Waste of space BAs get to ride the techies while the SE/SAs get LRed. Soon there will be no one left to generate business. A “celebrated” self styled nontechnical CTO ( magically metamorphosed from being a BA), thinks SD-WAN is for the SP sector. God help Cisco U.K. - legacy of DM’s lunatic fringe.
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We don’t get the BA role either. The BAs themselves don’t get the role. That’s part of the problem. Because they are not technical ( by own admission) but for some bizarre reasons some are allowed to introduce themselves as CTOs to customers, the whole process turns bizarre and sometimes toxic . They cannot give a technical solution because they are not technical, they think being technical is “moving boxes”, when that is far from the truth in these day and age and eventually their instinct of job protectionism takes over where they go up to management and bad mouth AM/SE/SA/TSA for the mess - end up being an unnecessary and unwanted appendage to the whole technical sales process. They don’t understand how to be an AM, does not have technical abilities to be an SE/SA/TSA but try to be all of that and make a mess of everything. All this while these charlatans are totally not needed, just impose themselves on an otherwise perfectly smooth sales and customer relationship process to cause chaos, mayhem and unnecessary disruption. A Cisco competitor’s wet dream!
Mgmt, if they insist on pushing these jokers on us, should insist that they get Cisco technical certifications as a bare minimum basic metric. as useless as those certs are these days, that will ensure that the BAs at least know what an up address is. Cisco built the internet and everyone who works here need to have a basic technical standard.
Very interesting discussion. I don't get this BA role.....sounds like a respin of other roles that already existed. Sales always had their sales guys, along with account mgrs, to do the selling. The SA (sales, and/or development) was there to draft the architecture, and the SE (along with help from development architects/engineers, if needed) would pitch the architecture and help draft additional requirements. The BDM would draft the business proposal, based on the agreed architecture, to sales....who would then have the SE/AM massage it to the customer.
All this "renaming" of positions reminds me of the TPM (Technical Program Mgr) role, which has been completely ruined within the tech industry. Amazon, Google, etc did that, by hiring biology/liberal arts majors and slap a TPM name on them. So sad. Cr-p like this is why I left the tech industry........it's so watered down now.
@2won+1eaOtRCg Therein lies the oxymoronic situation: BAs don’t understand the solutions. They hide behind the “I am not technical” mantra. Here’s a bit of enlightenment ( a “Duh” moment ) for you: Solutions in a technology company tend to be technical in nature! Hence, role of BAs are redundant by default .This is Cisco , not Walmart or a under-the-kitchen-sink outfit like Avnet, OBS or DXC where BS gets the pay check. At least that is not what Cisco is supposed to be if the ELT brouhahas are to be believed.
@2won+1eaOtRCg If only Cisco had “solutions” to sell.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have the Cisco schism writ large.
The battle between the Luddite AM and SE box-shifters and the new era of BA-led solution selling engagements that will lead Cisco into the bright sunlit uplands of the future.
As a previous generation of dinosaurs found, evolve or face extinction.
Happy, happy, days.
@1etn+1eaOtRCg Exactly. There is no scenario where a company would need these nontechnical “CTOs” and BAs to sit around in front of customers and embarrass us under the pretext of offering “an overall solution”. Core of the problem is, they don’t understand the solution! That is the job of presales techies and the BAs are not technical. None of the competitors have any such overlay baggage. One of them had a few but fired them all back in 2015-2016 when I was working for them. This is a ridiculous waste of OPEX.
@1kaa+1eaOtRCg Why wouldn’t that be the AM’s job?
Well, I was there too. I guess recollections might vary.
In 2011 sales of R/S tanked because at that time no one with influence was taking it seriously inside of Cisco and sales had been taken for granted and resources not invested. At that time it was all about video, collaboration, flip cameras, digital media players and all of that useless stuff that drew all the attention inside Cisco. If you were an expert R/S guy then "meh, get with the program dude" was the attitude toward you. Sell multi million R/S deals and it was like "meh"... Sell a few flip or DMP players and you were at Chairman's club. It was a ridiculous state of affairs. That is why R/S tanked, not because SE's couldn't sell it. SE's were not being /incentivized/ to sell it, that's why. So your assertion that the BA's saved the day by being the "saviour" knowing stuff over and above the SE is an incorrect characterization of the situation at that time.
I think the BA role has indeed gone a bit too far. However, that said, you have to remember that budget needs to be created for these technical projects and these technical projects have to align to the business goals of the company concerned. No one is going to spend $10million just because it can do SDA or ACI or has lots of fast interfaces or flashing lights on the box. That's where the BA comes in to align a potential project to what the business wants to do and help create the budget for the project. I agree what they do is all a bit BS to me but I do think that just saying they are all useless freeloaders is a bit unfair.
OK, I get it, you don’t like BAs.
It’s a shame you can’t name names though because I’ve looked through the UKI structure and don’t see any CTOs listed, although I accept that there were a couple.
It’s worth remembering how the BA role came about though. In 2011 sales of R&S where declining badly and someone in EN came up with a programme called Transformational Networking to try and grow R&S market share. The challenge that was identified was a simple one, how do you get a customer to upgrade a functional network? (This topic has been discussed elsewhere). The solution was to align network refresh to business outcomes and a number of account SEs and Architects were taken off regular duties and trained up. In 2012/13 there was an uptick of EN sales so TN was deemed a success.
TN then became SITR, which became DJDs etc etc and so the role of a BA was developed.
Point is, BAs came into being because traditional deep-techie SEs were not selling. Like it or not, SE is, and was, a frontline sales role.
The role of the BA (in Cisco or anywhere) is not to be deeply technical in any one architecture but rather to have a broad, if shallow, appreciation of all architectures.
@1ujo+1eaOtRCg Bingo! On top of that some of these “I am not technical” BAs have taken to writing CTO beside their names, despite the fact that the term CTO refers to technical people. The situation is ludicrous. Here’s Cisco thumping their chest as a High Tech leader and at the same time they have these bunch of jokers leading customer calls identifying themselves as CTO - and then backing off on that “I am not technical” line as soon as things get remotely technical. Ridiculous
SA is now a mini account manager (on 1/3 the money) whilst business architects do all the "fluffy" stuff that make Cisco management smile (and get $$$). But as soon as customer say "and so how would you do that????" all the eyes go to the SA to explain the reality of the BS they just said and the BA says "I'm not technical". Cisco is a technical company. How can so many people who we put in front of customers just keep saying the "I'm not technical" line????? There are dozens of people in Cisco for each technical one nowadays. Cisco need to get back to its roots.
Anyways, the SA and anything technical is a diminishing career role at Cisco and second class underlings. SA's have been repositioned to sort out the account licensing, quality and TAC issues.
Well in 2018 onwards they hired a LOT of BAs, at least in U.K. a bunch of arrogant, entitled waste of spaces. In the last couple of years not a single one of them have made any effort to educate themselves about Cisco’s solutions but insist on talking endlessly on customer calls. One such customer reverted back with a request to not have that “CTO person” on future calls as it is obvious that he was talking at “cross purposes”. ‘Enuff said
In 2017 they fired most of the BAs. There are more dead weight SA’s now. Also there are very few “Architects” at Cisco. It’s just a title that leadership decides to use to make them look more attractive to customers.
Who knows what Wendy thinks. Both her and DM are far more focussed on “mental health” issues than solving the root cause of those same issues by diminishing job insecurity among techies in Cisco U.K.
What does Wendy think of this?
Cisco obtains technical talent through acquisitions. That's always been the strategy to obtain talented SE/SA.