Q&A with Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
Thomas Thornton, our Cloud Technical Specialist recently got awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in the Microsoft Azure Category. We sat down to have a virtual chat with Thomas to learn more about his journey to MVP and what it means to him.
Can you give a bit of background to your journey to becoming an MVP – how did you get started in your career, your role in Kainos, what are your speciality technologies and what led to you becoming an MVP?
Having studied Computer Science, I’ve always had a huge interest in technology. I joined Kainos six years ago, starting as an infrastructure engineer and this was when I was introduced to Microsoft Azure. The last six years has been an awesome journey moving from infrastructure engineer to Senior Platform Operations engineer to Technical Specialist.
The roles got me working with quite a list of customers and throughout, so many great technologies. Even in the past year, I’ve worked on Azure Migrations, Azure DevOps workshops, and now everything relating to Azure Kubernetes Service!
I set up an Azure blog throughout this journey, and this was my first introduction to the wider Azure community. Through actively blogging, I have grown my network on Linkedin and Twitter, which has enabled me to participate in wider community events.
I also enjoy learning about new Azure resources & features and I spend a lot of free time “tinkering” with these and include findings into my blog posts.
What projects are you currently working on?
I am working on a really exciting project with one of our customers, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, currently leading a team working on mainly all-things AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) & from a GitOps perspective. We were selected by HM Courts and Tribunals Service to lead on developing, supporting and enhancing their Azure Platform Services. We will assist in the migration of their legacy services and applications to Azure, helping to drive efficiencies and modernise the justice system in the UK - it is a really exciting project to be part of! You can read more about it here.
How are you involved in the MS community?
I run and create the content for my Azure blog site and it is becoming busier and busier each month; averaging around 16,000 views. I am also very active on social platforms Twitter and Linkedin where I engage with the Microsoft Azure Community.
Throughout the year, I participate in several community events and meet-ups which have included:
I also run a community event called the azure spring clean with another MVP Joe Carlyle.
Mentoring is also something I strive to do, I actively help and share resources and advice on Twitter, Linkedin, via my blog and have also contributed to community events. I am always happy to help and provide advice to anyone looking to start or progress their career – feel free to connect with me on Linkedin!
What does it mean to you to be awarded MVP? What did this achievement feel like?
A surreal feeling; it feels great to have been awarded Microsoft MVP! I am looking forward to continuing what I am doing within the community, speaking at further meetups and continue seeing my Azure blog grow.
Any advice to other tech professionals who hope to eventually become MVP?
Keep up the awesome work, the Microsoft Azure community is great and such a useful resource! I would recommend being active in the community and definitely try to contribute to the community events that run throughout the year – they are great fun!
What Azure technology are you most excited about? Any major trends?
There are so many updates and new features being released all the time, the list would be quite huge! But some of the areas and Microsoft/Azure technologies I am always interested in and excited to see grow are:
Azure DevOps & GitHub Actions
I really enjoy all things DevOps related, working with our customers and helping them on their DevOps journey – whether it be from the beginning and introducing some DevOps principals into their ways of working or helping them progress in more advanced areas - I really enjoy utilising Azure DevOps & GitHub Actions for this!
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
AKS has been a popular topic of discussion for a while now! Kubernetes itself is a movable, extendable, open-source platform for managing workloads and services. AKS simplifies deploying a managed Kubernetes cluster by offloading a lot of the operational overheads required if you were to host your own Kubernetes environment. As a hosted Kubernetes service, Azure handles critical tasks, like health monitoring and maintenance. Since Kubernetes masters are managed by Azure, you only manage and maintain the agent nodes.
Additional benefits of using AKS include:
- Accelerates application development as Microsoft Azure handle critical tasks such a health monitoring and maintenance
- Ability to scale on demand
- Security & compliance
- Potential cost savings
- Can help attract talent – software engineers want to work for companies that use new and interesting technologies
I really enjoy introducing customers to Kubernetes and working with them to begin their journey to containerisation - even if it isn’t a full Kubernetes set-up there are still so many benefits!
Azure Migrate
I have worked on several migration projects across multiple customers and love utilising Azure Migrate to move infrastructure to Azure. Azure Migrate is a great toolset and resource to help you fast track your migration journey into Azure. By adopting Azure Migrate as part of our core migration toolkit it means we can simplify our customers’ cloud journeys from discovery and planning right through to execution. We recently helped The Pensions Regulator migrate 300+ servers from a data centre within tight timeframes by utilising this tool – it really did speed up time to value for the customer!
At Kainos we are passionate about empowering and investing in our people, so we were delighted to hear about Thomas achieving MVP status! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Thomas or you can check out our Azure expertise here.