The origin of Netcordia's name
by Terry Slattery
There's really no great story for the Netcordia name. My prior company was Chesapeake Computer Consultants, Inc.* That's a mouthful. We eventually used 'Chesapeake' as the name (changing from CCCI). I decided that any subsequent company would have a nice, short name that could be easily spelled.
When I started consulting after leaving Chesapeake, I used 'Intaligent, LLC'. Note the mis-spelling. I learned in a couple of months what a mistake that was. No-one could spell it correctly. Time for a new name.
I keep a notepad in my car. When looking for a company or product name, I jot ideas on the notepad. It is a way to use driving time to occupy my mind. The inputs are names and fragments I see on buildings, signs, trucks, license tags, and bumper stickers. The fragment 'net' held high potential as part of the name because the company would initially do network consulting. The process took weeks and resulted in a short set of names that looked promising. Web searches invalidated many of the names because they were used for someone's web site or product name.
Netcordia made it through that process, as did several other names. Sorry, no magic, no inspiration, no family member names, or trees**. Just a process and working through combinations of things and picking what looked to be the best of the results.
-Terry
* Chesapeake became one of Cisco's premier training partners. We had the best Cisco training program of all the training partners. Cisco sent their staff to our classes. Customers raved about the quality of the instruction. We invented the vLab online training system. Chesapeake didn't survive the downturn in the training market that occurred when the tech bubble burst and the curtailment of the training market subsequent to the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on 9/11/2001. Chesapeake Computer Consultants was picked because I decided, like Steve Jobs picking Apple Computer, that if we didn't have a better name by the time we needed to incorporate, that we'd use it. I still have the domain, ccci.com.
** Our marketing folks were delighted to discover that cordia is a type of tree, so they changed to a leaf logo graphic. Sorry, but a tree never figured into the origin of Netcordia.
Terry Slatery asked us to post this invitation to join the Cisco Mid-Atlantic Users Group (C-MUG). The folks over at Chesapeake Netcraftsmen are a brain trust and are creating a forum to share information with any interested network engineer in the region. Go check it out and tell them Eman sent you!
May Mid-Atlantic Cisco User's Group to Discuss Fundamentals of IP Multicast / T.38 Technology
May 19, 2009 - Columbia, MD
May 20, 2009 - Washington, DC
In May, C-MUG will focus on Cisco’s new Unified Computing System and the Data Center 3.0. The speakers will be Karl Rabe and Eric Simpson, specialists in Cisco’s UCS and Data Center.
Additional information and registration for the C-MUG session is available here:
http://www.netcraftsmen.net/cmug/index.html
Slides from previous sessions are available here:
http://www.netcraftsmen.net/cmug/index.html#cmugslides
NetCraftsmen Will Be @ Networkers @ CiscoLive In San Francisco
Jun 27 - Jul 2, 2009
Chesapeake NetCraftsmen will be at @ Networkers @ CiscoLive in San Francisco this summer. We hope you get a chance to stop by and visit our technical folks either at our booth #1038 in the World of Solutions area, or between sessions.
In addition to helping in our booth and attending technical breakouts, three of our senior consultants, Carole Warner Reece, Pete Welcher, and Paul Borghese will be presenting labtorial sessions at Networkers:
LTRCRT-2341 -- ''CCIP Prep: Influencing BGP Route Selection". Carole will lead a four hour lecture and lab session providing discussion and hands on labs on tools for influencing BGP route selection including: AS Path filters and regular expressions; Prefix-list filters; and using route maps, weights, and local preference. (Link to full abstract for "CCIP Prep: Influencing BGP Route Selection" is here.)
LTRCRT-2342 -- "CCDP Prep: Case Study Designing the Enterprise Data Center". Pete will present a four hour lecture and case study session reviews design considerations for the enterprise data center. Attendees will practice design skills in a collaborative small group classroom environment . (Link to full abstract for "CCDP Prep: Case Study Designing the ENterprise Data Center" is here.)
LTRCCIE-2746 -- "Cisco 360 Approach to CCIE R&S Skills Evaluation and Preparation". Paul will mentor a four hour hands-on practical Cisco 360 CCIE R&S pre-assessment session. Participants will obtain a scoring report and evaluate the results with an experienced instructor. (Link to full abstract for "Cisco 360 Approach to CCIE R&S Skills Evaluation and Preparation" is here.)
You can click the following graphic to link to CiscoLive Registration:
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