35 years in the ICT business on the 2nd of April

I started in the ICT business on the 2nd of April 1984, now 35 years later I still love what I am doing and have never regretted my decision of profession.

When I started the industry was called EDP (Electronic Data Processing). My first job was for an outsourcing company(it was not called outsourcing at the time, Data Service agency was the term). My task was to work with data communications for mainframes from Honeywell Bull and IBM. At the time a high speed connection was 9 600 bps!

During my 4 years I managed to learn a lot of new technologies and was involved in establishing a Helpdesk in 1985. I attended a training in London to learn about the task. Setting up a Helpdesk was a fun project where I learned a lot. I was working with 2nd level support. It gave me a lot of experience with supportingend users.

The next step for me brought me to the banking clearing house in Sweden, Bankgirocentralen (BGC). I worked for 10 years at BGC and learned a lot about Information security, as well as how to run stable networks and IT-systems. One of the benefits of working at BGC was the chance to learn about many technologies and vendor systems. I remember when we were recruiting new staff the applicants felt they were at a trade fair for ICT.

During my years at BGC I was fortunate to work with many challenging projects. Introducing high-volume scanning, my task was to connect HP Unix servers to our IBM mainframes using TCP/IP as early as 1994. I attended my first TCP/IP training in 1994. Much of my work during the years at BGC was to maintain the LAN(Local Area Network) based on Token Ring.

In 1998 I joined the vendor of Token Ring equipment Madge Networks as a TAM(Technical Account Manager) for the Nordic region. Working with a technology I had learned so much about at BGC was inspiring, unfortunately it was in the end of the era for Token Ring.

In 2000 I founded a company in Sweden(LanQvip) together with my boss at Madge Networks Nordic region. The first year we worked as agents for Madge, the same job we did as employed but now as contractors. We saw the end of Token Ring and decided to work with other vendors. We went on a trip to CeBIT trade fair in Hannover in March of 2000, when CeBIT was at its peak. We met with vendors that later formed the next steps in my career. In November the same year I went to Las Vegas to attend the trade fair Comdex and met with other vendors that added to our portfolio. We were now working as distributors of networking equipment.

In 2004 we decided to split paths, I continued working as a distributor. I founded the company I still run, NetIntegrate. I started expanding the business and gained some important clients with interesting projects. Technologies I was working with was IP-telephony, fiber-optic converters, routers and wireless. I worked also on some early projects of connecting building automation systems, today we call it Internet of Things(IoT). It was too early for the customers so those projects never took off. When I founded NetIntegrate and was working on the early IoT projects I came up with the slogan and vision that we still work with, "Online all the time, anywhere with anything".

In 2007 I started working as an agent again for a company that at the time was named Funkwerk Enterprise Communication(FEC) from Germany. I had been distributing their Bintec products since 2001 after we met with them at CeBIT in 2000. I was the Account Manager for the Nordics and worked with them until end of 2010. This agent work was the only business for NetIntegrate during these years.

During the time as an agent for FEC I had our Small Business Server 2003 break down for me. I was dependent on the system as we were actually using the SharePoint in the server. I had learned about Microsoft Cloud service named BPOS, so in June 2009 I moved the data to the cloud and have never since then had a production server at NetIntegrate.

In 2011 after leaving the work with FEC I started to resell Microsoft Cloud Services as the third stage at NetIntegrate. A stage we are still in and enjoy every single day. During the years I have had a the opportunity to consultant trainer at Vocational schools in Sweden for students learning to be SharePoint developers and Cloud Advisors. With SharePoint I taught the initial courses as I am no longer developing (except for Powershell scripts). I am following man of my students here on LinkedIn. During the years I have been training not only students, I have trained many users of Office 365 and the services.

Training has been a task I have done at all my jobs, the best feeling for me is when I train people and they say "Aha, so that is how it is working". I have had users I trained saying I can explain technology in plain language. During the last 3 years I have been training several hundreds in how to adopt their businesses to GDPR. My first experience with GDPR was in 2013 in Brussels together with some other Microsoft partners. With my background from BGC with Information Security I found GDPR very interesting.

I enjoy training to learn users how to be more productive and happy users working with systems that benefit them in their daily job as well as training students of ICT. I had mentors and colleagues I work with when I started 35 years ago, now I want to pass on my experiences.

Since 2015 I have been fortunate to have my son Eric working with me at NetIntegrate. We complement each other a lot as he loves to develop, especially using API technology. I know enough about what code can do to be the adviser to companies on what code can do to make the users and the company more effective, I bring it back and we create solutions. We are working with other companies to add to our customers needs. Our organisation is shown on our website, the term for our organisation type is a Hub-firm. Our slogan is now even more valid, almost 15 years (in October it will) after I came up with the slogan for NetIntegrate. Having Cloud services that are online all the time that you can connect to from anywhere using any type of Internet connected device.

I plan to stay in the business for many years to come, even after so many years I learn new things every single day. Working with ICT is like a puzzle, that is why NetIntegrate logo contains pieces of a puzzle.

I am glad I inspired you to read this far, I will be writing more here on LinkedIn. Stay tuned!

Photograph, Anna Bristrand (my daughter)