 buzz chat and I'm here today with Ben. Hey, hello. Hey, Christian. How's things? It's going well over here. So it's thanks for joining on your Friday afternoon. And as we go into yet another weekend, it's the community never stops. You know, it's a non-stop train to Funville. Exactly. That's a positive way to think about this stuff. You've got to be positive, haven't you? There's too much negativity in the world. When you think about the two, I mean, your MVPs in general are just very gregarious, very community focused, outspoken, friendly people. And one thing I always say is just that, well, first, you know what, before we get into the conversation, why don't you introduce yourself formally, who you are, where you are, what you do. Who is this guy? Well, it's an absolute pleasure to be on your show. My name is Ben Whitmore. I was recently awarded MVP in Enterprise Mobility. Literally, what are we on now? Nine days ago. And it's been a crazy ride ever since. You might be able to tell from my accent that I'm here in the UK. And so I've been, okay, a bit about me. I've been working in IT for 20 years. I'm almost legacy status. So not in skill, but in terms of, man, he's been there a long time. And so I've come in, you know, I started at the, what I'd call the bottom. I knew nothing about ITIN and I kind of worked my way through. So I started building PCs. Then I started chucking network cables into places, you know, I think we had cat. Pull and cable. I have a friend that had business and did some of that with him. And that's real work. You cut up your hands pretty quick. Seriously, those are fun days. Actually, there's a really scary moment when I had to maybe I shouldn't say this on camera, but I had to crawl through a loft space. And it was all big pipes and lagging. And it was above a school hall. And it's this tiny little thing you had to call through. And it's like a scene from aliens, you know, where Ripley is going across the pipes and the aliens are rushing through. And this stuff was lagged in asbestos. And I laugh about it now, but it's actually quite dangerous. And it was, so it's like a mix from aliens and Bruce Willis. So I had the cable between my teeth and I was crawling through this tunnel. So great memories of cable. Sure. I got some stories and things from that. Yeah, helping out. I was just doing my helping out with my friend's business. But yeah, yeah, it's, well, it's, I know that I'd love to hear more about that because a lot of people ask that question, like kind of what is your path into becoming an MVP. But I mean, career wise, I mean, it's very similar. It's like you start out, you make connections, you just, you are open to learning and kind of go from there. So what was the rest of your path with your role? Well, see, I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I left school and I went to work in the local supermarket just to get some cash. And then I became a fishmonger. And I guess that got me into IT because I knew I didn't want to be a fishmonger for the rest of my life. So that's not a common term in the US and I've heard it. Like I usually hear it like in reference, like in Lord of the Rings, it was referenced as a warmonger, not a fishmonger, as you know, chases after that. So what's a fishmonger? Oh, it's just somebody chops up fish and sells it to people. Well, there you go. Okay. Yeah, so from there, I was really fortunate to go and work for a local company just to build PCs and, you know, and that's where my love really, the spark really clicked. And I thought PCs, you know, IT is for me. So building PCs, doing the networking cabling with a local company, you know, I had maybe five, six years experience doing that. And it kind of set me off on my path really. And then I moved into a local school, was looking after their network. And from the local school, I then went to work for local government. And I sat in local government for 14 years, just working my way up through the different ranks. And when I started that job, I said, I'm going to be here for two years. This is going to be a stepping stone and I'm going to move on. But 14 years later, you know, it's great. And I met so many great people. And it gave me kind of space to breathe and grow. Because I guess in public sector, you don't have the same pressure as you do in the private sector. So I had that room to grow and improve, which kind of brings me, I guess, to where I am today. So back in March, I had the opportunity to join a company called Cloudway. And that company, for me, who was then just starting, you know, to look at enterprise mobility and Windows 10 and migrations and things, they were the kind of stars to have the opportunity to, you know, Ben, do you want to come and work with us? It's like, man, all you guys are MVPs. And there's just little old Ben from the UK. But they never made me feel like I was anything less than them. You know, they looked at my skillset, what I was doing in the community, because I was already blogging at that stage and doing events and things. So I joined them. And it's been a wild ride ever since, you know, from March until today. So joining an awesome company. So there's eight employees, all MVPs, you know, they're so good at what they do, to be in a team and working with people at that