MVP Monday: Making the difference at Schlumberger

We were proud to be part of the very first US version of Experts Live—and while there, we had a chance to catch up with some customers who also happen to be Microsoft MVPs. Matthew Hudson, Systems Engineer at Schlumberger, was excited to talk to us about his favorite 1E solution, Nomad. He’s spoken about his organization’s use of Nomad before, but we also asked him a few questions about what he expects to see happen in the industry this year. Take a look at what he had to say as we caught up with him on the conference floor.
Question: What brings you to Experts Live?
Matthew: I’m interested in what the cloud is doing.  I want to see how automation is progressing inside Azure and how companies are utilizing the Cloud.  I always look forward to networking with my fellow IT administrators.  There are many people here that I only see at conferences and it is always a pleasure to catch up with them.
Question: What are the big issues for you in 2018?
Matthew: The hot topic is automation. Maybe even Co-Management as we see more Configuration Manager functions moving towards the Cloud and Intune.  AutoPilot is a pretty new way of provisioning a computer but vendors need to work on support and companies need to determine how they will adopt it.
Question: ConfigMgr recently turned 25. What were your reflections on this?
Matthew: I’m glad to see it hit 25 because the beginning years were kind of rough. I think the fact that OSD has come so far has made me very happy.  I can still recall when patching moved from SMS 2003 ITMU to true WSUS patching, it was such a nightmare.
Question: What are your thoughts on Co-Management?
Matthew: I like the idea of it. The ability to move resource control into the Cloud seamlessly makes it easy for the admin to adopt but companies need to support the process.  Moving to the cloud can be as easy as clicking a button. But from a logistics or cost perspective, many companies don’t have a proper Cloud Plan that details how costs or IT functions will change.  IT now incorporates logistics, not just technical experience or mere implementation.
Question: How do you see 1E’s place in the ConfigMgr Ecosystem?
Matthew: I see 1E’s place as pretty much a “solutions expert”. Not only with Nomad, but with Tachyon’s ability to have questions answered in seconds.  Think of Tachyon’s as the local subject matter expert.  You can ask Tachyon to answer a question or perform an action and it will execute the process in real-time.  Faster than a person could do with a report and no waiting for other solutions to gather the data over 24 hours.
Question: What correlation do you see between industry trends and 1E tech?
Matthew: I think the connection between 1E and the emerging technology is Tachyon. It’s a gamechanger.  Now, you can gather information quickly from a resource and if management needs to know if a vulnerability could affect the environment, Tachyon can step in and return that answer.  As with Nomad and other 1E tech, you are conscious of the endpoint and the network making sure nothing is adversely affected.   I like that!
Question: What difference has 1E been able to make in your organization?
Matthew: 1E has basically allowed us to save network bandwidth. We use Nomad a lot! We’ve decreased network costs and we’ve dropped about 400 DPs.  Now we can focus on other activities and improvements instead of fixing broken DPs.  Each admin could spend two hours or more a day on broken site servers, now we focus on more pressing matters.
Question: Are organizations ready for the rate of change imposed by Windows 10?
Matthew: I don’t think businesses are ready for Windows 10 as a service. I think vendors still have issues with software. We will see people fall back to old versions of Windows 10 which puts them at risk for security vulnerabilities.  Vendors need to keep their software updated and companies need to continue to use the Windows Insider program to ensure their can upgrade their environment.
Question: What impact has Nomad had on Schlumberger?
Matthew: One of the interesting facts about Nomad is that it allows us to utilize slow links without taking them down due to bandwidth consumption. So, if someone is on an oil rig and has a machine that needs to re-image, even if the files aren’t there, we can pull them in a controlled manner over the WAN. While it can take 25 hours to download and re-image, it’s a stable process. It doesn’t matter that it took over 24 hours, it’s repeatable and reliable.
Want to see more from MVPs at Experts Live? Watch these MVP interviews now!