Looking forward to a new iland

Nope, the title is not a typo. Trust me, it’s punny.

A job change is always a big deal. The frequency we change jobs in the IT field confounds people who are in other career fields, but I don’t think that makes it any easier. Even working remotely, strong bonds of friendship and respect are formed and it can be hard to walk away from them. As is my usual approach to job changes, I get excited to learn new technologies and to dig into job duties that are new and challenging. So it was no small decision that I decided to leave HPE and accept a new position with iland Internet Solutions as a Cloud Technologist.

There are, of course, many things that made this position appealing to me, even compared to an internal transfer within HPE I was considering, but here are the four things that most stand out to me:

First, I really prefer working for smaller companies. I joined both of my last two jobs when they were both quite small, but grew over time and were both eventually acquired by larger companies. In both cases, but SimpliVity being the more extreme case on every measurement, I found myself missing “the old days” when I could know the vast majority of my coworkers and I could have a bigger impact on the overall success of the company.

Second, the opportunity at iland provided for a broader experience set.  This is closely related to iland being a smaller company, since generalization is much more necessary at a smaller company. However, the Cloud Technologist role is designed to be multidisciplinary, touching on aspects of technical marketing, product management, software development, evangelism, sales, and solutions development.

Third, I miss being considered “independent.” I really have enjoyed seeing the vendor side of our industry, and would definitely consider it again in the future, but have found it naturally causes a bit of narrow vision on the industry, especially in a company so highly specialized as SimpliVity was. The fact that iland is a cloud services provider was an added bonus as it’ll give my yet another perspective on the industry, which I think will round out with my customer, partner, and vendor experiences very well.

Finally, iland has a strong focus on backup and disaster recovery, which I think are slam-dunk territory for IaaS providers. I have a strong passion for disaster recover and business continuity planning, so this seems like a perfect fit for me. Funny enough, the day I put in my notice at HPE I received a note that iland had just been recognized by Gartner as a leader in the DRaaS MQ for the third year in a row.

I am excited to get started, and would like to thank Justin Giardina for giving me this opportunity. After one day in the office doing on-boarding and discussing the technologies at play, I feel even more excited and confident in my decision. Given iland’s strong focus on VMware and adjacent technologies, I expect I’ll still be seeing many people at VMworld and other VMware events, and possibly Veeam and Zerto events (two of iland’s biggest partners).

Here’s to the future!

5 Responses so far.

  1. John McCaslin says:
    Congrats Brian,
    Well said… I enjoyed your perspective on several of the key points you made. The future can be very exciting. It is exciting to be in a position to learn new technologies and new approaches. Will keep in touch.
    Good Luck,
    John
  2. Lindsay Schuman says:
    Well said indeed! I’ll be using this blog for recruiting purposes going forward. 🙂 Welcome to the team!!!
  3. Fara says:
    Congrats! Hope to see you at some of the upcoming Zerto events!
  4. Rick Murcek says:
    Congrats Brian! We should go grab lunch sometime when I’m in town.

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