Change of guard!

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Hello from Windows Server, I am Ram Papatla, the new GPM of the Windows Customer Advisory Team (WinCAT)! Chris McCarron has moved on as an Architect within the Server Division few months ago. I’ve been in the Server Division for the last 8 years and worked on various projects in Windows 2003, R2 and upcoming Longhorn Server and also deploying our technology across hosters, enterprise customers.

Below is a short summary of my team and focus areas.

Who are we?

We are subject matter experts and trusted advisors to customers and engineering teams for complex deployments using Windows Server workloads. Workloads usually comprise of one or more roles are aligned to how our customers deploy/use servers in their business. An example of workload is Security which comprises of several roles like PKI, Remote Access, etc. The team is non-Redmond focused so we have better customer coverage.

What is our typical week look like?

We split our time doing inbound vs outbound work. Inbound work is to obviously support the workloads from an engineering (customer) feedback perspective – reviewing specs, features, driving cross-group design sessions, presenting customer feedback for product enhancements. Our outbound work includes representing the engineering team at key customer deployment, architectural issues, support our consulting arm for complex projects and be the voice of the engineering team at key public events.

Members and workload alignment

The focus areas for each member of the team are:

- Software as a Service for Windows Server – Ram Papatla

- Application Server – Open head count

- High Performance Computing – Open head count

- Datacenter Consolidation – Allen Stewart

- Identity and Identity Lifecycle – Robert DeLuca

- Security – John Morello

- Network Health – Pat Fetty

I have two open positions for Application Development and High Performance Computing workloads. The job postings can be found here. We welcome your interest or referrals.

I promise to keep the blog fresh and updated with lots of good content from our side.