As of 12:01 AM on Saturday, April 24th 2010, Tad Crandall and Richard Crandall are no longer Microsoft employees and will be focusing on cb5 full-time. Though only gone for a short time, the news has generated several opportunities which we are working diligently to accommodate. However, one of our goals is to take some time to refine our infrastructure and our web pages so over the next several weeks you may experience some minor downtime and changes. Please bear with us as we are trying to provide a friendlier experience. Until then, here’s a little more info about why we are so excited about this change.
Tad spent nearly 10 years at Microsoft starting in the directory service depth queues in PSS (now CSS) in Charlotte, NC where he worked with some of the best directory service engineers in the world. Tad then moved to Maryland as a Senior Security Engineer at the Executive Office of the President, helping to identify and remediate security concerns and assisting in the establishment of Information Assurance (IA) processes. Five years ago, Tad moved back to Charlotte, NC to fill a Senior Premier Field Engineer role in support of the United States Air Force focusing on Microsoft platforms technologies including directory services, networking services, security services, and many others. Most recently, still within his Senior Premier Field Engineer (PFE) role, Tad has been supporting Department of Defense Joint Services where he has largely focused on federation technologies including Microsoft’s Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS), Threat Management Gateway (TMG), Unified Access Gateway (UAG), Forefront Identity Manager (FIM), and others. Tad is recognized within Microsoft as one of the foremost experts on ADFS and during his time at Microsoft served as a consultant to the Microsoft Online Services Team and helped the Air Force to integrate SharePoint and ADFS; creating an Air Force standard.
Tad also helped to frame and develop Microsoft’s Certified Masters (MCM) program for directory services. He participated in the Alpha rotation of the program and provided content, questions, and lab material related to ADFS and other components of the course. In addition to his Directory Services MCM, Tad is one of less than 25 people worldwide that hold the Advanced Infrastructure MCM. Tad also contributed content to the MCM program track for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Along with his prestigious MCMs, Tad holds many internal only accreditations including but not limited to Active Directory Risk Assessments, Active Directory Troubleshooting, Security Health Check, Active Directory Disaster Recovery, and others.
Nearly 5 years ago, Richard started with Microsoft as an Advisory Support Consultant (ASC) and though the role name has evolved (or changed at least) and he has officially changed title to become a Senior PFE, he still likes to tell people that he is an ASC. The title of Advisory Support Consultant seems to fit better as Richard spent his time serving as a trusted advisor with a wide variety of customers throughout Federal Civilian. Supporting Microsoft platforms technologies, Richard consulted with customers on directory services, migrations, network services, security services, training, and in support many other Microsoft technologies. Richard was consistently selected to support high profile, complex, and challenging situations during his time at Microsoft starting with the United States Department of Agriculture and their nearly 3,000 Windows 2000 domain controllers. He was also selected as lead Microsoft platforms consultant for one of the largest Public Sector datacenter virtualizations; and the virtualization platform was VMWare, not Microsoft. Richard also provided remote support to both the Republican and Democratic National Convention and was asked to validate the health of the President-Elect Transition Team infrastructure. Many years after Tad had left, a Crandall would return to the Executive Office of the President to provide infrastructure support for the upgrade of the messaging infrastructure. And all of those years later, Richard was welcomed into the EOP because of the relationships that Tad had built many years before.
Back when Microsoft’s Active Directory Risk Assessment Program (ADRAP) was called the Active Directory Health Check (ADHC), Richard was selected to be among the first two Public Sector support engineers to be accredited to deliver the engagement. Since then, he has provided directory services advisory consulting to more than 50 Public Sector organizations and has performed 100s of ADRAPs. Richard is passionate about helping others to maximize the return on their investment by optimizing the deployment and use of Microsoft technologies. Along with the ADRAP accreditation, he holds many other internal only accreditations including but not limited to Active Directory Troubleshooting, Virtualization, Windows 7, Security Health Check, and others. He also helped to frame the Microsoft Quick & In-Depth Premier Services delivery and developed and delivered several of the earliest content deliveries. Richard was also consistently called on to screen Microsoft interview candidates, both initial and face-to-face, and has served as a mentor for many of Microsoft’s new-hires. Richard also is certified as 2008 R2 Microsoft Certified Master in Directory Services and has contributed to the MCM content.
Tad and Richard loved working with Microsoft and it was a hard decision for them to leave a company that they wanted to work for their entire IT career. However, they are very excited to be moving on to the next phase of their career and are extremely motivated by the many challenges ahead. They know that the understanding that they develop will feed their ability to better serve customers and they couldn’t be happier about that opportunity. As much as they each love Microsoft and the people that they got to work with, it’s possible they may do their best service for Microsoft at cb5.
Though Tad and Richard will be greatly missed by Microsoft, we are grateful to welcome them full-time to cb5. We are excited to be part of their building success and we look forward to see what great challenges they take on next. Though each will be very busy helping to grow cb5, they have promised to attempt to blog regularly and we’re going to hold them to it. So start looking for some more great blogs coming soon and please help us welcome them to the team.
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