E105 - Carl Gruber at CDW

Our Head of Enterprise USA, Harry Green, was joined by Carl Gruber, the Managed Services Architect at CDW. Carl is an experienced industry leader, previously leading multiple IT teams in several Fortune 500 companies. He has been at CDW for over 5 years now and we learn more about the transition between roles. He delves deeper into his proudest accomplishment to date and a little more on how he stays up to date with technical skills.

Carl got into the tech world very early on in his life and it was mainly due to his grandfather. He was into computers and Carl was desperate to use his computer to play games, but his grandfather said if he wanted to use it, he had to read a manual on DOS (Disk Operating System). So, with his dying urge to play games, he spent 6 months learning how DOS worked which ultimately sparked a passion in him.

He thought he was going to be a computer programmer so went down that route. He took computer programming classes at school and then landed a part-time job at an ISP called Charter Communications. His role consisted of front-line work helping people who had trouble with their internet connection. He worked his way up at Charter for 12 years before they started making changes which required people to relocate. Knowing he didn’t want to relocate, he started looking for other locations to work at and one of his friends suggested CDW, he applied and got in as a consultant.

Biggest achievement?

When it comes to his career, he is no stranger to achievements. What Carl is most proud of though is when he was working in the cabling industry, he won a technical innovator award for a monitoring system that he built. The reason why that was a stand-out moment for him was that it was early on in his career and gave him the idea that there was something to what he was doing, and he knew from then that he was on the right path. People started to value what he was doing and started having a lot of business value in his work.

Now at CDW as the Managed Services Architect, his team is an extension of other enterprises' IT workforce. They come to them to provide a service for a customer base and are managing large amounts of different customers. They have to have equipment set up in a multi-tenancy fashion so that Customer A can’t see anything from Customer B. He is currently working on systems that will be able to be automated. This will ultimately reduce outages and will make people breathe easier in most cases.

ACE Program…

ACE is a bold program that enables you to achieve industry-standard certifications while providing structured training through our continuous learning environment. The ACE program is good for people in the earlier stages of their careers with maybe a couple of years of experience but who want to get into IT consulting. It’s an opportunity for an enthusiastic person to join CDW.

Carl is now doing the ACE program after being in the industry for many years which just comes to show that he is a self-starter that still values theory and studies behind the technology.

Carl shares why it’s so important to keep on top of your technical skills, make sure you tune in now to listen!