If you follow me in social media, you may have seen my announcement that I’ve joined Microsoft. Late in October I resigned my position at Pragmatic Works as a Senior Business Intelligence Consultant and accepted an offer from Microsoft to join their Education Specialty Teams Unit as a Data Platform Solutions Architect. This is such an awesome opportunity and one that I’m so very excited about but I wanted to take a few moments to share my reasons for resigning from Pragmatic Works and joining Microsoft.

This was an incredibly difficult decision that I did not make lightly. I spent over a month thinking, praying, and talking with my wife, Dad, and a few trusted friends about the decision. For the past seven years I’ve loved working, growing, and learning with the wonderful people at Pragmatic Works so I knew any opportunity I would consider would have to be the exact right opportunity. But after all the consideration both my wife and I felt like that this was an opportunity we were led to and that was right for our family at this point and time.

I knew that transitioning from a consultant to a solutions architect position would challenge me and force me to stretch and grow. I felt like that the opportunity at Microsoft would provide me the chance to continue my learning on a different level and this is one of the things that led me to Microsoft.

Also, the information technology field is changing so mind-numbingly fast that its impossible to stay abreast of all the changes, update, and products. Working with Microsoft will provide me the opportunity to learn and work with these new technologies before they’re even released. With Microsoft, I can stay on the bleeding edge of Microsoft’s data platform.

My position at Microsoft also affords me the ability to work from home unless I’m on the road. Time with my family and children is incredibly important to me. Working from home affords me the luxury of eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with my wife and babies. My kids are growing up and changing so fast and I want to be there for as much of it as possible.

So how will things be changing here at SQLDusty.com? Well, I’m in a brand new role facing an incredible challenge to learn the ins and outs of a bunch of quickly changing technology so you notice that I’m not posting as frequently.

Also, the topics I do post on may increase in variety of topic. Previously I was neck deep in business intelligence (which isn’t a bad thing! BI is awesome!) but now I’ll be working with customers and technologies across the data platform.

I know this is going to be a wonderful journey and learning opportunity and I can’t wait to share what I’m learning with you, my friends and fellow nerds!