Sometimes the best things happen when you least expect them. I was not looking for a new position when DoiT crossed my radar, but some opportunities are just too good to ignore. So just how did a small-town internet service provider technician from Texas end up as head of global client services for one of the world’s fastest-growing companies delivering the true promise of the public cloud? Here’s my story:

Where it all began

Technology was always going to be central to my career. As a child, I built computers with my father, and I took up web development as a side gig while I was still in grade school, working summer jobs as a ranch hand. While building early web brochure sites for small local businesses, I developed a passion for helping companies extract value from the emerging information era. This passion helped inspire my decision to join a dial-up internet provider in the 1990s, tracking the journey of low bandwidth dial-up modems onto point-to-point wireless solutions, ISDN, DSL and the cable internet giants of the time.

I went on to pursue a degree in computer science at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, where I ended up leading much of the university network engineering team while pursuing the degree – and still found time to go surfing and fishing on the Texas coast I loved so much. This was an exciting time in the evolution of the internet, and I was lucky enough to participate with the broader Texas A&M University backbone and early-day Abilene/Internet2 high bandwidth exploration research and teleconferencing networks.

What I've been building towards

When it was time to join the real world after graduation, I knew I wanted to continue helping companies get value from the internet as broadband access was rolling out to households everywhere. I joined the managed services provider Rackspace just a few years before the cloud began to disrupt traditional hosting models, and I witnessed firsthand the shift to cloud services and the accompanying concerns businesses had about security in the cloud and the pitfalls of failing to deploy cloud-native applications. 

As I progressed through various individual contributor and leadership roles across organizations – from customer support, internal IT operations and corporate security – the cloud trend continued to fascinate me. I ended up becoming one of Rackspace’s three original Enterprise Cloud Solution Architects (CSAs) in the technical sales organization. rising to a position where I led the team. 

However, as we scaled out, I became frustrated by the number of clients who were unable to extract true value from the cloud, due to failed transformations, both culturally and technologically. I knew I needed to take a bigger role in helping customers adopt the cloud successfully. As a result, I ended up leading the professional services organization at Rackspace through a transformation to scale from a small team focused on data-center migrations to a fully-fledged cloud consulting organization.

I went on to do something similar at the cloud services provider Mission Cloud, which I joined in 2020. The focus there was less on legacy hosting and more on a cloud-native approach, and I helped establish a scalable consulting organization through a period of tremendous growth. 

At Mission Cloud, I continued to observe a trend of clients developing more mature relationships directly with their cloud providers. In many cases, they were seeking to establish more competent in-house capabilities with less hands-on reliance on their partners, so they could transform and operate on their own. I also saw ongoing demand for  cloud cost optimization, as well as an ever-widening array of cost optimization services and platforms with intelligent technology in the cloud space. 

How DoiT fits in

Throughout my career, I’ve been obsessed with driving the kind of digital transformation that helps businesses achieve their goals. That has involved helping some global giants in IT advance from positions of barely coping to ones where they can leverage the cloud to drive more revenue and disrupt competition. I also helped many startups figure out how to approach the cloud right from the ground up, while avoiding costly, time-consuming mistakes.

When DoiT reached out to me, I was not seeking to move, but I soon realized that this was a company that shared my vision of what the cloud can do and what many clients needed. I discovered a consulting model that was purposefully designed to help clients learn and develop their own operational capabilities. 

I was really impressed by the power of DoiT’s intellectual property and technologies such as Flexsave and Spot Scaling, as well as its success in attracting and retaining world-class talent in a cut-throat talent market. 

After meeting some DoiT Customer Reliability Engineers (CREs), I soon learned why people were keen to join DoiT – and stay there: DoiT manages that elusive feat of maintaining a delivery culture intent on giving their people focus time to learn and participate in special projects along with an operational model that imposes far less stress than the traditional support or consulting organization. This approach creates a consulting capability aligned with the needs of today’s clients, as well as tremendous internal satisfaction and pride in what they do among CREs.

As I discovered more about DoiT, I was blown away by the speed with which DoiT scaled and became profitable creating a service and platform structure that aligned precisely with the trends I had been observing in the market while successfully navigating the challenges of scaling a cloud services business in the competitive talent market.

Ultimately, I felt my experience would align well with the next stage of the journey – ensuring the sustainability of DoiT’s continued scaling.  

Where next

As I start my journey with DoiT, my focus is on maintaining the magic that has made DoiT so successful and helping to leverage the company’s explosive growth for ongoing scalability and sustainability. That starts with ensuring our CREs have the working conditions they need to do their best work, and we have the specializations required to expand into additional clouds and technologies.  

As DoiT seeks out new and exciting services opportunities, I will help navigate our services roadmap, aligning to the evolving industry trends both in technology and client cloud adoption strategies. Personally, I look forward to having a ringside seat for observing the nuances of international trends while also increasing my focus on consumption-based delivery models that make sense for clients. 

And that’s just the start. Interested in joining me on that journey? If you care deeply about the quality of your work and the impact it can have on customers, your team and the wider world, you’ll find an environment that encourages your entrepreneurial spirit and shares your passion for solving the next challenge. Check out the careers available at DoiT to discover your next adventure!