How quickly the time passes - Where is James?

It has been a busy couple of years. I’ve thought about a few subjects that would have been good posts that never made it to keyboard…. and meanwhile my blog slept.

Lots of things have changed since.

I moved into two different Principal Architect roles over the next 2.5 years (Virtualization and then Transformation Services) that were really rewarding and would lead me to what has become my favorite role in my career.

In 2016 my family moved West to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia Canada. I was fortunate to be able to change roles again and in early 2017 it led me to my current role (and favorite to date) as Chief Architect for the Cloud and Managed Services business unit at Long View Systems.

So what does a Chief Architect do? I’m fortunate to be responsible for strategy, lead product development and governance, and focus again on client solutions. The role combined all of the things I have always loved as a consultant and architect - finding ways to solve interesting problems and then tell people about them. The last four years have been a period of rapid learning as our business unit retooled to better adopt Agile practices and embrace DevOps concepts into both our product development and our operations. I manage a dynamic team of incredibly talented people and I still get to be an evangelist and actively work with clients and our sales community.

Lately I’ve gotten back into the technology learning mode and have been researching and investing in a network upgrade and refresh on my home lab.

Some upcoming projects that may make it into posts:

Rebuilding my home lab with vSphere 7 to my Synology DS1815+

10G Networking implementation (Ubiquiti US-16-XG)/Unifi Switch Pro (USW-PRO-24)

Fiber cabling runs from my home office to a new network room in my garage

Ubiquiti Unfi PoE camera implementation

Adding an additional wireless access point to my Ubiquiti wireless environment (UAP-AC-LR)

Hoping you are well as I pick up where I left off, fascinated with technology and consulting (and with several projects on the go).

Cheers,

James