Oskar is the first of many members that we will be interviewing on SCC. Being from the Netherlands (Holland) Oskar will be among a nation of talented System Center guru’s.
Here are the questions we asked, how did Oskar do?
What is your primary role at your work?
I work as a consultant at Blue Mesa BV. a company which is based on 4 components Relationships, Information, Process and Technology The perfect combination of management skills and IT technique to optimize your business.
I have 10 years experience in managing, maintaining and designing Microsoft based environments. The last 5 years my main focus is MOM / Opsmgr this goes from presales to designing management packs, presentations and training.
What is your greatest and proudest IT achievement?
I would like to add “at the moment” since being a guy who always looks forward at improving there is always a new and greater challenge up ahead!
But one of my achievements which I am proud of is a MOM 2005 project I did some time ago for a multinational company with datacenters divided over three continents. This project was a real challenge since the project’s main goal was to get MOM 2005 being used. In fact the environment was already build and “working”. It still needed allot of technical improvements but that was not the biggest challenge ;-) A bit of understatement since there was allot of customizations involved.
The biggest challenge was to convince people to start using the product. Because of not only language barriers also the different cultures needed different approaches. Also most of them already had some sort of monitoring solution so they where sometimes very critical. Most of the times I needed to pull out allot more to convince them.
One of the funniest parts was always when they asked if they could speak with one of the guys from the monitoring team. They expected a big team of people who delivered the monitoring solution. It was always fun to hear the amazement when they discovered it was only 1 guy behind the buttons ;-) A nice example of efficiency!
The product is still being used as their solution to monitor the business critical applications and although they have been offered many solutions by other vendors for monitoring. They insist the application level monitoring is being done by Ops Mgr and nothing else!!!!
Outside of computers what are your interests?
All the spare time left I will spend with my wife and two kids.
If you were stranded on a desert island what would you most want to have with you?
Apart from the personal stuff my laptop would be handy with solar cells to build a monitoring environment to monitor the island’s resources ;-) This way I would know when it’s time to call somebody to get me off the island.
Although when on a desert Island you where probably better off with a Swiss army knife
What is the craziest thing you have done in your life to date (that we can publish)?
Hard one... especially since it needs to be publishable...;-)
First of all I am terribly afraid of heights.
Last year we went to TechEd Barcelona and one of my colleagues managed to get me crazy enough to accompany him to the top of the Sagrada Familia....and managed to get me down as well.
It took me a couple of hours and a couple of drinks to calm down again ;-)
In case you are wondering would probably never do it again, although the view was astonishing!
If you were a Star Trek of Star Wars character, which one would you be?
Would like to be Luke, just to be able to run around with a light saber would be awesome!!!
If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. With whom would it be?
Hmmm would like to trade places with Steve Ballmer to find out how it feels flying around presenting and running one of the biggest company’s on the planet.
Who is your favourite singer or group?
The Rolling Stones.
What’s your favourite movie film?
Lord of the Rings.
If aliens landed in front of you and, in exchange for anything you desire, offered you any position on their planet, what would you want?
Being an alien king on an alien planet I can only imagine one thing I would like to have with me... that is a woman (or more)! Because the aliens I know are not that good looking ;-)
How would you react if you are transformed into a fish?
Probably no reaction at all because a fish has a really short memory. Remember finding Nemo ;-)
But apart from this I would really enjoy swinging around in “An unknown world with strange creatures all around” (Needs to be pronounced with a Cousteau like French accent).
If you could meet anyone (dead or alive) who would it be and why?
Off course in my personal live I have people who I would like to speak again which are not around anymore.
Would like to speak to some System Center Central guys in person would be nice to exchange their knowledge...hmmm wait that’s what System Central is all about...
Well let’s say I would like to meet the rolling stones and some aliens and ask the aliens for the women and drinks. Find a deserted Island and I will live happily ever after!
Thank you for your time and effort you have put into System Center Central, we all really appreciate it. SCC