System Center Guide

Those that have followed my career since, say 2005, will know that there have been many moves in the past 4 years. While some have even taken shots at me for such, none have fully understood the reasons behind them all. So, allow a quick explanation and then some really good news about the next chapter of my life…

You see, in 2004 I met a woman that I thought would be my soul mate. She was, in every sense of the word – my every existence. However, being a small-town girl from Waco, Texas as soon as we married she wanted to see “what else is out there”. Mind you, at the same time, my employer was an acquisition target and the writing was on the wall. So, I started looking and took a job offer with a company that put us in Redmond, WA. Since then, that previous employer was indeed acquired and the parent company has now filed for bankruptcy.

Anyhow, back to Redmond… while in Washington, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. After going through months of treatment, she wanted to get back home to our family and friends (i.e. support network). So, here we go again… moving back to Austin. I assumed another role with another Microsoft Partner there and after only 3 months found my position eliminated because the company “could not fiscally support the overhead role”. Wow. I never saw it coming. For the next four months my wife and I debated our options: stay in Texas, move again, move overseas perhaps… back and forth, back and forth. Finally, we decided that with her fully healthy again, we wanted to take a chance at living overseas. So, we moved to Ireland – mostly because I have more family there than here in the States and it is an English speaking country. Mind you at the time, I was entertaining offers from Finland, Denmark, UK and Ireland. But, it wasn’t that hard of a choice to make.

So, after being in Ireland for quite a while and my wife gets the worst possible news: her nursing license was denied. She can’t work there. Period. Now, mind you – she’s highly educated and a gifted surgical nurse with specializations in both adult and pediatric orthopedics. Still… she was denied. Eventually, the stress and anxiety worn on us and within a few months, she left to return to the States. I stayed in Ireland and did the very best I could to form a System Center practice for the company I was contracted with. But, with only 82 enterprise accounts in the entire country and competing against the likes of Dell Professional Services and Microsoft Consulting Services, I was fighting a losing battle. Eventually, I went to my managing director and told him that I thought it was time for us to admit defeat. That we’d fought the good fight, but it wasn’t meant to be. He agreed.

I returned home to the States on April 28, 2008 and immediately hit the ground running with the company I went to work for by assisting with the local Wave 2008 launch event the very next day. And since then, I don’t think I’ve stopped. At one point, I spent 7 weeks straight on the road – partly by choice in not returning home for the weekends, but still… the travel has worn me out.

So, that brings me to today.

I’ve just resigned from my current post. My last day will be Dec. 31. Come January 5th, I will be back home in Austin, Texas assuming a full-time architect role for a local company and for the first time in over 10 years, I will not be required to travel in my role. I will finally be a normal person again. I can plan my life months in advance. I can join a sports league. I can have a dog. Hell, I can have a girlfriend! The point being, I will finally have normalcy in my life once again.

So, as the New Year approaches, I look towards this one with more enthusiasm than I have any other in many, many, many years! I will finally be back home in Austin – the only true home I’ve ever had. I won’t be traveling at all – barring the occasional conference, training sessions or rare company business with our UK offices. But, I’m most excited about the prospect of being able to lay roots somewhere again and being happy in my job. It’s been a long time since I’ve truly been happy at work.

What about SystemCenterGuide.com? Well, thankfully I will own all things System Center related in my new role and will continue to share my learning experiences with you all as we fully deploy SCCM, OpsMgr, VMM and even perhaps DPM. I will still be a very active member of the Microsoft System Center community, but will happily be stepping out of the “spotlight” so to speak. You can most likely still expect to see me at MMS – perhaps even on stage. Who knows? But, that’s likely to be my only public speaking engagement of the year moving forward.  

So, as we approach the Christmas holiday and the New Year, I would like to give thanks to God for the blessings in my life and the roads I’ve had to travel to get me to this place today. While it’s not been an easy road by any account, the trials have made me a stronger, wiser person. This year has truly been the hardest of my life. And, now I rest in the promises of the Book of Job. There is something wonderful about to happen.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!