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Mastermind profile: Meet millennial HPE Master ASE Matt Bridgeworth

Learn why this millennial made earning a Master ASE certification a priority for career development.

Matt BridgeworthMatt Bridgeworth

Name: Matt Bridgeworth
Employer: Softcat plc
Title/Role: Senior Technical Architect
Location: Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK
LinkedIn Profile:  Matt Bridgeworth

Certifications:
HPE Product Certified – OneView [2016]
HPE Product Certified – Synergy Solutions [2016]
HPE ASE Data Center and Cloud Architect v3
HPE ASE – Data Center Network Architect v1
HPE Master ASE – Advanced Server Solutions Architect v3
HPE Master ASE – Storage Solutions Architect v2
HPE Master ASE – FlexNetwork Solutions v2

 

 

 

 

How did you get started? 

“By accident actually. I’d left my original degree course after a year once I’d decided that IT was what I wanted to do, rather than a degree in Modern History. Whilst working temporarily at a pub, waiting to go back to University to start a new degree in IT, I saw the advert for a ‘Junior Hardware Presales Specialist’ advertised which described a list of useful skills including ‘PC building with a good hardware knowledge of processors, memory, and disks.' As I’d spent most of my youth playing with those things, I thought I’d apply. Luckily for me, I was successful and eight years later, through several different roles within the same company all designing infrastructure, I’m still here J.”

What is your favorite HPE technology? 

“I’d imagine a lot of people say this, but HPE 3PAR. I love the blend of extremely well thought through and custom designed hardware with innovative and feature-rich software. 3PAR represents a storage platform that can be tailored to and fit many different roles and give customers bleeding edge performance and flexibility. Lots of other storage arrays can only do one or a couple of things well, and customers have to compromise. Whilst 3PAR isn’t magic it does provide bucket loads of flexibility for relatively few compromises.”

Any interesting customer stories you would like to share? 

“We had a customer in London last year who for their business type and size had a horrendously high-performance benchmark with dozens of different workloads, all with different SLA’s and the environment was just generally a bit of a mess. After some thorough analysis work, we managed to downsize their environment and consolidate four different storage architectures onto a single All-Flash 3PAR solution (across two sites) and swap a mixed rack/tower compute installation for a highly resilient and scalable Blade solution using three types of blades for the different compute requirements. They were further impressed once we’d explained that they could manage it all from one place using HPE OneView too. Happy customer, the right technology fit and a scalable and flexible platform for them to grow with.” #bestresult

What are the benefits of being a Master ASE?

“Completing a Master ASE was always something I’d aimed for since starting my very first role. One of our Installation Engineers who’d originally been in Presales had his in Storage and it represented to me being a Subject Matter Expert, something I’d always strived to be. Now having three of them (Servers, Storage, and Networking) it gives customers confidence that I have a really in-depth understanding of the technology and in my ability to design complex environments in the most challenging of circumstances.”

Any tips for others interested in HPE certifications? 

“Work hard to broaden your horizons across all of the infrastructure space. Servers, Storage, and Networking are inextricably linked, and decisions taken in one almost always have a bearing on another. The more you can learn about the symbiosis between these pillars, the more useful you can be to customers who are after a trusted advisor, rather than simply a hardware provider. The fact that HPE has solutions in all of these areas as well as dozens more, means you can really get to grips with understanding an ecosystem that’s been designed to work in harmony with each other. Oh, and do lots and lots of reading.”  


As a Master ASE, you will be recognized as having reached the pinnacle in HPE Certifications. Customers will rely on you to bring rich technical skills to design and implement their most complex solutions. You’ll also see personal and business rewards while being able to network and share with one of the most exclusive teams in the industry.

About the Author

SarahA

I’ve been in marketing in high-tech for 20+ years.

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