Happy 65th Birthday to me

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun

But it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again

????????????? ? Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd, Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd

Please allow me to reflect on my career and my retirement after fifty years as a working stiff.?

I thought I was retired after Microsoft acquired FSLogix, Inc. , (and before that after VMware acquired RTO Software and before that when DocuCorp went public). But, each time something called me back. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn't have a realistic retirement plan. Oh, I thought I did. After RTO, the plan was to get great at golf. Those who have seen me golf know how that went.

The FSLogix years (2013-2018)

RTO had an OEM agreement with Symantec. During my tenure at VMware I kept in touch with the team at Symantec. After a chance meeting at a VMworld in San Francisco we decided that EUC wasn't solved -- and we were exactly the guys to solve it. We did solve a couple of problems and to this day over 5 years later Microsoft still calls our solution FSLogix. I wonder if we knew then that the company name would outlive RDMI and WVD (remember those names?) we would have spent more than twenty minutes coming up with the name.

Early pre-Seed Board Meeting (somewhere in Utah)

Jeremy: "We need a name for the company. Hey Randy, since your last company's name was FSLogic, what do you think of FSLogics? Dang. The domain isn't available."

Brian: "FSlogix is available."

Randy/Kevin: "Done. What's next on the agenda?"

Sure we were laissez faire, but that was the only time. Many have asked about the sale to Microsoft and "how did we did it." For me personally, I just got lucky, but for FSLogix we had a product-market fit and the product did what we said it did. The lucky part was being able to surround myself with excellent co-workers. Sometimes I see myself as a engineering recruiter for the Tech industry. All of the engineers from RTO are either still at VMware or stayed there through their retirement. Same with FSLogix.

Amazon EUC (2020-2024)

Unfortunately, for tax and SOX Compliance reasons, I wasn't able to join the rest of the team at Microsoft and as a result started another short-lived retirement. In 2020, AWS called and we discussed all the ways that EUC isn’t solved. The last 3 plus years have been an absolute blast.

It’s not the Amazon way to call out individuals personally, but you know who you are. I would trade my past career successes for your future ones.

Remember, if it was easy they wouldn’t need you.

?

-Kevin