Career

Why do IT projects fail? I am sure if you ask that question to ten people you will get 10 different answers, or at the very least a wide variety of reasons. The product chosen to deliver the solution was a poor match, the product was implemented incorrectly, the PM sucked, the Vendor gave no support, insufficient training material/resources, poor interoperability, the list goes on and on. One issue I have observed from time to time on my travels is quite different from the above listed examples.

Transforming Networking and Security for the Digital Era Wednesday morning I attended the Network and Security keynote which, if I’m honest, I found to be a bit boring. To be fair, it was probably aimed at business leaders and maybe not those that are technical. There were three customer stories, but I would have liked to have heard much more about the problems that NSX solved for them specifically, rather than being datacenter transformation/cloud journey stories that included NSX.

I was honoured to be asked to be part of VMware’s CrowdChat for the general sessions this year, the idea being to live-tweet the General Session as it progressed. I’ve tried to embed the session from CrowdChat itself below, but it might be blocked by your browser for running unsafe scripts. You can also see the commentary on the Day Two General Session here. [http://www.via-cc.at/657sc]

I was honoured to be asked to be part of VMware’s CrowdChat for the general sessions this year, the idea being to live-tweet the General Session as it progressed. I’ve tried to embed the session from CrowdChat itself below, but it might be blocked by your browser for running unsafe scripts. You can also see the commentary on the Day One General Session here. [http://www.via-cc.at/057s1]

VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist Exam I always like to take a discounted exam at VMworld, this year I opted for the VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist exam, which was released a few weeks ago. Having delivered quite a few vSAN based solutions over the last few years, I was fairly confident in the blueprint. I am pleased to say that I passed the exam with a score of 422, way higher than I expected!

**a non-VMware employee! I am very much looking forward to meeting friends old and new during the week, so if you see me come say hi! Where can you find me? During the day I’m likely to be found in the bloggers area, or hanging around the vBrownbag stage, when I’m not in a session. Monday evening I’ll be leading a fearless team of hackers for the VMware {Code} Hackathon, hoping to create something cool!

Just under two months ago I left my role at Xtravirt and started life as a contractor. At that point I was content to live the contractor life for a year or so and see what opportunities came along. I didn’t expect opportunity to come along so quickly! TLDR; I’m joining VMware as part of the PSO NSX practice! I’ve seen VMware as the place that I would end up working for a while now, having worked as a customer and a partner it seemed like a logical progression.

I’ve been working for Xtravirt for over 3 and a half years now, first as a Senior Consultant, and more recently as a Lead Consultant. During that time I’ve had the opportunity to work with some excellent people, some fantastic customers and some huge projects. I’ve developed and grown as a consultant and architect, achieved multiple VCP and VCAP qualifications, and VMware’s elite VCDX certification. For all of this, and for the opportunities and support they have provided, I am thankful to Xtravirt and to all of my colleagues who helped along the way.

I have been musing this a little while and decided to write this post/rant/opinion post, feel free to post your thoughts and opinions in the comments. OK so here it is, one thing I have observed for a good while now is how much noise there is about how -you- should be in the cloud (Public) and if you are not you’re already dead. I call Bull****! Public, Hybrid and Private clouds are solutions not final destinations, regardless of whether you are a customer, partner, or any other third thing you should be purely focused on what is best for you or (if you provide IT services) your customer.

I was having a chat with my Dad recently, about how those who work in IT keep their skills up to date. He is now retired but had spent 25+ years in the IT business so I always value his opinion. What occurred to me while we chewed the fat was the following. If there is one thing we can be sure of in IT, it is that change will happen and faster than we think.