level. And then to get invited on to the MVP program and to be accepted, it was just, you know, stuff of dreams. And because it's something I love doing. I love, I love working with people who have that same passion, you know, the same drive to work with technology to just make the experience for users better. You know, that's, I don't get up in the morning and sit on my PC and have fun just to click numbers, you know, I think, what's the point in this? And if I can make people's lives better, that sounds a bit cliche. But if you put in all the work under the hood and then you see a really great outcome, that's, that's where I get the love from. You know, there's, no, I think there's a lot to be said about that. And I think that's one shift that has happened shift in thinking due to the pandemic, as people have started in such a tight, you know, market now for, for, for work. You know, it really is the employees world, like you have your choice. Like if you are a, if you're in a crappy situation with the bad manager, not, you know, you've got skills that you can go and market, then there are opportunities that are out there. Companies, you know, my company, tons of hire, we've, in the last 10 months, we've hired over 400 people. And it's just, we're just growing immensely. But the struggle, what slowed us down is finding the right people with the right skills. Yeah. And it's a tight market. It is. And it's like you said, there's, there seems to be a lot of opportunities at the moment. And throughout the rough ride, we've all had over the last 18 months, that's maybe, you know, from our perspective in IT, that's a good thing that's come out of, you know, a good thing coming out of a bad thing is that it's, there is a lot more opportunity now. And, you know, everybody's moving stuff to the cloud. And it's, if you've not started the journey, you're halfway through it at least. Well, it's not just about finding a job for the technical skills match. But, you know, where I was going is, is people are reflecting on what am I really trying to do? Am I, am I passionate about this? Is it, am I, you know, the right personal growth? Is it doing the right things for, for, for my health, for, for the world, for the, the, you know, the economy to for, for nature is like, what are the impacts out there? And so it's really allowed people to, because we had extra time sitting at home, to think about what are we doing and why are we doing that? Absolutely. And, and the exciting thing is that I've seen a lot of companies now pick up the newer technology where they may have been a bit slow and apprehensive to go into it before they've almost been forced, you know, and in a good way, because they're seeing a lot of benefit from it, you know, and if, if the IT team is seeing benefit from it, because they're getting people working from home, you know, that makes my job just awesome, because I'm doing something I love and they're getting something awesome out of it as well. And, and you're right, it's a bit of a passion. And, and for me, coming into the consultancy role, to be able to work with like-minded people who had that same drive and passion in what they did is kind of the icing on the cake. Absolutely. You know, there's something to say. So my company, there are five of us that are MVPs and then three regional directors. And so it was actually, it's a huge part of my decision to join. They were one of my clients. I was independent until last December, but was that because I knew the company, you know, worked with the company for years, and I knew that they were very supportive of the community side of that and what that meant. Obviously, I have a job to do. I have my, my manual commitments. I've got like those things that I'm doing day in and day out, but they also recognize and leave room for the community activities and even help with, especially if you can find a company that, you know, occasionally I say, look, there's no like, we're not there at this event when events are happening again. You know, but we're not there or we're not sponsoring or maybe we're doing a digital sponsorship, but we're not there, but they may still cover my travel to go to this event because it is visibility. It is brand building for the company. There's goodwill that's, that's developed. That's actually, that's actually been a discussion point of, of like the value because a lot of community, it's almost, it's like a, it's a long play on marketing. There may not be the immediate short term, you know, clearly identifiable metrics out of you attending monthly community meetings or going to weekend community events or even to the larger conferences. So how does your organization measure those things and look at those activities? Ah, you're not, they're so cool. We've, we've just brought in this concept of no meetings, Fridays. And yet here we are. No. Oh, it's, oh, this is, this is fun stuff. Like I said to you before, I'm not having to cook the, my kids didn't make some talking to you about stuff I love. So that's good. So yeah, we've got this concept of no meetings, Fridays. So, and this is the awesome thing. So you're absolutely right. I need time to grow and to learn and to play with stuff and to blog and do that stuff that gives me enjoyment to keep my spark and my