Adios SMS and System Center

After years of working with, consulting and being involved with Microsoft SMS and SCCM I feel it is time to cut loose my involvement with that world. There simply are no opportunities whatsoever within my geographic area to even consult anymore. I have a good job that involves Wise packaging and scripting, but our parent company dictates Altiris. That won't likely change anytime soon.

I remember first working with SMS 2.0 back in the late 1990's with a good friend who passed away not long ago. My next project was a multi-site Active Directory migration to WS03 which was followed by my first SMS 2003 rollout. I actually joined the beta early on and received authorization to go ahead into production. It was exciting and scarry and I enjoyed every minute of it.

After that I spent a lot of time creating web reports, writing scripts, customizing MOFs and automating our inventory and patch management systems.  After a few years of growing with a growing company, the owner decided to cash out and split the place in half and sell it off and soon everything I worked on was gone or shut down.  I left to work for a consulting company that promised to put me to work in the area doing more SCCM work, but they never did any marketing and we floundered.  I ended up driving ridiculous miles to stay employed, but that fizzled out and nobody was doing any SMS or SCCM work within 150 miles of where I live.  None.  Zip.  Zero.

I worked hard on the SCCM beta and even passed the 70-401 MCTS exam for System Center Config Manager.  I’ve been watching the news from MMS 2010 and it looks like things are still progressing nicely.

As much as I enjoyed working with that side of the house, and spending time at MyITForum.com and other sites, it’s just not practical anymore.  I wish anyone who works with the System Center product line the best and hope that their jobs are prosperous.  However, I think it’s time for me to move on to other things.  Long live Wally Mead. :)