Thrive Spotlight: Marc Friesen, Senior Cloud Engineer, Remote Access

Welcome back to another installment of our “Thrive Spotlight” blog series.

Our featured employee is Marc Friesen, Senior Cloud Engineer, Remote Access. In his role, Marc focuses on Thrive’s Managed Azure Virtual Desktop and Managed Citrix Cloud remote access methodologies. He also operates as a subject matter expert on many related technologies such as Duo MFA and Printerlogic managed Cloud print management, among others. In addition, Marc collaborates with internal teams throughout Thrive that coordinate management and support of Thrive’s many Cloud offerings and work on new technologies to vet and integrate them into Thrive’s platform.

Marc lives in Maryland, which is a short drive away from Thrive’s Elkridge office. He is an avid reader and video gamer. Marc enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons with his fellow dad friends when they can find a hole in their busy parental schedules, and he recently started periodically playing the card game Magic the Gathering with Thrive colleagues after work.

Hi Marc! Can you tell us about your background and how you came to Thrive?

I came to Thrive as part of the 2019 acquisition of Ease Technologies, where I was the lead engineer for over 13 years building their Cloud Computing and MSP business. That role transitioned into Cloud engineering for Thrive with our Managed Azure Virtual Desktop and Managed Citrix Cloud Platforms.

Where did you go to school or get training?

I received my Bachelor’s degree from Bethel College, a tiny school in North Newton, Kansas, where my family has gone for three generations. I frequently tease my 11-year-old daughter that she has to be the 4th generation.

I also attended school in Lyon, France, and Henderson, Nebraska.

What do you most enjoy about working for Thrive?

I am a fan of efficiency because it makes everyone better at their jobs and reduces stress for ourselves and our customers. That includes the organizational efficiency of professionalism.

Many times in IT, one gets stuck in the weeds of a particular problem; at Thrive, we have a bewildering breadth of experience, which means I can bring up a complex problem to colleagues and come back with a simpler/better solution that has been verified and documented.

Are there any recent exciting projects at Thrive you can tell us about?

Cloud computing is going through an explosion of capabilities and functionality as Microsoft has pivoted from a software to a service company. New features will allow offline login to Cloud desktop with data still accessible for offline work and then synced back when the system comes back online, all from a secure dedicated integrated boot environment.

We recently completed a complex migration for a customer from RDS to AVD and received the feedback after a few weeks running that “everything just works the same or better, so we have no feedback.” Music to my ears!

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