Name: Matthias Schlimm
Position: Principal Architect
Worked at Orange Business since: August 2012
Based: Outside of Karlsruhe, Germany

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you first came in contact with Orange Business?
I have been with the company for over 10 years now and was directly contacted by HR to begin with asking if I was interested in a new opportunity. When they contacted me, I already knew about what was then called Login Consultants from before as they had a good reputation from a technical perspective, and I had heard positive things. I was contacted at a good point in time and once I had the opportunity to meet with people from the company, I felt that it would be a good next challenge for me. Throughout these 10 years, mainly looking back since 2016 when former Login Consultants was acquired by Orange Business, a lot has happened. According to me, the rebranding to Orange Business has brought a lot of positive aspects for us as we are now much more global than when I first joined.

Can you tell us a bit about what you do in your position as a Principal Architect and what that entails?
So, I have two different aspects to my job. One part of it is as the head of the CTO office where the aim is to drive the questions about which technologies we use in the right direction to fit with the customer needs and wants to make sure we can offer the best customized solutions. On the other hand, I also work customer oriented as an architect for design purposes. I work dedicated to customers, holding workshops to understand the needs, making designs, and creating the right solutions for their architecture based on their needs in e.g., Virtual Desktop Solutions like Citrix or native Microsoft environments.

Can you tell us a bit about what you are currently focusing on or doing when it comes to projects?
I tend to have up to 2-3 big customers that I work with at a time. Currently I work with a customer that has over 30 000 users around the globe and whom I have worked with for about 10 years now. We are several people working on a project for this customer which is going through a transformation to Microsoft 365 and cloud solutions.

What is it that made you decide to focus on working with Citrix as your main technology?
I have a long history working with Citrix going back to 1998 and have experience within several different areas of Citrix. In addition, I have been a Citrix Technology professional since a couple of years ba ck. Even though Citrix has been the main focus of the technologies for me, I also work a lot with other technologies and solutions such as Microsoft Services, Parallels and automation like Powershell as Citrix is not the only relevant technology within this area. The main focus for us is looking at what our customer needs and then make a decision based on that regarding which technologies we will use to design the best solutions. By us being independent and being able to use several different solutions in combination, it is easier for us to create a puzzle which fits the needs.

What do you enjoy the most about your position?
I enjoy getting to have a broad overview of a lot of different technologies and that I am not only deep diving into one vendor. As we have so many talented consultants working here that also means that there are several opportunities to share our expertise about the different technologies. There is a focus on creating forums where this can be done, we have for example the CTO office and SME groups (Subject Matter Expert) where knowledge is shared. So, I enjoy the knowledge sharing culture and the community we have which makes it easy to talk to and ask questions etc to anyone as you know that everyone is willing to help where they can.

What education and background do you have to be able to do this job?
I actually come from the electric energy field to begin with which is completely different from what I do today. But I started studying during evenings and weekends outside of my prior profession to then be able to go into my first job within this field as an IT Administrator in the year 2000. Since then, I have continued to deepen my knowledge into technologies like Citrix and Microsoft, laying a good ground to be able to work closely with our customers.

What do you personally think is the best thing about working for Orange Business in Germany?
Already having touched upon this topic, I very much appreciate the culture and the community we have here where you can approach anyone for help and support. In addition, I like the freedom under responsibility that I get! I have tasks that I need to fulfill and projects for customers to deliver on, but I appreciate that the management let me structure my work and my days the way I see fit and that I get to manage a lot by myself. This gives me freedom to have a great work life-balance which I highly value.