Friday, October 22nd will be my last day at Peak 10. Almost exactly six years to the day I started at Peak 10 I will leave to start a new adventure.
To say that the last six years have been the best of my professional life wouldn’t do justice to the experience. I have met some of the best people, worked with some of the best engineers and sales folks, gotten to interact with the best partners and been honored to be part of delivering solutions to the best customers on earth. I couldn’t be prouder of where I’ve chosen to spend the last six years of my life. My sincerest thanks to the executive leadership at Peak 10; thank you for letting me part of this incredible thing you’ve built. There are too many people to mention individually, but there are two in particular that deserve more than a “thank you”. Pat O’Brien gave me my first position at Peak 10, and taught my engineer side how to embrace and love the process of sales. He always encouraged my growth within the company, even when it wasn’t the best thing for him or his team and I’m lucky to have been able to work with him. Monty Blight gave me the opportunity to ride on the Managed Services rollercoaster, and it’s been incredible. He gave me the freedom to run through walls, and was good enough to clean up after me on the occasions (many, I’m sure) when I ran through one I shouldn’t have. Monty is one of the most decent and good-hearted people I’ve ever met, much less gotten the chance to work with, and if there’s any such thing as fate, hopefully it will give us the chance to work together again in the future. Much of what I am as a professional today is the direct result of the endless patience and faith that Monty has had in me, and I will do my best to pay that forward in my career.
As with many things, sometimes change is a necessary part of growth and I’m ready to embrace new challenges and run in new directions. I have accepted a position with Acadia as one of the first group of vArchitects, and I’m so excited to get started I can’t stand it. I have been a believer in the VCE coalition since its inception, and have witnessed first-hand the power of the Vblock and what it can do from an operational efficiency standpoint. That I’ve been invited to become part of the team that gets to go out and evangelize that to the market, and that I get to do so in the Service Provider and Healthcare verticals that I’ve worked in for the last decade is almost too good to be true.
David Jones is the CEO of Peak 10, and one of the best leaders and businessmen I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. He has a saying that I find to be particularly appropriate for this moment, so I’m going to steal it as a way of expressing my gratitude for what he has done for my career and my family. I am now, and will always be:
“Full Speed Ahead!”