Danny never planned his career and is not afraid of changes. He fulfills several roles at Avanade, working as a Modern Workplace Solution Architect, Certified Systems Integration Solution Architect, Platform Modernization Offering Lead, Career Advisor and Delivery Lead.

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Technician at heart

Danny lives in the northern part of the province Noord-Holland, in pittoresk Medemblik. He has been part of the Avande family for over 10 years: “I’ve always worked in consultancy and my primary drive is to maintain a clear link between customer goals and architectural building blocks. I have a lot of hands-on experience and this didn’t get unnoticed by Avanade. I worked as a consultant for another tech company when recruiters of Avanade invited me to come over for an interview. I am a technician at heart and like everything that has to do with automation and digitalization. Even my home is equipped with an automation system, making it a smart home where I can connect all of my devices and interact with them. My interest in automation creates a great advantage in my work at Avanade. I am a pragmatic infrastructure expert with a broad view on the Microsoft product family, which helps our customers make better business decisions and create a modern workplace.”

Full migration to Office 365

At Avanade, Danny started with Windows migrations for SMEs, leading the operations work stream to migrate thousands of users to a new Windows version. Then, he was asked to do one of his most memorable projects thus far: consolidate hundreds of domains all around the world to one global Active Directory domain and enable collaboration by using Office 365. His first managerial position: “After just nine months, I was able to embark on this new journey, which captivated me from the very start. I did a lot of traveling, moving from the United States, to the Middle East and Asia. During these trips I had the opportunity to visit the factories and meet local employees. After a period of 18 months, we completed the full migration. I learned a lot about project management, financial requirements and more. Overall, the migration included Active Directory consolidation, mailbox migrations and support collaboration by enabling Office 365 for about 10.000 employees world wide.”

Learning every day

After this project, Danny was placed on a project for a Dutch Financial Services company: “The banking industry was completely new for me, and I focused on learning the rules about cloud security and policies regarding a data center for the financial industry. Working for this customer gave me new insights and broadened my knowledge and skills. Especially from a compliance and security point of view. At Avanade, we don’t let documentation lead us. We like to build and create, designing the best possible solution for our customers. Through Microsoft technology we are able to build test environments to give insight in the project ahead. Something the customers don't have time or the knowledge for. Next to my work as a consultant, I also work as a career Advisor at Avanade, helping colleagues in their career by coaching, setting priorities and enabling them to get the most out of their career. I never planned my career and like changes, that is what keeps my work interesting and challenging. Something I also want for my colleagues.”

Look at these pages to find out more about the culture at Avanade.