TTI boosts network deployment speed and IT capabilities amid pandemic slowdowns

Video Transcript: Network makeover: How SHI helped TTI with rapid deployment

The SHI-Cisco partnership has really again given us the knowledge we need to reduce deployment timelines. It’s very crucial for us to meet those deadlines.

My name is Sean Viehman, and I’m a senior network engineer for TTI. My first experience working with SHI was bringing online some new sites during roll up of the pandemic.

I’m Phil Shiflett, the network manager for TTI. I manage over a dozen sites on the network infrastructure side, so I do everything from Cisco networking to VPNs and firewalls. TTI is a power tool equipment manufacturing company for consumer products and professionals. I’ve worked with SHI for six years. When I first joined the company, I interviewed several different vendors and felt that SHI understood my vision.

SHI has several Cisco experts, ranging from smartnet to DNA and EA specialists. We have Amy Karen, who’s awesome with smartnet, and Dan and Reagan on the infrastructure side to help with hardware piece, design piece, and order piece. Eli from the Cisco sales side is instrumental in ensuring orders are filled on time.

I met Eli at an event in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for a barbecue. It was the first time ever meeting him him in person, although we’d talked on the phone a lot. He’s super lively just like he is on the phone, super personable, just a really great guy to work with.

I would say the most valuable part of working with SHI is the partnership in general. I like the fact that I have somebody that's not on the team but feels like they're a part of that team, to give me that support I need to be able to make sure that the mission is completed and that I have everything needed.

I like the accessibility with Reagan and Dan, being able to work with them on a lot of projects. Their insights have been instrumental in what I'm trying to accomplish.

Every single person that works in IT can’t know everything. We all are masters of what we’ve learned and what we’ve grown through and the situations that we’ve been in before, so you can’t know everything. And that’s the other good thing about SHI and having that kind of relationship is that there’s a lot of people that are on their support teams and they can reach out. "Hey, have you ever seen this? Have you ever heard of this?" And normally there’s going to be someone there that says, "Yes, we’ve come across that same thing and this is how you remedy it."

I trust SHI to meet TTI’s needs. So before SHI, I didn’t really have a relationship with partners. They were more of, "Give me this and I’ll give you that." Right, I asked for this, give me that. With SHI now, it is a partnership.