NetApp, here I come!

I am very excited to share that I will be joining the Modern Workplace team at NetApp as their new Product Marketing Manager for VDS in EMEA on the 1st of December. Together with a great team of highly motivated people, I will be working on defining the future of NetApp’s Virtual Desktop Services.

Within this role I will be responsible for promoting VDS to partners and customers throughout EMEA. From the start I will be gathering feedback from customers and end users to help build the roadmap to define new product features that meet the customer requirements.

My focus will be mainly on the Azure and WVD part of the product. I am a huge fan of WVD because of it’s simplicity, scalability and the possibilities to automate everything. I know everybody loves technical demo’s and walkthrough, so you will see me doing a lot of webinars, giving presentations and sharing information about VDS and End User Computing in general. Let’s hope next year we can even do some physical events again!

NetApp Virtual Desktop Services

NetApp VDS simplifies the provisioning and deployment of virtual desktop solutions. What differentiates VDS is its ability to serve as a unified global control plane spanning your entire virtual desktop footprint across users, locations, business units, regions and even Azure subscriptions.

Virtual Desktop Service supports Remote Desktop Services (RDS) on major public cloud environments including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform as well as on-premises environments. It has also native support for Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) solution in Microsoft Azure.

Recap 2020

2020, the year the whole world changed. Worldwide pandemic, working from home, distancing ourselves from the ones we love most and times we lock ourselves in home to protect others from a sneeze or a cold that might be COVID-19. We all made sacrifices, small or big. I must admit, the first few weeks were quite an adventure working fulltime from home. But after a month the new normal got harder. No small talk at the coffee corner, only talking to your colleagues and clients online, changing your whole routine is hard. I’m guessing all of you experienced the same/similar.

But for every downside there is always an exciting upside. I found mine in extra time, time for personal growth. I started reading books and reached out to meet new people. These meetings were so helpful, not only because of the knowledge these people were willing to share but also my confidence grew stronger and so did my social network.

One of those people is Neil McLoughlin. Back in April this year we started the WVD Community to share news about this new service from Microsoft, the endless possibilities this products has to offer and made sure all new features and use cases were highlighted. We had a lot of contributions from members within the community, partners and even Microsoft employees.

As our community started to grow, so did we, and we started our own WVD community podcast. We recorded our first episode on a Sunday morning, just a day after we had the idea for this podcast. Tom Hickling was our very first guest and has helped us tremendously with promoting the WVD Community. Did we have any experience with doing something like this? No! Was it perfect? No! Was it well prepared? No! But we had so much fun doing it and decided right there and then to continue.

As I am trying to say, 2020 was also the year my world changed. This year has brought me so much, I started the Dutch Windows Virtual Desktop User Group and even got invited to present at the Microsoft meets Community event organized by Christaan Brinkhoff. These were things I could never imagine doing a year ago. I had to overcome my insecurities and perfectionism to find joy in presenting and sharing knowledge. Esther Barthell and Neil were one of the few in the community who knew this side of me and supported me every single step of the way, a big shout out to them for their help and support! And of course, all of this wouldn’t be possible without the love, help and support from my wife!

Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.

I am thankful and very proud for all of the above and I look forward to everything 2021 has to offer. All I know is NetApp gave me a great opportunity to help shape the future of VDS and I’m looking forward to a new year of pushing myself beyond my limits and kick myself out of my comfort zone!

Hope to meet you all in person as soon as possible.

Stay safe and healthy

Stefan Dingemanse
Product Marketing Manager VDS (EMEA)
NetApp