Tag Archive for: Amazon Web Services

Commercient Team Members Get AWS Certifications

A global company, full of capable team members is one of Commercient’s greatest assets. People that are great at what they do, willing to improve their skill sets in order to provide best-in-class service to our customers and partners. Now, two of them have received the AWS Certification. 

After weeks of hard work preparing for the exam, Sergio Cabrales and Alan Valdez, both Level 1 Support (Application Team of Commercient), completed this process successfully and are proud owners of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification. 

They had one month to prepare for the exam which resulted in them being extremely dedicated during the week and on weekends. 

They stated the following on how it will benefit Commercient:

“I hope that this certification helps me have a deeper understanding of the configuration of our customers so that I could provide them with better troubleshooting and advice whenever needed”, explained Sergio Cabrales

Alan Valdez said: “This clearly proves that as time passes on, Commercient gets more and more people certified in different skills which brings way more value to the company in any way one could think of.”

About AWS

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, which is known to be a cloud-based platform that offers 175 services ranging from analytics, application integration, AR & VR, AWS Cost Management, Blockchain, Customer Engagement, Machine Learning, Developer Tools, Security, Networking, IoT, and the list goes on. 

Part of these functionalities is that there are so many, that an application can be designed with the right tools for the specific job you require and it offers data to be moved to the cloud through cost-effective, fast and easier measures. Not only that, but AWS is one of the most secure cloud databases as it even satisfies the military, banks and other industries managing sensitive information.

AWS Certifications

Even though AWS is offered as a product to many customers, it also offers various certifications such as:

  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner  – Foundational
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate 
  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate
  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate 
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

Sergio and Alan  took this great challenge by excelling in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certificate. This course focuses on:

  • Designing systems with AWS tools
  • Data Security
  • Troubleshooting
  • Implementation 

And this is what our team members had to say about it:

“I think getting this AWS certification is certainly a big accomplishment for my career. I had experience working with AWS before, and this exam required a deep knowledge of cloud computing. This has greatly helped me understand how cloud computing works and all of the components needed to make a business application successful said Sergio Cabrales.”

“I prepared for this exam by reviewing online studying materials and also doing some hands-on practice in the AWS console directly. Balancing the workload at the job and the study time was quite challenging, but I am glad I got a positive result,” explained Cabrales.

Alan Valdez shared this about the preparation process: “When I got the assignment of passing the AWS Solutions Architect Certification, I definitely took it as a challenge to test my capabilities as we only had around a month to go before test day would arrive and I wanted to contribute to this to the best of my ability for Commercient.” 

“Then came the course to get prepared for the AWS Solutions Architect Certification actual test. This was more of practicing within the console of AWS and covered a lot of material than what was actually in the real exam and previous dump exams, that I had taken prior to the real one”, said Valdez. 

How do you expect to help Commercient customers with this certification?

“I hope that this certification helps me have a deeper understanding of the configuration of our customers so that I could provide them with better troubleshooting and advice whenever needed”, said Sergio Cabrales.

Alan Valdez added: “I believe this certification will truly help Commercient and our customers not only because of the Certification itself, for partner wise purposes and related topics. This clearly proves that as time passes on, Commercient gets more and more people certified in different skills which brings way more value to the company in any way one could think of. This was my joyful experience in taking this examination and being able to pass on the first attempt.”

Here are some tips if you feel like getting an AWS Certification is the next step in your career.

Tips To Get The AWS certificate

How do we know which AWS certificate is best suited to us? What is a certificate? Why do we need certificates? These are all common questions that are normally asked amongst ourselves. But they are highly recommended and the following are one of many benefits:

  • They are proof of hard work and knowledge
  • They are valuable
  • They open doors to many opportunities
  • We can gain skills and make ourselves more profitable

With the types of AWS certificates such as,

  • AWS Foundational Level Certifications: This is based on foundational cloud concepts but nothing on implementation.
  • AWS Associate Level Certifications: This has to do with working in the cloud and has to do with more hands-on implementations.
  • AWS Professional Level Certifications: You are already experienced in AWS and have passed the AWS associate-level certifications.
  • AWS Specialty Certifications: You are highly experienced in AWS and it is focused on narrow areas – networking, data, and security. Many years of experience are needed for this.

If the AWS certificate is what you are looking for, here are the steps to sign up and begin!

