Key responsibilities
- Produce guidance and advice for SharePoint infrastructure architects (architectural approach, farm design, security, performance, geographically dispersed deployments, extranets and migration)
- Produce guidance and advice for supporting technologies from third parties and Microsoft in virtualisation, Identity and Access Management, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery disciplines
- Deliver initiatives to expand depth and breadth of technical readiness for infrastructure technologies and new versions of core products
- Provide technical advice and validate suitability of new products for Content and Code approaches
- Internal and hosted infrastructure strategy and guidance
- Internal development and test environment architecture and strategy (virtualization approach, technologies, usage guidelines and training)
- Technical contact for participation in pre-release Microsoft technology programs, such as the SharePoint 2010 Partner Evidence Program
- Mentor junior staff and engage the wider SharePoint community.
What’s your background?
“I studied at the University of Iowa before spending several years as a regulatory analyst at WorldCom. Then I made the jump to a Microsoft Gold Partner where I built up my technical knowledge over six years and became an Infrastructure Architect.
I joined Content and Code in late 2008, moving into the Businesses Practices Team where I worked as an adviser to our professional services teams. I now advise our professional, managed and online services departments regarding their infrastructure needs. I’m regularly engaged with the SharePoint community, so I can pass on what I learn there to our delivery teams, while contributing our own learning through user groups, my blog and other social media.”
What’s been your biggest achievement at Content and Code?
“Since joining Content and Code I’ve helped raise the maturity of our infrastructure architecture offerings to the level our Enterprise clients expect. We are one of a few partners in the UK with a dedicated team of infrastructure architects who do nothing but specialise in SharePoint infrastructure, including the numerous technologies that are key to delivering SharePoint well, such as SQL Server, Forefront products and Windows itself. As SharePoint has grown over the years, this diversity of SharePoint roles has become more important to successful delivery of SharePoint projects. I’ve been a key advocate in the business’s commitment to these roles and this approach.”
What are you working on right now?
“A number of things as always! I’ve delivered a few client projects over the summer, while helping our Cloud team build our offering for Office 365 - particularly focusing on Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) v2, providing single sign-on to the cloud. I’ve also been working on Lync bandwidth modeling and Exchange on-premise federation for Office 365. For the rest of the year I’ll be focusing on new versions of internal network and security systems.”
What do Content and Code offer that’s unique?
“Experience and expertise. Not only do we have some of the most experienced SharePoint professionals in the UK, but we are of sufficient size to allow specialisation where many of our competitors generalise. We also have management who know SharePoint well, which improves internal communications and aligns thought from sales through delivery to support.”
How would you describe Content and Code’s culture?
“It’s a fun place to work and we are fun people to work with. But there are also a lot of passionate, dedicated professionals who really care about delivering quality and really know their stuff!”