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This year will bring a bit of change to my professional life. Since October 2018 I had the incredible chance to work with an awesome set of people not only on the most intuitive IaaS- and PaaS-solution out there but while doing that enable other companies to become cloud providers as well. When I joined gridscale in 2018 this was the continuation of me falling in love with the gridscale product a few years earlier as one of their first customers. In those 3 1/2 years gridscale has evolved a lot - I just joked the other day with some colleagues that one gridscale year equals four human years - and to this day I’m very happy I got onboard and was able to help shape gridscale into what it is today. The recent award of being a rising star in the public provider benchmark by ISG shows it is not just personal perspective, but also recognized by business analysts.

I’ve never experienced such a fast moving company before: An environment that enables everyone to grow by embracing a fail fast, fail early and learn culture. Of all the things we achieved in the last years, none where the result of single person but all of them are built upon the work of people working as a team - teams that are able to try things without being afraid of failing at first. This is how innovation is coming to life. As much as gridscale evolved over the years, I’ve made a similar journey for myself. I learned a heck load of things about product management, tech innovations, leadership, business development, metrics and grew in many aspects. I was able to work on my weak spots. Much as I progressed professionally, my personal life changed as well. Partly due to things such as a global pandemic, much more to have become a father. With the birth of my son (and I’m sure every other parent can relate) priorities and views shifted and adjusted.

I’ve been involved in the Open Source Business Alliance for many years - as such I was very happy when the Sovereign Cloud Stack project came to existence in 2021. Open Source has accompanied me my whole professional life and throughout the years I was involved in various communities and helped building and fostering them. With the SCS project I now have the chance to combine my interest in cloud computing with the joy and passion for open source technology. From the first of February I’ll be joining the SCS team at the OSBA as the product owner for IaaS & Ops. Since I still want to transition a few items at gridscale, the first few months I’ll be on 50% at both places. From July on I will completely switch over to the new role and depart from gridscale.