My 2013

Well another year just ends and as in 2011 and 2012 I like to summarize things a little before starting with the next year. This year was maybe one of the busiest years for me and it was really fun. I had the chance to meet, talk and work with some really great people all over the world, and to list every single one would just be to much, but I want to make sure that everyone knows I am really thankful for that. I am also pretty happy with this year and the goals I reached, and for me everything worked out pretty good. Besides that I am really grateful that most of the people around me, like my friends and family and of course myself, are healthy, because this is something I cannot control and you need a lot of luck for that.

I tried to summarize some of the events and things I had the chance to do in 2013, there was a lot of other stuff going on but I think this does is pretty good.

2013 was my second year at itnetx gmbh where I am working as a Cloud Architect. Well this job brought me around some of the most beautiful places in Switzerland. And it still feels pretty cool to work in such a great company with so many talented people, know-how and interesting projects.

In February I started my Master of Advanced Studies in Business Engineering and Management at university. Well it’s fun to be back at university, to learn somthing new and meet different people from totally different industries.

In February I also attended my first Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Redmond. This was an absolute great experience getting information about products and talking to other MVPs and the Microsoft PGs.

At the Microsoft MVP Summit I also got my first Surface Pro, which later replaced my notebook and became my daily working machine until the Surface Pro 2 was released.

In March I was at the Microsoft Live from CeBIT Hannover (Germany) 2013 event with me as an Expert for Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center on a live chat.

I also had the chance to deliver some great Windows Server, System Center, Hyper-V and Windows Azure workshops and trainings through the whole year.

The second time I had the change to visit Redmond this year was the Microsoft MVP Windows Server and System Center Mini Summit in May.

At the end of my I had another presentation together with Michael Rueefli E2EVC Copenhagen called SCVMM Mania, where we showed some great features of System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Hyper-V.

At the middle of the year one of my best friends started his journey around the world. So at this point I wish him still some good luck and hopefully see you in summer.

During the Summer we also got our first StorSimple box.

StorSimple was not the only storage product we are working with right now. In 2013 we also had several customers staring with Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces projects. This was huge fun especially customer had some great solutions for low cost.

Besides a lot of Microsoft projects I had the chance to work together with Cisco Switzerland on some cool Cisco UCS projects with Hyper-V and System Center integration.

During the summer of 2013 I also had time to do a redesign of thomasmaurer.ch based on some “Metro” design elements.

In September I had the chance to present 4 session at the System Center Universe Europe in Bern Switzerland. This was one of the greatest and best events I have seen in Switzerland so far and having the chance to present was just great. The event was organized by Marcel Zehner and itnetx and I had the honor to present with Philipp Witschi, Carsten Rachfahl, Damian Flynn, Michel Lüscher and Kevin Greene.

In 2011 and in 2012 itnetx was awarded by Microsoft Switzerland as Microsoft Datacenter Partner of the year. In 2013 itnetx was awarded the third time in a row.

Speaking of awards, In October I was also awarded by Microsoft as Microsoft MVP for Virtual Machine for the second time.

During 2013 I had the chance to speak on several different conferences like Experts 2 Expert Virtualization Conference (E2EVC) or the System Center Universe Europe, another pretty cool event I had the chance to talk about System Center and Windows Server was the Swiss IT Pro event called Geekmania. 2013 was the second time I was presenting at the Geekmania after the my first run in 2012.

In October Microsoft released the Blue Wave which included Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack. This also offered some great new possiblites and of course some great new porjects. I had the chance to work in several of those projects with Windows Azure Pack, Hyper-V, Storage Spaces and Network Virtualization.

November was my a crazy month in 2013, with the release of the System Center and Windows Server 2012 R2 wave and a lot of great opertunities to speak, I was travelling the whole month. The first stop was the E2EVC in Rome where I talked about Windows Azure Pack and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. And by the way, the restaurants and the food in Rome are just amazing ;-)

After I spend a night at home and working for a customer in Switzerland we had this amazing company weekend in Paris.

Next stop was the TechNet Conference Berlin, Germany where I was talking about Fabric Management with System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

One day later did another presentation on Fabric Management with System Center Virtual Machine Manager at the TechDays Basel, Switzerland together with Philipp Witschi from itnetx.

In November Microsoft also released their new Exam: 074-409  Svr Virtualization with Windows Svr Hyper-V & System Center which is basically for all the Virtualization Admins and Consultants in the Microsoft area out there. I am happy I also passed this little challenge.

And then there was the second Microsoft MVP Global Summit and the third time I had the chance to visit the Microsoft Campus in 2013. Well this was maybe the most interesting I have been to so far, and it was great to see all the people you normally only know from Conf Calls, mail or Twitter.

Directly after the MVP Summit Marcel Zehner, Maarten Goet could visit the guys from Cireson in San Diego and was just great to see those again after I had the chance to meet them at the System Center Universe Europe back in September.

During the year I was presenting on several TechNet events in Switzerland organized by Microsoft Switzerland. In December I was presenting together with Markus Erlacher about Hyper-V, System Center and Windows Azure.

So this were some of my personal highlights of 2013 and I sure 2014 is going to be pretty good as well. So I want to thanks again all the readers of my blog, my followers on twitter and all the people how makes the effort running a blog and investing so much time in it totally worth it.