Technologies
Thirty-five years in information technology leaves a fairly wide stack. Here is the honest picture.
A list of technologies says little on its own. An integrator can tick the same boxes without ever having had to repair an environment at three in the morning.
What gives this one its value is that it was built in order, over thirty-five years: first telecommunications and networks, then physical servers, then SAN storage, then virtualisation, then cloud from 2008, then identity, then AI.
Each layer was learned in production, in environments ranging from a fifteen-server small business to estates of over four thousand servers and fifty thousand workstations.
What I run
Technologies encountered without running them in production are not listed. The list would be twice as long and half as useful.
Cloud and platforms
- Microsoft Azure
- Microsoft 365
- Azure DevOps
- AWS
- Google Cloud
- OpenStack
- SherWeb
- Private cloud
- Cloud architecture
Identity and access
- Microsoft Entra ID
- Active Directory
- Azure AD
- ADFS
- LDAP
- Zero Trust
- MFA
- PIM
- RBAC
- Conditional access
Security
- Microsoft Defender
- Microsoft Sentinel
- Tenable
- Fortinet
- FortiGate
- FortiManager
- FortiAnalyzer
- FortiAuthenticator
- FortiEMS
- Cisco
- Juniper
- SonicWall
- VPN
Virtualisation and servers
- VMware ESX
- Hyper-V
- Citrix
- Windows Server
- AIX
- Z-Linux
- OS/2
- NetWare
- IBM
- HP
- Dell
SAN and NAS storage
- EMC
- VMAX
- VNX
- Isilon
- NetApp
- IBM Storage
- Hitachi
- DataCore
- Dell
- HP
- SAN
- NAS
Backup and continuity
- CommVault
- NetBackup
- ArcServe
- TSM
- BackupExec
- Networker
- DoubleTake
- EMC DataDomain
- Centera
- Disaster recovery
- Business continuity
Collaboration and messaging
- Exchange
- Exchange Online
- IBM Domino
- Lotus Notes
- SharePoint
- Teams
- Skype for Business
- OneDrive
- Microsoft Intune
- Power Platform
- BlackBerry BES
Enterprise and IT management
- ITIL v2 · v3
- ServiceNow
- PeopleSoft
- Oracle
- WorkDay
- Macro Scope
- Enterprise networks
- VoIP
- eDiscovery
Artificial intelligence
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Microsoft Copilot
- Sakana AI
- AI agents
- Assisted automation
Governance
- Data governance
- Digital sovereignty
- Compliance
- Law 25
- IT governance
Knowing a tool means knowing what it does. Mastering it means knowing when not to use it.
What that depth changes
I recognise the problems that repeat
Cloud migration raises the same questions as the server consolidations of the 2000s, which raised those of the centralisation before that. The names change, the traps do not.
I know what a migration costs
Having migrated Domino 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, then to Exchange, then to Office 365, gives a realistic sense of timelines. Optimistic estimates almost always come from someone who has migrated once.
I do not confuse novelty with progress
A cloud practitioner since 2008, I have seen what it genuinely delivered and what it simply relocated. That distinction is hard to make when you have only known one model.
I design for the team that stays
The best architecture is not the most elegant one: it is the one the people in place can operate and maintain once the consultant has gone.
A question on this?
Describe the context in a few lines. I answer with a proposed angle, not a brochure.