Miss England

#devops The EMEA International Technology Center is now open!

I know it doesn’t apply, but the song is stuck in my head, so I got to get it out. Come on; sing along, “There she is, Miss America. There she is, your ideal.” Now doesn’t that feel better? Ok well, maybe not, but it was worth a try and the shock of folks sitting around me.

AND the winner is........this beauty, F5’s newest International Technology Center (or Centre if you are in region) in the heart of London! She debuted Monday and already has a full dance card. (Ok this is corny and probably very painful for you. So I will stop with the whole beauty queen analogy.)

The facility will serve as F5’s regional Technology Center and provide tremendous value to our customers through product demonstrations, proof of concepts, design and architecture discussions and much, much more. After building and then running our Seattle facility over the past five years we learned few things about facility design and usability that we incorporated in this new build out. Just small simple things that we underestimated with our Seattle design, like LARGE in-room garbage can needs, catering setup areas, single touch lighting/AV controls. These things aren’t really interesting or earth-shattering but they add to the overall experience. The big stuff that counts the most, like lab design, HVAC, fire suppression, power, monitoring, alerting, management and security, I am proud to say we got right the first time and only required engineering changes to accommodate some of the locations physical challenges. But since lab design is interesting to me and only a handful of other individuals I will spare you all the details and just show up the pretty pictures.

But not before thanking all the folks in IT, Facilities, Operations, Finance and PME who helped make this a success. Thanks folks, what a great team!

Now it is time for the tiara, the bouquet, tears and a wave.

Published Oct 08, 2011
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