Introductions – the difficult first post

martinbuckley — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:10:28 GMT

Where to start?

The first post to any blog is the most difficult; tradition dictates that it should be an introduction to the blogger. After starting several blogs over the years this should be getting easier, not harder.

The biographical pieces are quite easy; my name is Martin Buckley and I’m relatively new at Microsoft. I joined in March 2008 as a Senior Program Manager working with System Center strategic partners and alliances. Put simply my role is to get more people to integrate with System Center products – and then to get people using the joint solutions.

I’ve been working in the Systems Management field for ever. I started off in the mid-90’s as a consultant in the UK; deploying Windows NT 4 workstation and managing it using various products. As the millennium approached most of my work was replacing legacy systems with Windows workstations and a lot of Novell NetWare and Windows NT 4 servers.

I spent over eight years working at Novell – as a Product Manager (that’s Program Manager in Microsoft speak) for the Novell ZENworks desktop management products. For most of that time I saw the Microsoft products – Systems Management Server and Microsoft Operations Manager as directly competing with my product. It’s certainly strange to be ‘on the other side’.

I’ve been blogging for over four years; I run my own blog, a family blog and I ran the Novell Cool Blogs site for Novell technology bloggers.

My blogging here is going to be ‘ISV partner focused’ – I don’t know where that’s going to lead me; but certainly most of the content will be useful for the IT Pro as well as the occasional developer.

Phew! Enough of the tedious bio. Expect to see ‘content’ very soon.

Written at: Issaquah, WA

Martin Buckley - on systems management : introduction

Introductions – the difficult first post