Premier partners, today’s tools, and all that good stuff

A few months ago, I made a transition and decided to accept an invitation to join the Content & Collaboration practice at Blue Chip Consulting Group. Blue Chip is a Gold Certified, Microsoft Managed Partner specializing in Infrastructure Optimization, and providing quality consulting services within the Microsoft stack. They’ve also been recently named as one of the Top 5 Microsoft Consulting Services’ Premier Service Partners for FY13, a distinction they’ve achieved 2 years running.

My consulting toolbox hasn’t changed much since my last role. In fact, Cloudshare is still as much a part of my tool set as it was in my last related post. And with the addition of their persistent DNS and vanity URL features, it’s now even easier to quickly fire up my VM’s when I need them, even on my Surface Pro tablet PC. These days, tho, I’m also making more use of VMWare for offline access.

But what is somewhat new to my list of dev toys is my personal Office 365 SharePoint account (recently upgraded to 2013 a few months back). I find that this is useful to have in order to get up to speed on the deployment and development differences between cloud and on-premise SharePoint projects, especially as more of our customers continue to explore Office 365 as an option for their SharePoint environment. And, at $8/month for a SharePoint-only E3 plan, it’s very economical as well.

Stay tuned for future posts as I continue to explore these tools & technologies to enhance my SharePoint 2013 delivery.

A new role in SharePoint, better toys, and all that good stuff

Starting in January 2012, I’ll be taking another step in my career by joining the Improving Enterprises team as their new SharePoint Practice Lead. Improving is a firm that focuses on Agile software development as well as certified Microsoft training, and I look forward to continue providing SharePoint consulting to clients, as well as helping to teach Microsoft Official Curriculum training to users as well.

Here’s the interesting difference between this post and the last time I posted about a career change almost 2 years ago – the tools.  Back then, I complained about how SharePoint’s new 64-bit requirement made it hard for developers like myself to create VM’s for training and prototyping. But today, I have no complaints – thanx to CloudShare! : )  Yep, now I’ve got a virtualized SharePoint environment waiting for me in the cloud whenever I need it. And I no longer have the headache of dealing with local PC settings or slow-running servers that depend on the number of CPUs on my laptop. Ahhh, the cloud…

More on my CloudShare experiences in future posts.  What about you – what SharePoint virtualization strategy will you use in 2012?

SharePoint 2010, Architects, VM’s and all that good stuff

Last month I took a new step in my career, and began a journey into full-time SharePoint consulting.  I’m now a SharePoint Solutions Architect for ICC, an IT services firm and Microsoft Certified Partner here in Columbus, Ohio.

So far, it looks like my timing was pretty good, as the excitement among our customers seems to be continuously building as we near the launch of SharePoint 2010.  One of my primary tasks at ICC is to help us prepare to be effective in the delivery of SharePoint 2010 services, specifically in the area of application development.  That means I’ve had to spend a lot of time recently getting acquainted with all this SP2010 goodness. :) And as I’ve started diving deep into its many offerings and improvements, I can say that the excitement seems well worth it.