Blog

Doing It Right When There's a Shortcut

October 27, 2026

Every time we onboard a new client, there's a moment where you find out what you're really walking into. With one recent client, that moment came fast. Their domain controller was offline.

The previous IT provider never finished onboarding them. Nobody had access to the AWS account the DC lived in. The card on file expired, AWS shut the account down for non-payment, and the DC went down with it.

Their fix was to pull every computer off the domain and point DNS at 8.8.8.8. People could get back online, so it looked solved. It wasn't. They'd just stopped looking at it.

I understand how that happens. Tracking down who owns an account is slow, frustrating work. But that shortcut left the client with no central identity, no policy enforcement, and a security gap they didn't even know about.

So we took the long way. I followed the trail back to an IT provider the client had worked with five and a half years earlier, got access to the account restored, brought the DC back up, and rejoined every machine to the domain.

The technical part wasn't what made it hard. What made it hard was staying patient when there was a shortcut sitting right there. Ownership means treating a client's environment like it's your own, and doing things the right way even when nobody would notice if you didn't.

Shipping 100 Laptops With Zero-Touch Setup

October 27, 2026

This year I automated device onboarding with Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopilot, and shipped 100 laptops out for zero-touch setup.

Zero-touch changes what a new device means. Instead of a technician imaging and configuring every machine by hand, the policies, apps, and security settings live in Intune, and Autopilot applies them when the device is set up.

The same approach carried into a greenfield build for a 100-employee remote law firm: Intune device policies, Windows Autopilot, Entra ID, Okta federation, CrowdStrike, and BYOD policies, all configured with security first.

The work up front is the work that scales. Get the configuration right once, and every device after that comes out the same.

Building a TAM Function at an MSP

October 27, 2026

When I stepped into the Technical Account Manager role at Straight Edge Technology, the goal was to move our 80+ client portfolio, with 3,600+ managed endpoints, from reactive support to proactive governance.

A big piece of that was onboarding. I took over our new-client onboarding process, redesigned the workflow so every client gets the same consistent start, and have onboarded 8 new clients with it so far. Onboarding is where you find out what could take a business down, so it's worth doing carefully.

The other piece was compliance. I designed a multi-framework compliance program covering HIPAA, PCI-DSS, CMMC, and NIST 800-171 that standardizes controls and documentation across clients, and I helped a client achieve CMMC Level 1 (self-assessment) by building their evidence package and writing their policies.