In our new column 'on the shop floor at...' we interview ANVA colleagues about their role, work and responsibilities inside and outside the doors of ANVA. After Christiaan Maas, this time we ask Michiel Singor, system and network administrator at ANVA, about his work.
"I really liked it at ANVA, but wanted to get my paper. Moreover, a few of my colleagues quit during my internship, so my commitment was needed. Meanwhile, the three colleagues I started with at the time are no longer working at ANVA and I am the only system administrator left. I do have two new application administrator colleagues, the three of us now make up the IT team."
"It both falls under the heading of IT services that we offer to our colleagues. Our department consists of an application management section and a systems management section. We also work closely with a club of technical consultants. The colleagues from the ANVA DevOps team also support me in my work. We all understand IT and help each other where necessary."
"Simply put: everything to ensure that everyone working at ANVA has a computer and network to do their work on. Equipped with the right software and available from both home and office. You could say I'm responsible for everything that has a plug on it."
"Yes, across the board I make sure that all the technology for my colleagues works and keeps working. So that also means that at events at our office I make sure that image and sound are ready, or that I have set up and coordinated all the technology in our webinar studio for my marketing colleague Christiaan. As soon as it is up and functional, I hand the baton back to my colleagues and am of course ready to support them where necessary. We are also working a lot on security, for which we are ISO 27001 certified. This means that we are constantly making improvements and implementing smart features to be able to continue to maintain our systems and networks according to those guidelines as well."
"No way, I do that with my application management colleagues and with one of my colleagues on the DevOps team. We are also looking for an additional system administrator as a direct colleague of mine. So whoever likes it: I'd love to challenge you to apply!"
"Not necessarily more complex, but very different. Especially the way I am in contact with my colleagues has changed. Previously, people would stand at my desk with a question, now these kinds of questions mainly come via Teams. I then have to ask further questions to find out exactly what is going on. At a certain point, I know pretty well how someone works or what they mean. If someone stands at my desk with a question, either very clearly or in doubt, I also know how to solve it the quickest or at least get to the heart of the problem."
"What I spent a lot of time on and am proud of is the conversion from our previous management system (LANDESK) to the cloud-based management program Microsoft Intune that I set up. LANDESK I inherited from my previous colleagues, but over time I didn't see much use for it anymore. Then I started looking for a better solution and in a few months I transferred everything to Intune. With that, I have been managing all machines within ANVA for about two years now. Moreover, I now roll out all of our computers with Intune. A cool project, which I am also quite proud of."
"Yes, it is but it works super! For example, in Intune, now that Windows 11 has just been rolled out, I can very easily select a group of test users and assign them this software. That really works perfectly."
"The transition to new telephony is the first thing that comes to my mind. This is also really something my colleagues are waiting for. Especially for our service desk, this is a very welcome solution. Currently, in order to handle calls from home, they literally have to take the phone home with them. After our transition, they can very easily log on to the telephony with software. In addition, of course, we are always keeping ourselves busy with security improvements so that we maintain ISO 27001."
"I am in the process of reviewing our entire home office environment. We are taking the experiences from the past Corona period to continue to develop in the future. To make this as pleasant as possible for everyone, we want to have all colleagues working from laptops by 2022. This is not the case today, but it is much more convenient to be able to work from home or flexibly. Our service desk and back office now take over the computer from home that is in the office. If they soon have laptops we will have to start connecting to assets on the network in a different way."
"Haha, it's not that bad. But technical it is, yes. The idea is that I will slowly grow towards the DevOps side. After all, I really enjoy continuing to develop in the professional field, especially when my colleagues can then make use of it."
