So Long and Thanks For All The Fish

For those who are familiar with the movie Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy you will know that “So Long & Thanks For All the Fish” is the opening song for the movie. This line also has a significant role in the books by Douglas Adams.

In the movie the dolphins tried to communicate the impending destruction of Earth. The destruction of Earth was for an intergalactic bypass. The dolphins could not communicate this because there was a communication barrier. The last message the dolphins sent was miss interpreted by humans. It was assumed to be a complex attempt to do a double backwards summersault through a hoop while whistling the Star Spangled Banner. In actuality the dolphins message was “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.”

That said on Monday, September 17th, 2012 I tenured my resignation at Eagle Software. For those that follow me on Twitter you probably have seen my tweet of “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish” and some other cryptic tweets. This tweet was sort of my theme for my departure. Why because like the dolphins I was departing a known world heading to who knows where.

Today I’m publicly announcing a change in positions and a change in companies.

For the last 7+ years I’ve had the pleasure to work at Eagle Software. While there I helped to create and develop Eagle’s VMware presence as well as having the opportunity to work with many excellent people ranging from customers and partners to co-workers. I was also involved in many projects at Eagle.

These projects have helped Eagle, Eagle’s Customers, & myself grow and excel in the virtualization industry. During my tenure at Eagle we (Eagle & I) accomplished the following and much much more:

• Virtualization of many environments including:
  • VDI for Oral Roberts University: http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/videos~en/Documents~2012-eagle-10010273.aspx.aspx
  • Financial Institutions
  • City and County Governments
  • Divisions of State Government
  • Eagle Software
  • And many others
• Participation in several projects at the beta level that are now actively used in production by IT teams all over the world.
  • My VMware
  • vSphere Data Protector (VDP)
  • Spectra Logic Blue Scale firmware version 12
  • Many Dell/EqualLogic programs
• Mobile demo systems that are fully functioning examples of many VMware technologies.

At this time both Eagle and I feel that my departure will provide great growth for both of us.  For me I will have the opportunity to expand my horizons in my new position. For Eagle this will provide the opportunity for some of the highly skilled up and coming virtualization engineers to grow and expand into new areas. A majority of these up and coming engineers have spent years under my supervision and are well prepared to take on the new virtualization challenges as I depart.

I will always think back fondly of Eagle and my co-workers and wish them all the best. To the Eagle team, thanks for allowing me to grow and influence the organization for all these years.

So whats this nerd going to do?

I will start my new role as a VCE Solution Architect on October, 1st 2012. In that role I’ll be spending some time traveling, I’ll be working on some fun vCenter Ops things, you may even get to see me at some of the shows such as VMworld, EMC World, and VMware PEX. There are probably many other things I’ll be doing but either don’t know enough about them or can’t discuss them yet. One thing I intend on continuing is my blogging (I know its not that much now) and my tweeting.

I’ll be working from my house in Salina as its fairly centralized and will give us (VCE and myself) greater agility and flexibility in responding to our client’s needs.

I’m looking forward to new growth and experiences in this role. I am also looking forward to meeting many new folks in my travels and maintaining contact with those I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting.

Cheers,

Tony