About
Who am I?
My name is Fabrizio de Luca and I’m an Italian independent VMware Certified Instructor (VCI) Level 2 and a VMware Certified Mentor (VCM) born and raised in Milano, yet teaching globally – since 2010 – for VMware Education EMEA as a direct contractor (a.k.a. VMware Associate Instructor) and for the major VMware Authorized Training Centers (VATC).
The Beginning
The very first time I read about what would have soon become the company we now know as VMware Inc. can be dated back to even before VMware itself was actually founded. It was autumn 1997 and, while reading the comp.os.linux Newsgroup, I run into a singular post. The message was fundamentally saying something very close to the following:
We are developing a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that will let you run multiple OS instances on top of the same x86 hardware platform, pretty much the same way you can do on mainframes. If you’re interested in this project, let us know or follow this thread.
The Development Team.
It was only a few months later that, on February 10th 1998, VMware Inc. was founded by Diane Greene, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Edward Wang and Edouard Bugnion. The company exited the stealth mode in February 1999 and launched their first product, VMware Workstation, in May.
I’ve been using their products since the very beginning: starting with VMware Workstation, then in 2001 GSX Server – the hosted hypervisor – and eventually moving to ESX (now ESXi) and Virtual Center (now vCenter) Server – respectively the bare-metal hypervisor and centralized platform management products. Nowadays, VMware offers a multitude of products organized in different product lines: Anywhere Workspace, App Platform, Cloud & Edge Infrastructure, Cloud Management, Desktop Hypervisor, Security & Networking.
Career as a consultant and freelance instructor
In 2007 I started my own company: during the first three years, I took care of a number of VMware-based projects on behalf of some Italian VMware Business Partners. In the meantime I leveraged the opportunity to further improve my preparation to successfully pass my VMware Instructor Certification Workshop back in 2010.
In 2012, I’ve achieved the VMware Certified Mentor status. According to this role I can prepare and authorize – via the VCI Mentorship program – new VMware Certified Instructors.
Lately, in 2016, I earned the title of Certification Subject Matter Expert, when I started helping VMware to develop the VMware Certified Associate (VCA), VMware Certified Professional (VCP) and VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) certification exams.
Students’ feedback
Since I became a VMware Certified Instructor, back in 2010, I trained a great number of professionals: here is an yearly average recap of the feedback scores I received from delegates attending my training sessions.
In January 2023, VMware has changed the rating scale – from a 5-point to a 7-point grading scale – therefore this is why you see two different tables.
| NEW SCORECARD | 2023 | Overall | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of students trained | 115 | 115 | |
| Number of courses delivered in year | 17 | 17 | |
| How satisfied were you with the Instructor? | 6,80 | 6,80 | |
| How satisfied were you with the Instructor’s subject knowledge? | 6,87 | 6,87 | |
| How satisfied were you with the Instructor’s presentation skills? | 6,82 | 6,82 | |
| How effectively did the Instructor create an interactive environment that invited student participation? | 6,69 | 6,69 | |
| VMware Certified Instructor scorecard, used since 13th February 2023, with [1] being “Extremely Dissatisfied” and [7] being “Extremely Satisfied”. – Last updated: 22nd September 2023. |
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| OLD SCORECARD | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of students trained | 53 | 68 | 225 | 147 | 114 | 187 | 205 | 214 | 243 | 193 | 213 | 297 | 276 | 24 | 2.459 |
| Number of courses delivered in year | 3 | 12 | 30 | 23 | 16 | 21 | 23 | 30 | 34 | 27 | 28 | 34 | 32 | 4 | 317 |
| The instructor’s subject knowledge | 4,79 | 4,88 | 4,85 | 4,88 | 4,92 | 4,90 | 4,95 | 4,88 | 4,91 | 4,91 | 4,90 | 4,91 | 4,93 | 5,00 | 4,90 |
| The instructor’s professional and presentation skills | 4,83 | 4,78 | 4,83 | 4,84 | 4,87 | 4,91 | 4,93 | 4,86 | 4,89 | 4,92 | 4,89 | 4,91 | 4,90 | 5,00 | 4,89 |
| The instructor encouraged participation and responded well to questions | N/A | N/A | 4,82 | 4,82 | 4,84 | 4,91 | 4,91 | 4,85 | 4,88 | 4,87 | 4,88 | 4,90 | 4,91 | 5,00 | 4,88 |
| VMware Certified Instructor scorecard, used until 10th February 2023, with [1] being “Needs Improvement” and [5] being “Excellent”. | |||||||||||||||
Career as an employee:
In the late 90s I worked as an IT Administrator for 4+ years at Ingram Micro up until 2000, and then as an IT Manager and Program Development Manager at Avnet Technology Solutions.
In 2003, I begun running the Avnet one-man VMware Business Unit as a Brand Manager, but also taking care of every other single aspect of the BU: pre-sales, sales, post-sales, marketing and on-site delivery and implementation. At that time there was no VMware subsidiary in Italy, therefore I autonomously developed a one-day localized seminar for evangelizing Italian Avnet Channel Partners about the technology and its benefits.
In 2005 I joined EMC² as a Partner and Sales Development Manager: during this period I created, managed and delivered the five-day European Channel Partners’ training program, called “EMC Partner New Hire Training”. I trained 200+ new Partners across the whole EMEA (with training centers in: Ireland, Austria, Poland, United Arab Emirates). This experience provided me with a much wider knowledge about storage technologies, complementing my previous SAN understanding, and fully prepped me as a public speaker and trainer.
Strongly Motivated
Education is our core business: we always strive to do better than anyone else and this is where we focus to achieve success.
Deeply Committed
All our time and energies are dedicated to achieving the deepest possible insight into products and technologies to effectively evangelize students.
Highly Skilled
Working in the Education business since 2009, we have accrued a great deal of experience and skills. Check our list of certifications.