StormWind Studios uses proprietary technologies to provide live, interactive IT training courses online in technologies such as Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, CompTIA, ITIL, AWS, cybersecurity, project management, and more. Our blog aims to share the goings-on at StormWind Studios, as well as industry news, blog posts, and some fun stuff, too.
Nathaniel Miller
The skills that got you promoted are not the skills the job now requires. New managers are measured on what their team delivers, not on what they personally produce, and that shift catches most people out in the first quarter. This is a practical 90-day framework: what to focus on in each phase, the five […] Read More: Management Skills for New Managers: The First 90 Days
Nathaniel Miller
Microsoft’s Azure certification path is organized into three levels (Fundamentals, Associate, Expert) plus specialty and hybrid credentials. Exams cost about $99 at Fundamentals and about $165 for everything above it. The right starting point depends on whether you are new to cloud or already administering it. Unlike the older Microsoft program, the current path is […] Read More: Azure Certification Path 2026: Levels, Costs, and Order
Nathaniel Miller
Waterfall suits projects where the requirements are fixed and the cost of change is high. Agile suits projects where the requirements will move and the cost of being wrong for six months is higher. Most real delivery organizations run both. The useful skill is knowing which one a given project needs. Plenty of articles will […] Read More: Agile vs Waterfall: How to Actually Choose (Decision Table)
Nathaniel Miller
PMI membership cost is $149 per year plus a $10 one-time application fee. Renewal is $129 a year. For anyone sitting the PMP, membership pays for itself immediately: the member exam discount is larger than the fee to join. That is the part most people miss. Project Management Institute membership looks optional until you put […] Read More: PMI Membership Cost in 2026: Fees, Renewal, and Worth It?
Nathaniel Miller
Cloud managed access points move the management plane to a vendor-hosted platform. They do not send your users’ traffic through that vendor’s data center. A laptop talking to a file server on your LAN still goes from the AP to your switch to the server. That is why a brief internet outage is usually a […] Read More: Cloud-Managed Access Points: How They Work and When to Use Them
Nathaniel Miller
Cisco Firepower is Cisco’s next-generation firewall (NGFW) platform. The naming is the confusing part: Firepower, FTD, FMC, FDM, ASA with FirePOWER Services, and Secure Firewall overlap in ways that make inherited deployments hard to read. If you have walked into a Cisco security estate and could not tell what you were looking at, that confusion […] Read More: Cisco Firepower Explained: NGFW, FTD, and How Teams Use It
Nathaniel Miller
The CCNA 200-301 is a single 120-minute exam covering six topic areas, and it includes hands-on simulation questions you cannot pass by reading alone. If you want a practical answer to how to study for CCNA, start here: it is forward-only, so you cannot go back and change an answer, and about a third of […] Read More: How to Study for the CCNA: A 10-Week Study Plan
Nathaniel Miller
CISSP cost in the Americas is $749 for the exam, plus a $135 annual maintenance fee once you certify. The AMF is one fee covering every ISC2 certification you hold, not a separate charge for each credential. The real gate is not the money. It is five years of documented security experience in at least […] Read More: CISSP Cost and Requirements in 2026: Is It Worth the Investment?
Nathaniel Miller
The CCNA certification cost starts at $300 plus tax for exam 200-301. Every retake costs the full $300 again. There is no discounted second attempt, and Cisco typically makes you wait five calendar days after a fail before you can retest. This guide covers the real total, including the line items people forget, what CCNA […] Read More: CCNA Certification Cost and Salary in 2026
Nathaniel Miller
Short answer: yes, it is real. Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi partnered with StormWind Studios on the AI Accelerator bootcamp: six live sessions where you learn to securely build your own personal agent. StormWind Studios is an instructor-led IT and business training company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Raymond Lacoste leads the live sessions. Dean Graziosi […] Read More: Is the AI Advantage Bootcamp Legit? StormWind’s Tony Robbins Partnership, Explained
