Hi, I’m Barry Pascolutti and I’m the latest addition to the VQ team as their Lead Sales Engineer.
I write this at the start of my 6th week since joining VQ Communications Ltd and what a month or so it has been.
I was a Collaboration SE at Cisco at the time of their acquisition of Acano last year and I was tasked with becoming expert in Acano technology. It soon became apparent that to truly unleash the power of the Acano server at any scale, some sort of management platform is necessary that can utilise the Acano API. And researching that is when I first became aware of VQ as they absolutely tick that box.
I’ve joined the company at a really exciting time.
Alongside 2.1 MR4 which has just been made available to all customers , VQ are just about to release the highly anticipated version 2.3 of Acano Manager with support for Cisco Multiparty licensing. I remember when Multiparty was first introduced. The change from port-based to meeting-based licensing was regarded as something of a paradigm shift and was welcomed by many. It was logical to extend this licensing scheme to the Cisco Meeting Server but ensuring the correct license is consumed and keeping track of license usage is an important concern for the administrator. So I believe this will be a much-used feature of Acano Manager.
A key part of my Sales Engineering role has been hosting customer demos. The demos not only allow me to put a face to the name in the email address but to build up relationships with customers. Over the past 5 weeks I have enjoyed hosting a bunch of demos to customers all around the globe and have witnessed a good number of deals being signed off during my short time here.
I’m home based and typically spend more time working from there than in the office. The team as a whole is dispersed around the UK (and further afield) with a small group based in the main office; every Thursday those based more locally come in and the office is full and we enjoy a “brown bag lunch” from the local farm shop – really tasty.
What’s really clear though is how video (CMS based) and tools such as Slack, Github and a team that knows what it’s doing can work really efficiently together. It’s a business that simply couldn’t have existed without video calls and a big fat pipe. The whole world really is just a click away.
VQ itself is a dynamic, vibrant company whose people share a genuine passion and enthusiasm for what they’re doing. This shines through not only in the product but also the day to day office atmosphere.
I look forward to my next trip to Chippenham with relish and keeping you up to date with my VQ journey.