by CUGC HQ
Kevin Howell, CTA
Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom
What Citrix technologies are most important to your work?
We work with the full Citrix ecosystem. I am currently spending a lot of time developing our Digital Secure Workspace DaaS offering with Citrix Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Key work areas are XenApp/XenDesktop, NetScaler, along with Windows 10/Office 365!
What’s the biggest tech challenge you deal with, and what Citrix solutions are you using (or plan to)?
Digital Strategy and Cloud Transformation for large scale Enterprise clients. It’s quite simple to build an evergreen technology stack. However, moving an existing business with complex processes and critical line of business applications without impacting the day to day business is always a challenge. Some of our clients have over 125,000 users and 10,000+ servers with strict governance and compliance. Utilising Citrix Cloud allows us to quickly provide a secure digital workspace to provide development areas and early access hands-on pre-production environments to end clients and developers.
This will be your first year attending Citrix Synergy, and you’ll be attending as a new CTA. What are you most looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to catching up with fellow Citrix CTAs & CTPs, learning about new product releases/announcements and hopefully some much needed Californian sunshine. I’m also booked for a certification exam: Designing, Deploying and Managing Citrix XenMobile 10 Enterprise Solutions.
Which sessions are you most excited about?
I’m looking forward to hearing the keynote speakers–especially the Super Session with Dr. Condoleezza Rice, working hands-on in the self-paced labs, and attending sessions by CTP Christiaan Brinkhoff (Twitter-@Brinkhoff_C) and fellow CTA George Kuruvilla (Twitter-@gkuruvilla): SYN105-Citrix Workloads on Different Cloud.
Share a little about your experience in the CTA program.
I have presented at the UK CUGC in London, with fellow CTA-now-CTP James Rankin, last year, along with holding several online webinars. I enjoy being part of the early access program and providing feedback from our UK clients. I am always surprised by the CUGC community spirit, along with willingness to share stories and technical challenges and how they are using Citrix technologies to overcome them.
Favorite words of wisdom?
You get out of life what you put in…treat people how you would like to be treated yourself…oh, and keep it simple!
Outside of work and CUGC, what do you do for fun?
I’m big sports fan, so I follow my local football team in the UK Newcastle United FC. I also play golf, cycle and try my best to run, as I have a half marathon later this year for charity. I’m also very lucky to have a supportive wife (Sarah) and we have two sons Callum 8, Elliott 4, and our Labrador, Ebony, who is 11.
