Disclaimer:
I have always been a staunch supporter of technology, sometimes the underdog (looking at you Sun Microsystems with Sun Ray, & SGD) and sometimes the champion (VMware, Nutanix) but always for the right reasons – the best tool for the job, and the customer.
This has often left me (and my wider team) in the cold with vendors because we won’t toe the line and sell beyond what the customer needs, no upsells to Enterprise when Standard would do, and no layering of additional services that aren’t needed just to make a bottom line healthier.
Since November 2020, I have been contracted to support a large ISV as they are deploying a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) refresh project for a multi-national banking organisation who use virtual desktops for a large proportion of their users across the world.
Initially, we were contracted in to provide a ‘quality check’ across their design for a few months and build the base deployment for DEV & UAT, but this stretched out to 18 months to even cover the PROD deployments into 4 hub locations providing capacity for upwards of 120k users with more still happening now to increase this number further.
Throughout this project I worked alongside the various teams within the ISV, and parallel teams within the customer in providing real world experience advice to achieve our goal. We have COVID playing in at the same time removing our ability to get together in a room and whiteboard it out.
Uniquely though, a couple of Resident Consultants (legends) from Nutanix were in the room with us all which is where the experience deviated away from a ‘normal’ deployment to one that felt much more like a partnership between us all in taking challenges and providing solutions.
Traditionally the loudest person in the room, I found myself muting a little(!), and learning from these guys who brought something genuinely different to the party and I can say it opened my eyes further on the value proposition with Nutanix.
Around 12 months into the project in October 2021 I found myself more active in the Nutanix Slack channels for services folks (NCS-A/NCS-C), and SME (EUC) I stumbled across the ‘NTC 2022’ blog post from @Angelo Luciani (a true community leader) and initially shied away from applying because I didn’t think my face would fit in being ‘too loud’.
I was encouraged to reconsider and applied, and to find I was successful was a watershed moment for me in realising that I can be ‘loud’ but ‘share/promote good things’ at the same time, I think people call it evangelising.
These days you can find me in the NTC Slack Channel conversing with some of the smartest folks in the technology space I’m honoured to consider my peers.
I was never one that needed a badge or label to feel heard, but the NTC tag is one I’m proud to have as it has shown me others who are on the same path I am and for that I am eternally grateful.