Chris M.
Director, Systems Administrator

Senior IT staff must be comfortable wearing a variety of hats—manager, mentor, trouble-shooter, diplomat. Chris wears another hat—salesman. "Our Ireland-based datacenter is on the tour when executives visit as part of the sales process. Potential customers want to see how the product works in a production environment," he explains. It’s an opportunity a lot of people in his line of work don’t get, and it’s just one of the reasons why working at EMC is so different and exciting for him.

Chris’s group is split into two functions—client services and information infrastructure. "Client services is the public face of IT," he explains. "They’re the people you call for day-to-day support such as connecting PCs and troubleshooting desktop problems. Information infrastructure is more about the network, deploying servers, and connecting offices with each other."

It’s these IT infrastructure people who find themselves putting EMC’s promise into practice. "We don't deploy an EMC product unless there’s a business need for it; but when we do, it serves as a showcase." With 300 offices worldwide, a focus on virtualization—and the mandate to cut costs while maintaining high service levels—the EMC organization has become an ideal example of an EMC client.

"We like to think of ourselves as an internal customer," says Chris. "We're involved in the development of various solutions, providing feedback on what we, as a customer, would like to see." His team beta-tests new products, and the developers tell them that nobody provides more candid feedback. "We're more candid than the outside customer because we have a stake in the game."

Why Chris joined EMC

Chris joined EMC on the manufacturing floor 12 years ago, and moved into the IT department within six months as a network engineer. Moving up the ranks of management within the telecommunications area, he then took on increasingly senior roles across the broader client services and IT infrastructure group. The range of opportunities and strength of the career path are two of the many reasons Chris works at EMC. Or as he puts it, "I get a new job every two or three years. Why would I ever want to leave the company?"

Want to work with Chris in IT infrastructure?

As in any IT organization, members of Chris’s team need to know how to scale the infrastructure. But as representatives for showcasing EMC solutions, they also need to be able to explain to visiting customers how they implement and support EMC products in production environments.