About me
Hello, everyone!
I'm Ben. An enthusiastic and sometimes masochistic Microsoft consultant. 😉 A little masochism is always part of IT, because IT is alive and therefore naturally prone to disruptions. You have to like that.
Due to my career background, I work extensively with Microsoft products and technologies. My focus is on hybrid infrastructures and Microsoft 365. However, I don't like to commit to a specific product, but try to maintain a broad overview. My goal is to be able to advise customers as comprehensively as possible.
Career
After graduating from high school, I first completed my civil service (yes, I'm that old! 😁). I then began training as an IT specialist for system integration and successfully completed the program after 2.5 years. I was hired by the company where I trained, the City of Frankfurt am Main, and was able to learn about public service there until 2009.
During this time, I worked with several colleagues to support vocational schools in the field of IT (basically all medium-sized companies with specialized software for fashion design, 3D design, travel, and commercial professions, for example). This led to the formation of a team that now supports all schools in the field of IT. Basically, this paved the way for me to become a consultant.
In 2009, I moved to Bavaria (where love takes you… 😊) and switched to the private sector. Until 2016, I worked (with a short break) in system administration at a medium-sized logistics and freight forwarding company. It was a very exciting but also very tough time, during which I built up a great deal of technical expertise—not only with Microsoft, but above all with infrastructure.
During this time, I developed a desire to contribute my knowledge to other companies as well. However, this required another change. So I moved to a medium-sized IT service provider in Munich, where I spent the next few years helping to build up the Microsoft consulting team. In addition to my technical projects, which during the pandemic revolved almost exclusively around the cloud, I was gradually introduced to a team leader role. At the same time, I was also able to support Microsoft in partner management.
I was able to take on this role in 2024 and, together with a colleague, led a team of 11 employees. I really enjoyed this – and judging by the feedback, the employees also enjoyed working with me! 😊 I always saw my leadership role as “accompanying and supporting” and never as “boss-subordinate.” And I would do it again anytime!
Internal developments within the company then prompted me to move to another IT service provider in Munich, where I can once again fully immerse myself in my role as a technical consultant for Microsoft. Let's see what the future holds—I'm excited!
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Selection of my projects
To give you an idea of the breadth of my expertise, the following table lists some (by no means all!) of my projects:
| Project | Customer industry | Customer size | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Splitting an Active Directory forest | Fashion | 600 employees | Technical analysis of the overall Active Directory structure and identification of dependencies for the separation of logical company structures, support during the separation process. |
| Rebuilding a Windows PKI | Financial services | 14.000 employees | Conception according to proven methods and implementation |
| Fully automated deployment of a Hyper-V infrastructure | Unternehmensberatung | 30.000 employees | Analysis of existing systems and development of a PowerShell-based automated deployment for new Hyper-V systems and VMs |
Multi-forest migration to Microsoft 365 | Business consulting | 800 employees | Development of the architecture for migrating all subsidiaries to the central environment of the holding company and using Microsoft 365 services. |
| Secure implementation of Microsoft 365 | Various | Various (100-1000 e.) | Consulting and concept development for the implementation of Microsoft 365 to replace third-party solutions and homogenize the IT infrastructure (Azure infrastructure, Entra ID, conditional access, privileged identity management, Entra application proxy, access audits) |
Rebuilding IT infrastructure after a disaster | Software development | 450 employees | Secure and hardened rebuilding of central IT services and restoration of operational capability using modern services and operating systems |
Setting up a remote desktop server farm | Manufacturing | 1200 employees | Setting up a Windows-native remote desktop farm to replace the existing Citrix farm |
Setting up an SQL failover cluster | Fashion | 600 employees | Design, installation and further development of an SQL failover cluster for the central and fault-tolerant provision of application databases |
| Multi-tenant migration to a central M365 environment | IT service provider | 1300 employees | Lead architect for the design and implementation of a migration of multiple Microsoft 365 environments to the parent company's central Microsoft 365 environment and the setup of central infrastructure components (signature management, Azure Virtual WAN, remote maintenance) |
Technical focus
Due to my career background, I work extensively with hybrid infrastructures. I often help companies to sensibly enhance their locally provided infrastructure with cloud services or even replace it with cloud services. For example, I have already carried out a large number of projects to replace Exchange Server. I also demonstrate ways to combine Windows Server with cloud services in a meaningful way (e.g., replacing classic file servers with Azure File Share or providing redundant data using Azure File Sync).
In the past, I have had a lot to do with the management of end devices (Windows, mobile). Therefore, I am also familiar with the typical pain points of end users and typical procedures for transitioning end devices to modern management using Intune. However, Intune is not one of my core competencies, so I am happy to refer you to colleagues who are skilled in this area. 😉
One of my passions is automation. I love creating PowerShell scripts to automate recurring tasks and speed up workflows. I already have a large collection that I will gradually make available in my script nest.
Finally, I would like to mention my certifications. Yes, there are many. But I have been working in IT for a long time and have seen a lot during that time! 😁
