Côme

My background

Almond is my second company (not counting Majj, which was integrated into Rampar and then became Almond). My first professional experience was in an even smaller structure where I was already doing integration, but more network-oriented and less security-oriented. I met Benoit Vérove (Associate Director at Almond) on an assignment when I was resigning from my previous company, and that’s how I came to Majj and then Almond.

My missions and daily routine

The principle of integration is that there’s no such thing as a typical day. The missions are all different, although of course a certain number of elements recur regularly.

Assignments generally involve adding “something” to a customer’s network infrastructure. The “something” may be a function on a piece of equipment already in production at the customer’s site, or a new piece of equipment that will perform a new function or replace another piece of equipment already performing that function. These functions generally revolve around security (Firewall, IPS, VPN, etc.).

To this can be added a small amount of runtime for certain customers, and troubleshooting/debugging in what amounts to level 3 support.

All these missions can be mixed together as part of a large long-term project for a customer, or be very independent and ad hoc.

I’m also an in-house expert on Check Point technology, regularly answering questions from colleagues or helping them with their Check Point assignments.

In all cases, the approach consists of:

Understanding the need
Understanding what exists
Obtain the information needed to either properly integrate the new function, or find the problem in the case of troubleshooting
Plan with the customer the operations required to successfully complete the mission
Perform technical operations

What I like most about my job

Discovering very unique and special customer environments and ending the assignment with a network that works better than when I started.

The human side is also quite interesting. Many customers don’t dare intervene on their own network for fear of breaking everything. Guiding them and helping them to become autonomous on simple tasks is quite interesting and sometimes leads them to consider bigger projects when they’ve gained confidence.

Almond is a structure that’s not too big and impersonal, but big enough to fit in. No matter what your profile! The management is attentive to my needs, and I can concentrate on what I like to do: tinker with customer networks.

And it turns out that I’m doing exactly the job I want to do.