Mike and I are excited to get a new avenue in which to discuss the technologies that we work with on a daily basis. The opportunity to address portal and collaboration in this forum is a real thrill for us, and we expect this blog to be a fun, interactive way for us to reach out to customers and interested parties at large. Their should ample topics, concerns, and opinions to keep us rolling for a long time.
Now for a little bit about me. I’ve spent eight-plus years working almost exclusively with portals, beginning with five years at BEA Systems working in the WebLogic Portal group. While at BEA, I gained first-hand experience with how enterprise-class software is constructed, delivered, supported, and maintained. Since joining Perficient I’ve worked first-hand on the other side of “the wall” separating software vendors from systems integrators.
At Perficient, my areas of focus have included general portal development and architecture (surprise!), webapp security, and content integration. As a member of the National Portal Practice, I now focus more on strategic initiatives, helping to get portal and collaboration projects moving in the right direction at the get-go. To illustrate, I read somewhere that Steve Jobs uses the analogy of a rocket. The launch angle can be easily and minutely adjusted before launch, but those little adjustments can make a difference of hundreds of thousands of miles as the rocket hurtles through space. At Perficient we work to do the little, strategic things right at the beginning of engagements when they can have huge impacts on the overall success of projects.
Some of the things I hope to bring to this blog include insights gleaned from client engagements, discussions of effective techniques (both strategic and tactical), and interesting information from a constantly shifting software landscape (anyone notice that BEA and Sun no longer exist?).
As Mike has stated, throughout the course of this blog, you’ll notice that he and I agree on a lot of things, differ on some, and have somewhat different styles. We think this will lead to a fun read and a vibrant running discussion. We hope you will all reach out and feel free to leave comments, topics, and questions that you’d like to see discussed.
