Adaptation Fuels Our Success: An Interview with Shaun Austin

Meet Shaun Austin of Intuit Technologies, the Extreme Hero of the quarter.

You’ve been involved in some of the biggest and most important joint projects with Intuit Technologies and Extreme. Can you take us behind the scenes of this partnership?

We have a very strong partnership with Extreme Networks, particularly with our colleagues from the Extreme team in Australia. One of our most recent projects involved modernization of the network infrastructure for the Queensland Parliamentary Service. With the new Extreme solution in place, the customer’s network has become simpler and more secure, while delivering an improved experience for end-users.

It’s worth noting here that you went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure everything was deployed seamlessly and without a hitch for Queensland Parliamentary Service.

I wanted to make sure we were providing a deployment based on best practices. So beforehand, I looked for a specific training course to bring my Extreme product knowledge up to speed. I quickly took and completed the training, which fueled me with more knowledge and contributed towards our overall success.

Being a Senior Network Engineer, you have a great deal of experience with technology from many different vendors. What do you like about Extreme solutions in particular?

I’m a big fan of Extreme Fabric Connect. The solution makes it a lot easier and quicker to deploy new services such as VLANs, routing tables, or multicast networks, compared to other networking solutions out there. If you add the Site Engine for management and Control Engine for authentication, you’ve got a network that’s easy to deploy and manage − no matter how large it is.

But the most important thing is, if you combine Extreme switches, access points, authentication engines, and the management engine, you have a very powerful, very capable system. The products integrate with each other very well, providing automation, security, ease of management, and application visibility across wired and wireless networks.

Bill Gates once said: “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” How do you celebrate your wins? And how do you react to defeat?

When my wife and I want to celebrate something big, we like to treat ourselves to some ice cream at our local Baskin Robbins. Upon defeat, there is motivation to move into the problem-solving mindset and learn from the experience.

“If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been,” says Samwise Gamgee in the movie of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy “Lord of the Rings.” The character was played in the movie by Sean Austin, most of which was filmed in New Zealand. What about Shaun Austin from Australia; are you a homebody or a world traveler?

I’m a bit of both. I don’t mind recharging my batteries at home, but at the same time, I try to actively explore new countries and cultures whenever I can. When I’m between travels, I enjoy watching Drew Binsky’s videos on YouTube, which is second best to getting out there myself.

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