Adrian’s passion for Red Hat Openshift
Because of his experience in IT, Adrian was excited about the rise of Red Hat OpenShift, and he’s built up a wealth of experience since he came to work for Piros. “In our industry, you need a broad knowledge of IT anyway. Knowledge of OpenShift alone won’t get you there.” Discover Adrian’s passion for Red Hat OpenShift.
Adrian has been working at Piros for four years now. “Four years ago, most companies were still running on bare metal and VMware,” he says, “but a lot has changed since then.” Adrian joined Piros because he specifically wanted to work with OpenShift, and he’s been doing just that for the past four years. He first worked on a series of projects at an IT service provider, a bank, and then an insurance company. “I gained very broad experience with OpenShift, from setting up dev and test clusters to setting up production environments from scratch, including all the accompanying documentation, workshops, and so on.”
Adrian has been working at Smals, the IT service provider for government institutions in the social and health sector, for the past two years. “The Smals’ OpenShift team keeps the service up to date for those government institutions.” And it turns out there are a lot of them. Sixty to 70 OpenShift clusters are in use at the various government services that Smals supports. “As a project manager, I’m responsible for guiding OpenShift version 3 to version 4.”
Rapid evolution
The world of OpenShift is evolving rapidly. That’s why it’s important for specialists to keep up with any changes. With every new release, there are always a lot of new features to discover. “Customers are generally aware of these new features,” says Adrian. “And, of course, Red Hat also provides a lot of support.” Adrian stays up to date by participating in user groups and events, among other things. “Activities like these offer the opportunity to exchange tips and ideas with colleagues. You’re sharing information with a community that often faces very distinct challenges, and you always learn a lot that way.”
It’s this rapid evolution that keeps the job interesting and exciting. “I had been interested in OpenShift for some time,” says Adrian. “Now I’ve built up concrete practical experience at Piros.” That Adrian had previously worked in other roles and with other technologies helps him to this day. “With OpenShift knowledge alone, you won’t make it. You need a broad knowledge of IT on an OpenShift project anyway. I used to work as a DBA on Oracle and SQL. Later I worked as an all-round systems engineer. The insight I gained in those roles has helped me a lot on my OpenShift journey.”
Challenge and variety
The big challenge for an OpenShift project manager is to see the bigger picture. “Not only do you need to have a deep knowledge of OpenShift, you also need to understand how OpenShift fits into the broader story: how OpenShift plays into development, security, and so on.” And there’s another challenge for the project manager: “The project manager must also demonstrate leadership to the customer. That makes the job at Smals challenging, but also ensures a lot of variety. My OpenShift expertise is at the service of customers. I don’t only cover the technical aspect, answering questions about capacity management, for example, but I also often work on governance, billing, security, and so on. All those different facets make the work complex, but that’s precisely what continues to fascinate me.”
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