Robert M. Cannistra

Robert M. Cannistra is a full-time faculty member at Marist College located in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he teaches networking, voice communication, security, wireless communication, and system administration courses within the School of Computer Science and Mathematics. Outside of teaching, Robert provides network consulting services for enterprise, service provider, and medical organizations for network design, configuration, and troubleshooting. Robert has held the positions of Northeast Regional Manager, Technical Services Manager, and Senior Consultant for a Cisco Gold Partner. His time there was spent designing, configuring, and implementing highly accessible data networks for various enterprise, service provider, and Internet companies across the world; some of those clients included Quaker Oats, Milwaukee Electric Tool, AC Nielsen, Cogent Communications, and EthnicGrocer.com, among numerous others. Upon the completion of each client implementation, he would develop and instruct customized training courses to help the client manage the newly designed networks. Robert has taught as an adjunct faculty member at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) for their Computer Science, Engineering, and Information Technology curricula and as an adjunct technical instructor for a technical institute in Poughkeepsie, NY. He has also held the positions of Senior Network Engineer for About.com, Inc., Internet and Intranet Infrastructure Webmaster at AT&T Solutions, and Systems Engineer at Kodak Imaging Services. Robert holds a master of science degree in Computer Science/Information Systems, a bachelor of science degree in Computer Science, an associate of science in Liberal Arts and Science, and several industry technical certifications including CCAI, CCNA, CCSP, MCSE, CLP, and several others. Whenever Robert has a free moment (which isn’t very often), he enjoys spending time with his wife, Kara, two sons, Luca and Rylan, and their dog, Tripster (a coonhound who always stands right behind him and his wife so they take full advantage of her name...as they trip over her).

Michael Scheuing has witnessed the evolution of Cisco voice products since first working on Call Manager 3.1 many years ago. Drawing upon 15 years of telephony and network experience, Michael has designed, implemented, and maintained voice and data infrastructures for small businesses and large enterprise alike. Michael currently works as a Telecommunications Engineer responsible for the architecture and management of a complex voice and video network consisting of legacy PBXs, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and Cisco TelePresence.