Interview with Stefan Horz

PorträtHere is our first Interview in 2016, its Stefan Horz from VAS Value Added Services GmbH.

From time to time I will ask some of my colleagues from the community if they are interested to answer some Questions, so here we are.

From this point now, Stefan will answer my Questions, at the end I will let you know where to connect with Stefan and where his Community work is available.

Small Introduction of you and what you are doing

I work as a Senior Consultant at Value Added Services (VAS) for automation and integration products from Microsoft since 2007. I work for large enterprises, SME and public sector in small to large projects as a consultant or trainer.

I’m active in the Technet forums from Microsoft. Since now I have provided there over 1.000 answers and helpful posts to user questions.

What was your way to IT?

Like the most male teens here in Germany in the late 80’s and early 90’s I was very interested in computers. So, after taking my A-levels I finished a professional education for math and IT. Before becoming a consultant I worked as a system administrator for inhouse or outsourcing hosters in complex environments with Microsoft products.

I personally think that it is difficult to motivate customers to switch from SCO to the current version of SMA for on premise automation and integration if the Activities from SCO meet their requirements

Whats your thoughts about the switch from SCO to SMA or Azure Automation

In my opinion all three products have their own advantages. With each of the three you can automate and integrate your IT infrastructure centralized and high available.

In Orchestrator (SCO) you have the possibility to design and maintain your workflows graphically. If the Activities and their functions are enough for your requirements to automate and integrate your IT processes you can do this with SCO without expert knowledge of the integrated products, programming or scripting.

Using Service Management Automation (SMA) you have all the power of PowerShell and the PowerShell workflow engine and can use the PowerShell Modules of each IT product you want to integrate. This allows you to automate very flexible and performant.

I love to work in teams. I venerate team members no matter if they are direct colleagues or customers which help in special ways to implement a solution with success.

I personally think that it is difficult to motivate customers to switch from SCO to the current version of SMA for on premise automation and integration if the Activities from SCO meet their requirements.

Azure Automation is also great. You don’t need to maintain own infrastructure for reliable automation. With Hybrid Worker and OMS you can automate even your on premises infrastructure from the cloud. As in Orchestrator you can built graphical Runbooks and convert the Orchestrator Runbooks with System Center Orchestrator Migration Toolkit.

Your favorite System Center Product

All the three above :- ) . But all the System Center components and especially Azure provide huge and reliable possibilities to maintain and host your IT infrastructure.

I organize the System Center Service Management Group (www.scsmug.de). I guess we organize at least two meetings this year

Your favorite System Center Feature?

The interaction between the products and supplement of all the System Center products is a great feature.

Which Guy from the IT are your “Role Models” and why?

I love to work in teams. I venerate team members no matter if they are direct colleagues or customers which help in special ways to implement a solution with success.

On which Conferences will you attend this year, TechEd, SCU….?

I organize the System Center Service Management Group (www.scsmug.de). I guess we organize at least two meetings this year. Stay tuned for the next meeting registering at http://www.scsmug.de/.

I also consider to join other conferences this year. But I’m not sure which one at this time.

Last Words?

Thank you very much for the interview, Mr. Techguy! Perhaps we can arrange a presentation of SCOOSP in one of the next User Group Meetings of SCSMUG.

The End

A big thanks to Stefan for answering my Questions, here are some Links.

Blog: http://www.sc-orchestrator.eu/index.php/blog
Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Stefan_Horz
System Center Service Management User Group: www.scsmug.de
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SCSMUG

Michael Seidl aka Techguy

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