Renewed as an MVP for 2019 - 2020!

For all Microsoft MVP's around the world, yesterday (1st July aka 'F5 Day') was the day that we all receive notification as to whether or not we've been renewed as MVP's for another year. Thankfully someone in Microsoft thinks I'm doing a good job for the community and I was happy to see my inbox lighting up with the all-important email stating I'd been renewed as a Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP for 2019 - 2020!

I was awarded my first MVP (in the System Center category) in 2012 and no matter how long you're in the program, it's always a welcome relief to see that email land with confirmation that you're good to go for another year.

With many of my MVP peers moving over to the Azure specialty, the Cloud and Datacenter Management category that my award relates to gives me a unique opportunity to work on and present content to the community and my customers across the hybrid-cloud space. This category covers many on-premises management technologies (including SCOM 2019, which is still very much alive and kicking with our customers) and it also includes Azure management technologies and services such as Azure Monitor, Azure Governance, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Migrate etc.

Through the MVP program, I also get to network and hang out with some very smart people across many different technical spectrum's and I'm very lucky to work for an employer (Ergo) that supports me and my colleagues on this journey (we also have two other MVP's working here!).

In the past year, I've kept myself busy in the community by presenting at events such as Experts Live Europe, the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany, the Global Azure Bootcamp and the Microsoft Tech Summit. I've also managed to squeeze in the time to complete the authoring process with some awesome MVP friends on our recently released 'Inside Azure Management' book.

Hopefully this coming year as an MVP will help me bring more of these contributions to the wider community!