Cloud Career Profile: Robert Smit

Microsoft

Robert Smit with Anna Chu (Community Manager) at the Amsterdam Tech SummitRobert Smit with Anna Chu (Community Manager) at the Amsterdam Tech Summit

@Robert Smit

Azure Technical Lead

Caase.com

MVP:  https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/PublicProfile/4025011?fullName=Robert%20%20Smit

Twitter: https://twitter.com/clustermvp

 

Tell us a little bit about who you work for, your role in the organization, and if your organization has transitioned to the cloud.

I work for Caase.com, my role is Azure technical lead. Our company is a Cloud integrator based on O365, EMS & Azure. Currently We are Microsoft country partner of the year and our main focus is currently on building a new digital workplace in the cloud. Based on RDS.

 

You’ve had a career in IT for over 20 years. Undoubtedly it has changed dramatically over time but can you talk about the change you’ve seen specifically as it relates to the cloud transition? How has your own role and the role of IT shifted since the move to the cloud?

With the cloud option customers are more and more looking to embed the cloud features to their datacenter. That is where the Hybrid cloud is born. Step by step as expanding the options in the Cloud.

 

You indicate that you’re “capable of transferring knowledge to others” and that this is a rare feature in IT. Can you elaborate? What would you say is your most valuable skill? Why?

As an MVP and MCT I learned in the past years that “Knowledge is power” but if you give the knowledge for free then others don’t have power anymore and see me as the knowledge base. As an MVP I use a lot off my time on reading and testing new preview products and give feedback to the product teams and this is very awarding to me. Serving Microsoft and the Community and myself with the future knowledge I like to be a step ahead before anyone else have the product. And I’m a very good listener between the lines so I often drop some “question bomb” that could have been answered or asked weeks ago but often it will come just before the product goes live.

 

What is the biggest challenge you face in your job?

Now days everybody is starting or already joined the cloud. And sometimes you need to say let’s start over the right way or point the customer in the right way because I know what is coming the next few month’s so make the right decisions for the customer. But often they don’t listen.

And how to make and adjust my designs with so many new things in Azure. New stuff is old tomorrow and I did not have the time to test it. Or I blew all my MSDN credits in a few hours testing and need to wait 20 days to get new credits.

 

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