So, any regular readers might have noticed that the posts have been slow coming the past few months. Hopefully you don’t think that the depth in those few posts has been lacking. I’ve been struggling with how to report that I took a new full-time job in April. Obviously, it’s not stopping me from writing, but has slowed me down a bit.
As you may remember, back in January I was invited to speak at Directory Experts’ Conference, 2008. If you weren’t there, I spoke about integrating 30+ Linux servers with a 2000-user Active Directory forest at one of the U.S.’s biggest home improvement providers. At the time, we had used Centrify DirectControl 4.0 to accomplish this integration, and they were the ones who invited me to speak at DEC.
As part of my preparations, I reached out to Quest Software to ask about Vintella, now renamed “Authentication Services”, and to Likewise Software, who sent me software and support contacts (at my request), so that I could learn Likewise Enterprise as well as I knew Centrify DirectControl. That was a very tall order for Likewise Software to fill, as I had spent the past 6 months learning DirectControl inside out.
After 4 weeks of building demonstration machines (with both products), capturing video in case the demos crashed (which they didn’t), and building a presentation and practicing it, DEC was upon us. I gave two presentations, one specifically for Centrify on Monday, and the primary one on Wednesday. At the end of both presentations, we recieved a lot of great questions which Centrify’s Director of Product Development helped answer.
At the end of the conference, Likewise offered me a job. After many discussions with them, my friends and family, and my customers, I decided to take the opportunity. This is not a decision I made to slight Centrify, who’s support of me through my time as a customer was amazing, and who’s assistance through the presentation was fabulous. It’s just one of those opportunities that comes along that I couldn’t pass up.
So for the past 6 months I’ve been the Project Manager for Deployments for Likewise Software. I’ve been on the road about 80% of the time, working with customers to install our software in their environments. Many of the posts I’ve made in that time have been in response to an issue we’ve seen or avoided at a customer of Likewise. I will continue to write these, and I’ll work on doing so at my old (2007) pace of about 3-4 posts a month, since they have been (according to my stats) useful to many people, which is the point of writing this blog.
That means, no changes here compared to last year, but I will have a wider variety of topics, and I’ll likely start mentioning our software specifically. I want it to be clear it’s not advertising, but just the state of what I’m working with. Again, Centrify makes a great product, and I was very happy to have chosen it for my needs at my previous employer. However, I’ve chosen to move forward with this open source company (Likewise Software) for the next stage of my career, and will continue to write about software and integration with a view towards open source software.
Thanks for continuing to read!
Robert Auch