Our AvePoint Community Collaboration Ambassador Spotlight series continues! Each month, we’re highlighting a different member of the Community who has reached the Collaboration Ambassador level, allowing you to get to know our members, learn highlights from their careers, and get their own personal tips for enterprise collaboration success.
This month we’re highlighting Collaboration Ambassador Frank van Rijt. Find out more about Frank and his work in the collaboration technology space below.
Want to earn your status as a Collaboration Ambassador to be spotlighted and gain other special privileges? Read this post to find out how!
1. How long have you worked with collaboration technology and where did you get your start?
I’ve been working in IT since 1994 and my experience with collaboration technology started with Digital All-In-1. My role began merely as a systems administrator, but I eventually moved forward to design, manage, and work with several collaboration tools including Lotus Notes, Exchange, SharePoint, SocialCast, Yammer, Lync, Documentum, and Office 365. Currently, I’m a lead service architect at DSM, and as such I am responsible for the workplace infrastructure architecture of DSM Global, which has 20,000 users.
2. What do you like best about the collaboration technology community?
I appreciate people’s willingness to share their views on the security aspects of collaboration.
3. What are some of the key challenges your organization has overcome when it comes to collaboration?
Moving towards the cloud (Office 365) and getting the right level of security in place by balancing user awareness with technical controls.
4. What is the best advice you’ve received in your career thus far?
Be technology agnostic and open for other solutions. In IT things can change very fast; the winners of today can be the losers of tomorrow. So keep looking around.
5. What is one fun fact about yourself that you’d like to share with the other members of the AvePoint Community?
I play trombone in a party band, which brings me lots of fun during the Carnaval season.
Trombone! That’s cool.
“Balancing user awareness with technical controls” is key for us too. O365 and Yammer are not “just another IT thing” but rather tools that will seamlessly integrate to help people do what they do more efficiently. I have repeated this in various different ways over the past year. How have you helped coach your users?