Let’s put it this way. I wasn’t looking for a new job. But due to an unforeseen curveball, I now work for Pure Storage. This wasn’t a planned move, but looking back (6 months now). I have no complaints!! I wish all of my friends and colleagues at Entrust the best of luck and I know we will see each other at future trade shows or somewhere else along our travels.

What am I doing now?

My official title is: Field Solutions Architect or FSA. As an FSA my team and I are specialists across several different subject areas, including virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V, OpenStack, etc.), databases (MS SQL, Oracle, SAP), cloud (Azure, AWS) etc. I am a specialist in the virtualization and cloud areas. I work everyday with our North American Systems Engineering (SE) teams when their customers/prospects would like to go a bit into the weeds on both of my specialty areas. I will be writing about each of those areas and some of the Pure goodness in future articles right here.

Tell me more

The team I joined at Pure is nothing but top notch folks. We have all been in the industry for many years and the collaboration between the entire team is nothing like I have ever experienced before. There are no wrong questions to ask. Do we give each other a hard time every now and then? Of Course! I wouldn’t expect anything less. However, when challenges are presented to one or more of us on an opportunity we come together as a cohesive unit.

Some of the folks I work with have blogs you have read or Twitter handles (I refuse to use the current name) you have most likely seen before. Here is who I’m talking about (in no particular order):

• Tristan Todd
  • All around good human, my west coast counterpart, and super knowledgeable VMware Expert
  • He keeps threatening to start a blog and when he does, I’ll update you here
• David Stamen (DS1)
  • Uber knowledgeable VMware and Cloud Expert
  • He is DS1 and I’m DS2
  • Blog: https://davidstamen.com/
• Eugene McGrath
  • VMware Expert and knows his stuff about Cisco UCS
• Andy Yun
  • Microsoft MVP on SQL Server and fellow New Englander
  • Blog: https://sqlbek.wordpress.com/
• Anthony Nocentino
  • Microsoft MVP on SQL Server and PowerShell Expert
  • Blog: https://www.nocentino.com/
• Ryan Arsenault
  • If I have any questions on SAP this is the guy I turn to, also a fellow New Englander
  • Twitter: @RyanArse35
• Peter Gonzalez
  • Network file system guy and all around great colleague
• Mike Spitz
  • Another goto network file system guy
• Thomas Stutesman
  • Did you say Oracle? If so, Thomas is the dude!
• Paul Joyce
  • Great manager who truly cares about his team
  • Twitter: Storagepedia

Wrap up

To wrap up this article, I can’t say enough good things about Pure and the team I joined. I landed at a fantastic place to work. I’ll be continuing to talk about many virtualization topics, mostly related to storage and some not related to storage. So, please stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!