One journey ends, another begins

A long time ago, I worked in corporate IT.  One day I started looking for new challenges and interviewed with Microsoft for a job in Microsoft Consulting Services, helping customers with their Windows deployment processes.  I distinctly remember talking about all the “challenges” (putting it nicely) with the current tool, the Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 1.0 solution accelerator, that was being used.

Through an interesting twist of fate, I was soon working with the BDD team on version 2.0.  That was in 2004.  It turned into a full-time job in 2005 when I moved to Redmond.  Many more releases followed:  BDD 2.5, BDD 2007, Microsoft Deployment (see https://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2008/01/22/a-concise-history-of-bdd.aspx), Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, and Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012.  And that doesn’t even count the “update” releases that happened in between (or the latest one, MDT 2012 Update 1, due soon).  All total, we’ve managed to have slightly more than one release per year. 

It’s been a great journey.  But this journey is coming to an end and another is beginning.  After eight years, today is my last day working on the MDT team.  Starting tomorrow, I am joining the Windows organization as a product marketing manager for enterprise Windows deployment.  It’s not huge stretch from what I’ve been doing: helping customers get Windows deployed in their enterprises.  But instead of working on individual tools, I’ll expand my horizons to include the entire Windows deployment process.

Does that mean I’ll disappear into the innards of Microsoft, never to be seen again?  Not a chance.  I’ll still be blogging (hopefully even more), I’ll still be presenting at events (even on MDT), and I’ll still be involved in the MDT, Windows, MVP, and IT pro communities.  And I expect to hear from you if you are having deployment challenges, roadblocks, or just questions about how to do things.

Thanks for your support over the years, and I look forward to keeping in touch while on my new journey.