This Week, July 2, 2007 - role change to Network TSP
Crickets, crickets... Not much going on this week! Of course there is a lot of buzz-buzz from people who finally have the iPhone in their hands. I actually saw one at St. Louis Bread Company yesterday. Smaller than I expected but it was pressed against a guys head, so who knows, maybe he had a big head.
Some personal news. As many already know, July 1 is the beginning of our fiscal year. This is the point where all kinds of organizational changes happen to make sure we are doing our best to stay aligned with our customer's needs. In the Education Specialist Team Unit we run a pretty slim crew so we try to stay agile.
I'm anticipating that most people by now have some concept of how and when they will deploy Vista, although many will continue to have questions. On the other hand, Server 2008 is on the horizon and we anticipate there will be a lot of requests in the coming months for information and technical insight to how changes will impact customer environments and what features to plan for. So I am switching my role from a Windows Client Technology Solutions Professional to a Network Technology Solutions Professional.
I will be keeping a few "commitments" to the client OS so you can expect me to keep posting on Vista along side new content for Server 2008. I still have a long list of Vista posts that I just haven't had time to get to. Ironically, many of them are related to things like NAP which cross client/server interests.
I had lunch with a Network TSP from our local district office last week. He described the role as being very different from person to person based on the needs and demands from other specialists on each respective STU team and each set of customers. He primarily focuses on NAP (Network Access Protection), PKI, and a variety of network load balancing and network infrastructure planning.
In education, I regularly encounter people who have a tremendous level of technical depth. It would be foolish for me to think I could ever hold my own against the network specialists in EDU. I hope to be a source of information on Server 2008, and do everything I can to introduce the new features to the education community through speaking events, proof of concepts, correspondence via phone/Email/IM, public webcasts, private LiveMeeting events, and blogging.
BTW, I am starting a Tumblr log. This is really just a place for me to send more frequent, random links and comments. I often see something and either don't have time to blog about it or feel it would be inappropriate to send it out through the TechNet master OPML. So this works out well as a parallel feed and allows me to add more personal touch.
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Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
This sounds very similar to the discussion I recently had with a more tenured NetTSP. Interesting thoughts on the subject - the network tsp role in many ways is an infastructure support specialist. There are specific topics such as NAP, PKI, IPv6, Terminal Services, ISA, IAG, etc that are networking specific, but there are also many things that come up over time that require a broad understanding of how products and technologies work, very often including non-Microsoft solutions, so other specialists can leverage your expertise when planning architectural design and testing proof of concept labs. Another good "food for thought" suggestion is how organizations are creating the user experience and dealing with things like mobility and offline usage of applications and data.Anonymous
July 09, 2007
The comment has been removed