I have experienced several inflection points in my career. The first was during my time as a Microsoft Certified Instructor during the 1990’s… I learned about Citrix for the first time – at the time their product was called Winframe. I was astounded by the idea (and the experience) of hosting a complete, immersive desktop on a single Windows instance for dozens of users… it was a game changer!
The second was in 1999 – I was working for a reseller in California, and my job for the week was to install Citrix Metaframe on a bunch of Windows servers at Peoplesoft in Pleasanton, CA so they could host their applications for users remotely. One of the other consultants working on the project was running a linux laptop, and yet I saw a window running on his laptop that clearly had an instance of Windows 98 running… “What is that!?!” I asked – and he told me about this cool tool called VMware Workstation.
Those two incidents together have shaped my career for the past 25 years. I went on to work for Citrix for a few years as a presales engineer. In 2004, VMware came along and hired away most of the team I was working with, and though they didn’t have an opening for someone in my location then, I eventually landed a job with them in 2007. I have been with them since. Even my time as a vSpecialist for EMC – while technically not a VMware employee – was spent working on VMware topics and technology. I have been a Systems engineer for the core sales team in Virginia and the mid-atlantic, a business strategy solution architect, a vSAN Systems Engineer, and most recently a Cloud Solutions Architect. I have worked with customers large and small – across multiple verticals, including Capital One, Fedex, Bank of America, the State of VA, Northwell Health, Health New England, Cleveland Clinic, various state and federal agencies, and numerous cities and counties. Nearly every post on my occasional blog is taken directly from my personal experience working with customers – I write to help crystallize my thoughts and solidify my knowledge… if any of this has been helpful to my colleagues and customers, so much the better.
VMware is a special company and has been my home for the better part of the past 20 years. No matter what happens next I have enjoyed my time with my company and my customers. We have literally changed the industry… the way technology has been built and sold has fundamentally changed due to VMware – servers don’t or function look the same, storage arrays don’t look or function the same, networking equipment doesn’t look or function the same. I recall at one company meeting Diane Greene talking to us all and pointing out – “We have a chance to insert an entirely new layer into the technology stack in the datacenter…” And we did it – We have altered the datacenter industry forever.
This week represents another major inflection point as Broadcom finalizes and closes its acquisition of VMware. I will be staying with Broadcom post-acquisition for the foreseeable future, but I have no idea what the gig is going to be like. I don’t know what the next weeks and years will bring – but it is clear that it won’t be the same – both from Broadcom’s past acquisitions, as well as from how this one has proceeded.
I will be taking an extended hiatus from blogging until my path is clear (who am i kidding? I only write a few articles a year anyways)- so until then…
So long and thanks for all the fish.
My Occasional IT Blog... 