Nick on HCI

Using Azure Stack HCI step-by-step

About

Nick Washburn

I’ve been building software since I was a kid. Starting in high school, I ran my own (informal) consulting business in my small WA town – fixing PCs, deploying hardware/networks/software, and creating custom database management systems for local businesses. My passion was for all things PC and Microsoft tech – hardware, software, and databases alike.

After college I joined a small Silicon Valley tech firm (Lundquist Consulting, Inc) as a software developer and participated in creating a national database software ETL application from the ground up. Over a 10 year period I was heavily involved in requirements, design, development, testing, product launch, operations, maintenance, and enhancements. In that time I developed skills building complex systems, architecting databases, administering SQL servers, coding in a DevOps environment, and the importance of testing and QA. We grew and built case search products on top of our core national database platform, and the company was eventually sold to a multinational data analytics and risk assessment firm (Verisk).

I took the next step in my career at Microsoft in Redmond WA, transitioning from a developer-centric to a product-centric role, joining the Windows Server (later Azure Stack HCI) team. Here I consolidated and honed my career-long experience with Microsoft software, systems and environments, and all my prior roles involving design, databases, hardware, testing, management, and communication.

As a product manager at Microsoft, I participated in the launch of a brand-new OOB server management solution (Windows Admin Center), where I headed up efforts to launch and evangelize the Windows Admin Center developer SDK, as well as expanding and refining customer-facing collateral and documentation.

Next, I had the opportunity to be the go-to-market leader of a v-team launching the reboot-less updates (Hotpatch) feature on a new Azure-only edition of Windows Server; as time went on, I became the face of Hotpatch, participating in demos (appearing in Microsoft Ignite), interviews, and evangelization of Hotpatch and Windows Server Azure Edition with strategic partners internally and externally.

In my latest role at Microsoft I had the pleasure to bring Hotpatch to guest VMs on Azure Stack HCI, where I led the private and public preview of Hotpatch go-to-market effort. For that effort I did design work, POCs, and scenario testing, combining host (AzSHCI), guest (WS Azure Edition), and feature (Hotpatch) together with various management platforms (Azure automatic patching, Azure Update Manager, Arc, WSUS, and Windows Update).