interest. And especially with a family, I was doing that in the evenings and on weekends. And then I was thinking, well, how can I balance my time? No, because I've got a young family who needs me. And so this concept of no meetings, Fridays, we all block our calendar out. No meetings. And we are literally working together on solutions on blog posts, on community stuff. We're listening to podcasts. I'm trying to get through that stack of books behind me. And it's all about personal growth. And we're going to be measuring how that works over six months using Viva Insights. And, and hopefully it's going to be here to stay because I know the feedback I've had from the people I work with is, it's just awesome. We're not spending the weekend evenings or the weekends sometimes on that learning process because we have to keep fresh, don't we? Yeah. If we don't keep fresh, somebody else comes along and takes our job. Well, it's funny that, you know, and having worked for companies that did not allow for the community component and viewed it as competing with your time. Like they just weren't, you know, in fact, I was, I had one company that I worked for that was, I would argue jealous of the community activities and the executive team of the attention that I was getting, the recognition through that and was furious every time I did a blog post, even on my personal blog, that I wrote over the weekend of my time that didn't mention the company or one of our products. Really? Like, yeah, that's kind of not the point. Yeah. That sucks a little bit, doesn't it? I don't want to bring this, I don't want to bring the vibe down on that. Let's keep the fire going. Yeah. Well, hey, why don't we go? So I always like to ask to like, kind of, so enterprise mobility MVP. So what are you writing about and talking about right now on that topic? Oh, wow. Do you know this, this, that category spreads, you know, so enterprise mobility. So I look at things from, from the Windows 10 and device management through to identity and security and kind of everything in the cloud that pulls that together. So it's such a wide spreading category. I mean, my most recent post was we've started we've called it the mega series on single sign-on. So there seems to be this misconception that if you've got an Azure AD joined device, so these are people who are going clouds, you know, like in tune for management devices joined to Azure AD, no on-prem. There's companies out there who still want the users to be able to connect back to on-prem and access file shares, you know, and stuff because there's some legacy workloads that are really difficult to move. And there's this misconception that you can't take a, let's call it a cloud joined machine and with that identity access on-prem stuff without some really over complex, you know, engineering. And that's just not the case. So we've tried to demystify that for people if we can. Historically, hasn't that been the, hasn't that been the case historically though? I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, you have to do this. I think there's this preconception and hopefully we're breaking this down, you know, so, and there's a lot of people in the community singing from the same hymn sheet. So if I've got a machine in the, you know, in the cloud, then I have to hybrid join. I have to join it's my domain to better access my domain resources. And that's just not the case. You know, so where companies have like a domain and Azure AD, they normally have an AD connect synchronizing identities between the two. Yeah. And when you're logging on to an Azure AD join device and you get your primary refresh token, if that's a synchronized identity, you already have the necessary information about the domain. So if you've got line of sight of your domain and your domain controllers, then the Kerberos authentication just happens. You know, it's like smoke and mirrors. So this blog series with I blog on MS endpoint manager.com. So it's over there. It's going to be like a nine part mega series showing people how single sign on works, how single sign on works for Windows Hello for Business, and then how they can set up like a very basic VPN to get connectivity back to the company, you know, you have to send me the links to that stuff in the blog post profile that all so if anybody that's finding this video or listen to the podcast, if you go out to buckleyplanet.com and there'll be a summary blog post around this as well, and I'll provide all those links. So send me all the links that you'd like on that series. It'd be great. Yeah, yeah, it's so much fun. And actually, just yesterday, we were doing the Windows 365 community event. And we were just, that was so much fun as well. We would talk about Windows 365 from what's coming in all the new cool stuff and how easy it is and how cool it is and so yeah, so and surprisingly, you get spread like butter, you know, you might be interested. So I just posted today. So this, of course, this our conversation will go live in a couple of weeks. But episode 22 of my podcast, which I'm doing weekly now, we talked about the impact of Windows 365 and not just of Windows 365, but the nature of software as a service and how that is impacting customers, partners, and Microsoft and how they're delivering and what