Meet our CEO: Nick Kazen
Nick has started his IT journey around six years ago at Sentia Consulting - back then also a partner of Microsoft - helping companies start their Cloud Journey or host their services in a Private Cloud.
Origin
Nick started out as a junior project manager, after studying Hospitality Management. It was a big switch for him to start in IT, but he always had an affinity with IT and had some experience in leading small IT projects in-house for his former employers.
At Sentia, Nick got the change to help with the creation of designs- and architectural documents for customers in a supportive role. Something completely new to him of course. However, Nick had the ability to connect the dots and liked translating the business goals- and values of companies into something engineers could use to create an actual IT environment; being the translator between the business and the development teams. He grew in his role and worked his way up the ladder to become an actual Architect.
Fun fact: at one point Nick had obtained so many certifications of Microsoft, AWS and Google he was easily the best certified person within the company.
During his time at Sentia, Nick became the trusted advisor and architect for all Cloud customers, especially for the companies with Azure environments. One problem, Nick couldn’t be cloned, meaning that he had to train new team members using his experience of starting from scratch as an architect. Resulting in him leading a team of architects, who just as him, started out without any IT experience.
Partnering with customers
After his time at Sentia, Nick started out as a Cloud Architect at Wortell. There, he quickly proofed that it wasn’t just an one-time trick. Partnering with the customers, creating a trusted advisory role and again translating the business requirements- and goals to the technical development teams who could then turn his designs into actual Azure environments.
After a while, Nick decided that partnering with customers, creating a real impact and value for the business and their technical teams was his ultimate bread-and-butter.
Vision
For Nick, partnering with customers and being the trusted advisor is something that goes deeper then just his work. Simply put, it’s something he has been doing since he was 14. From working in restaurants and being schooled in Hospitality Management, the link can be made easily.
Our partnership model is therefore something that has been shaped out of his Hospitality background, creating an outcome-based value model. Taking the business goals of our partners as the input for our pricing model. The partnership vision and seeking a true collaboration with our partners is for its largest part driven by Nick.
What’s next?
Nick went on with what he likes the most, translating the business to the technical organisation. At the moment he’s helping two of our partners in their journey into the Azure Cloud and on expanding their technical foundation.
