A little bit of prehistory;

My name is Andy Grogan and I have been working within the IT industry for the last 12 years primarily with Microsoft , HP and IBM - technologies – however my main passions have been Microsoft Exchange server, Active Directory and SQL Server.

Over the years (and many customers) I would (Guess)timate that I have personally worked on and deployed Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory solutions to over 165,000 seats in all kinds of environments – however my main focus has been mainly within the Local Government arena - however I have experience of directory and messaging implementations in many other sectors.

Currently I work for the London Borough of Hounslow, which is located in West London in the capacity of Networks and Infrastructure Manager. I have held this position for the last 11 years where my day to day responsibilities include managing the 3rd Tier technical group (15 professionals), providing clear technical direction for further projects and technology upgrades, technical contract management and negotiation and of course - my personal favorite - running the Exchange infrastructure.

A few years ago (around the time of the “blog culture explosion”) I decided that it might be a good idea to start my own set of ramblings about Exchange writing about some of the things that I have encountered over the years.

I also thought that it would be a forum for me to test some scenarios with Exchange that I would not normally do in a production environment and share them with a wider public, and explain situations in my own words with a primary focus on what I thought System Admins would like to hear.

My first blog was based on Google Blogger – it was OK, and I was learning how to blog therefore the first year or so was appropriate at the time – however ultimately some of the stuff that I was trying to do outgrew Blogger – therefore I made a move to Wordpress (http://telnetport25.wordpress.com). Wordpress was a wonderful platform to blog on and with however in late August 2008 I decided that it was perhaps time to take the blog to a another level. I wanted to offer more features to my readers, as well as more content – whilst finally cutting out the sites own identity (www.telnetport25.com).

So I have invested in a hosted platform, new domain and a fully content based site based around Joomla.  

My Work  - History and Now;

Way back in the day I started out as a freelance programmer using C++ and Delphi to name a few languages that I have murdered – however in 1997 I took a role as the IT manager for a large Senior school in London, where in addition to running a network which at the time was mainly Apple Mac (yuck) based I taught the programming aspects of the Advanced Level in Computing Science. I gradually moved the school away from Apple to Windows NT (which was pretty much a learn on the job gig).

After two great years working there (honestly it was good times) I joined one of London’s largest Local Government Authorities as the deputy manager of the Schools IT support service. During this period I and my team looked after 900 customers spread across 80 geographically separate locations. It was here where I gained experience of migrating users from MSMail based on Novell to Windows NT and Exchange 5.5. As is the habit in local government there was a reshuffle where all of the IT provision in the council centralised and I was given the role of heading up the Corporate Infrastructure provision – it was here where I worked on many mail migrations and upgrades (Banyan Vines Beyond Mail & Office Power to Exchange 2000, and then an upgrade from Exchange 2000 – 2003). 

I have recently focused my energies on Exchange 2007 as more and more companies are recognizing the benefits that the new message platform brings. I been involved in the design and deployment of over 25,000 seats of Exchange 2007 (in a consulting role) where I have a little bit of a flare for CCR within Exchange 2007.

In April 2009 I was awarded the prestigious MVP award in the category of Exchange Server - you can view my MVP profile here.

Outside working hours you can normally find me in the MSExchange.org Forums (Where I have been  a Trusted Source and am currently a moderator) or working on this site. 

Generally speaking I am available for parties, and weddings (although what a mail server would be doing at them I do not know) and you can contact me via the mail address which is on the Contacts page of this site.

I do try to answer as many people as possible, however if you are trying to sell me Viagra, or have an opinion on the size of my genitals – it’s too late - my wife has already said all that needs to be in that aspect and cornered the market so to speak so don’t bother