It’s been a few years since I posted on this blog but figured this was the best place to share with everyone the next chapter in my career – Rubrik. Before I talk about what I will be doing, allow me to give you a summary of the last 3 years at HVE/UCX.

I left the customer space to join a startup, what startup that was going to be I had no clue! But I networked through VMUG and LinkedIn and landed an interview with a small hardware manufacturer in East Dallas that was making some awesome VDI appliance. I was brought onboard as a Sr. Virtualization Engineer and got to work quickly learning their architecture, message, and value to the customers they serve. With my background in Construction and BIM, I started working with a team to design and build GPU accelerated VDI appliances that rivaled the competition by supporting more users and better performance at a lower price. Sounds too good to be true right? Wrong, we launched a prototype platform and starting working with some known AEC firms and we off to the races.

Like any good business we began marketing this and other products in the AEC space and found a great opportunity in becoming a sponsor with the BILT Conference (formerly Revit Technology Conference). We sponsored the lab experience at the show and were able to showcase our platform with some of the industries best architects and engineers demoing the latest CAD/CAM/BIM software. With this show, I travelled to Portugal, Singapore, Australia, Canada, and across the US four times a year for the shows. I met some amazing people and learned a ton at these shows about how they use and consume technology to build smarter buildings. It was pretty awesome to see them do all of this using our platform. Companies caught on to our solution and once again, we were off to the races.

This momentum carried success for our company, among other great products that we were engineering for customers. We also started generating some great partnerships, one of those being Datrium. We launched our Datrium Ready Node line of VSI and VDI appliances and it has been a wild ride with them.

All of this momentum got the eyes of some investors and in Q1 of 2017 we were acquired by Sphere 3D. I have learned a ton from the teams in San Jose and Toronto and have met some great people all over the world from the new parent organization. These past 3 years have been everything I hoped for and more, meeting great customers, working with great employees. I got a chance to mentor few engineers and witness them attain VMware certifications along the way.

So if all of this is so great why change Brian? Great question.

There have been a few people that have guided me in the direction I wanted to take my career over the years and they all have said the same thing: If you are comfortable, then you aren’t growing and challenging yourself enough. This isn’t to say that I was comfortable or unhappy, I just felt that it was time to be challenged in a different space. I am thankful for the team at UCX/HVE for giving me a chance to be a part of something great, I made great friends and learned a lot from the guys I managed everyday. I am proud of what we accomplished and know they have a bright future ahead.

The industry has shifted since I got into IT almost 12 years ago and the push to Public and Hybrid cloud models is moving quickly. Rubrik is an explosive growth company that is quickly changing the way we address backup, replication, recovery and hybrid disaster recovery. I am excited for the opportunity to be a SE for them and cant wait to get started.

I’ve said this before, but it is my goal to resume posting some content about automation, cloud, dr, and more in the future as I get a little less comfortable in my role at Rubrik.

Stay tuned!