the market looks like. It's yeah, we're in an interesting world now where we have still a ton of on-prem and that's alive and kicking and strong and Microsoft supporting them hybrid, of course, and then all the cloud pieces, but also how we sell those, how we consume those different pieces. It's there's a lot of interesting things going on now. It is. It's like we said before, it's like being a kid in the candy shop, you have all this technology, but there's so many choices now. And the biggest challenge I've found is it's kind of convincing people that it's okay to put that toe in the water and try something new. Have a look in that catalogue of new tech that's available and just start trying it out, even if it's in the lab. Because I think you'll find it will free up the way that your customers are able to access their PCs and data. And this is coming off the back of the Windows 365 event and just seeing how simple it is to have that persistent PC in the cloud that is accessible from any device at any time. I can be working at my desk in my office, go downstairs and pick up my tablet and carry on from the same PC. That's just. I'm just thinking of like giving your background as well. And I didn't have a similar role, but was very worked very closely with the IT teams and a number of different companies that owned the desktops that owned the devices. And when somebody knew starting up, they needed a couple of days to load the new PC or just set it all up. Yeah. Constantly fine tuning things and how different of a world that is now. So where I mean, especially with Windows 365, I mean, have that control and not worry about let Microsoft do the heavy lifting on the things that they own. Absolutely. So we had the concept of autopilot, which was literally taking machine off the shelf. It's already registered to the tenant. The user switches the machine on and it's pre-configured and that is awesome. There are still use cases for tar sequences and config, man. Absolutely. And it's still a very strong product, but to be able to pick a machine off the shelf and just switch it on and you're there is amazing. And Windows 365 just comes on the back of that as well. That whole persistent experience where you're not having to build custom images or deploy scripts. I hate doing stuff manually. It has to be automated and that's key. Absolutely key. When I was especially, how complex our worlds are, the fact that we have the different profiles built into our laptops. So it's not just that. It's being able to switch between the profiles. I mean, multi-tenancy, how big of an issue is. It's funny with a lot of the multi-tenant issues. A lot of the stuff, it used to be that Microsoft, they did not have them at high priority, the issues that we're having because MVPs and hardcore consultants were having this issue, but the vast majority of customers were not having these multi-tenancy issues. That's not really the case anymore. It's becoming very prominent. So Microsoft has had to address that. Yeah. And literally, I just find my edge browser now and I've got about actually 7 million and 52 profiles. But it's cool because those profiles contain a unique identity. So for me, accessing different tenants now is as simple as just switching a profile on my browser. Well, Ben, really appreciate your time talking today. Folks that want to find out more about you or connect with you, what are the best ways to reach you? Yeah. So I blog at MSnpointmanager.com. You'll find me on LinkedIn. If you follow hashtag Cloudway or hashtag team Cloudway, you'll see me pop up because we're doing so many cool stuff with those guys. I'm on Twitter at Byteben. My DMs are open. So if you see anything I'm blogging about and you've got questions, I'm happy to jump on board and try and answer those for you. Awesome. And again, I'll have all the links to all your social profiles. And I don't promote this enough, but you can go to mvp.microsoft.com, of course, you can find any MVP. It's not good at finding who are all the MVPs in the UK that are focused on enterprise mobility. You can't do that, but you can do keyword searching and, of course, name searching and find folks on there. And from your profile, click on and find kind of all of those main social platforms as well. It's cool. It feels like I'm walking on the shoulders of giants now. To see your name up there in MVP is such an honor. It's pretty cool. It's kind of a running joke when you describe it like when you get renewed to stuff to say I'm humbled and I'm honored and humbled or humbled and honored. And it's the same two words that everybody used so it becomes kind of cliche. So try to find other words to describe it. But I mean, it is, it's a great honor. I'm excited to be in the community and get to meet other MVPs and find out about what you're working on. So hopefully we'll see each other face to face at the next summit in person. That'd be awesome. And maybe we can play bass guitar together or something. I don't know. That's right. I know. I should pan the camera over to gathering dust right now. We need an online jam, MVP jam live. There you go. We've set the scene. That sounds like a hot mess. We open that up to others, but it's great talking to you and connecting with you and we'll talk to you soon. E2, all the best.