  1. You will need to sign up for an AWS training class
  2. Look over any exam or study guides to start preparing
  3. Take on all AWS whitepapers as you may find many answers in there to your questions
  4. Make sure to practice over past exam papers to gain an insight into what it will feel like to write the exam
  5. Depending on the certification, make sure you spend at least 80-120 hours practicing and studying before the exam. Once you feel ready, schedule the exam.

Rundown of Commercient’s 2019

2019 is quickly drawing to a close. Let’s take the time to reflect on the year gone by with Commercient. Our company grew rapidly this year not only increasing our customer base but also our worldwide team. We hire talent from all over the world expanding our sales, support, IT and marketing teams. 

This year we’ve grown our partner channel by adding two major tech companies Intuit and HubSpot  in addition to the well over 80 Salesforce and Microsoft Consulting practices that also joined our partner network. If you would like to partner with us, please contact us.  In 2019 we launched two significant CRM exchanges, Zoho Marketplace and Sugar exchange. We also added 10 new Salesforce apps to our existing 16.  

In terms of technology, this year saw Commercient being awarded an Innovation Credit by Amazon Web Services. The Innovation Credit was used to roll out an AI-enhanced Commercient SYNC. This will deploy 4th generation technology to achieve more rapid implementations, enhanced customer experience, global market reach, and the ability to onboard many more customers faster.

We deployed a new AI program for data matching and deduplication, which is incredibly powerful, and therefore power-hungry. We required GPU cores to handle the millions of parallel operations needed to deliver intelligent decisions on how to match customers and products between systems. This process would have taken hours on traditional computers and servers, and add into that the human verification process.  The net result is that we can automate matching and deduplication of data in seconds instead of weeks, which is a huge help for new customers with disparate data between ERP and CRM systems.

On June 24, 2019 Commercient, won the Salesforce AppExchange Demo by popular vote! The 3-minute demo focused on SYNC, and was performed by Ken deLodzia, Commercient’s Senior Solutions Engineer. The AppExchange Demo Jam is a game show-style event where up to 8 Salesforce app partners perform a fast, 3-minute demo of their app. Attendees watching the demos vote for their favorite.

“The valuable data you guys are able to SYNC over is fantastic. Not only do you have the bi-directional SYNC going on, which is configurable as a one-way or two-way SYNC, but you are able to pull that data in a way that a customer service rep or a support rep is able to access, and utilize. Not only for the entitlement side, or the, ‘Hey, I need to get you a replacement order.’ You can see the order information from whatever ERP system you’re pulling from. Fantastic, very simple to use!”- Jeff Grosse, Salesforce MVP, and Demo Jam moderator.

Commercient was in attendance of multiple industry-leading conferences all over the world including Salesforce World Tour London, SYSPRO Wave, and Dreamforce.

Salesforce held its annual Dreamforce convention on November 19-22, 2019 in San Francisco. Our founders, Richard Jenkins, John Angove, and Corinne Allgaier as well as our Head of Partnerships Noah Thomas and Paul Barry, Senior Solutions Engineer were all in attendance. Over the four days, our team met with 18 potential customers, partners and loyal clients.

“Our customers love that we proactively monitor the synchronization” – John Angove CFO

As we prepare to close 2019, we reflect on Commercient’s place in the world as a global corporate citizen. At Commercient, with a global work staff, we believe in the ability of corporations to act as a platform for change, and we consider our collective roles as guardians of world climate health to be both urgent and critical. 

On a very practical basis, the urgency of the issue was brought home to us when Commercient CFOs were in Europe for a conference in July and were subjected to the intense heat waves across France, The Netherlands, and England. John Angove, Co-Founder, and his family were among those that became stuck on a train from Paris to Amsterdam. The railway lines were buckling, temperatures inside the carriage became intolerable and people were panicked. 

It is in this context that as individuals and as a corporation we strove in 2019 to make real and impactful contributions to conservation and climate efforts. In 2019 Commercient spread the joy by making contributions to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) when our customers gave us commendations. We participated in beach clean-ups, electronics recycling, climate protests,  and WWF campaigns. We got involved; our children got involved.

We’re thankful for all the opportunities we received in 2019 and all of the companies we managed to help with our SYNC solution. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to contact us if you are still looking for a data integration solution for 2019.