Introducing Mikael Korsgaard Jensen, a long-time IT specialist and a member of the Tech Field Day community since 2018. Based out of Middle Jutland, Denmark, Mikael started his IT journey 25 years ago. It all started in high school when he first fell in love with computers, and started puttering around with Olivetti 286, his first-ever computer. A turning point came in his career in 2003 when he found virtualization and there was no looking back after that. In his profession, Mikael has worn many hats. He has been an operations engineer, server manager, technology architect, among other things. Working at the cross-section of technologies, Mikael likes to define himself as more of a generalist, who can dabble in many things, but has the technical command and spirit to be a specialist when asked. Mikael has followed the evolution of storage and security from the ringside since they were separate disciplines to the present, when they’re a multi-disciplinary whole, one complementing the other. Compared to before when backup was for the purpose of accidental data deletion, Mikael views backup now as the last defense against ransomware. Following VMware’s trail into the cybersecurity space, he takes an active interest in the consolidation of the two fields, and the part AI plays in enriching them. A former VMware User Group (VMUG) leader, Mikael has been an early member of the VMware community. Like in his profession, in his personal life, Mikael engages in a series of hobbies ranging from 3D printing to partying like a sea warrior in Viking costumes, drinking mead and jousting with friends. Thank you for being a part of the community, and for joining us for Tech Field Day Extra at VMware Explore US 2023!
Connect with Mikael
Mikael Korsgaard Jensen is the Technology Specialists Team Lead at Kamstrup. You can connect with Mikael on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. See Mikael’s Tech Field Day profile find out more information about website and his work.
Transcript
Stephen Foskett: I’m Stephen Foskett from Gestalt IT and we’re here at VMware Explore. One of the best things about VMware Explore is that we get to connect with other people in the industry. We get to learn from them and we get to you know make new friends from around the world. And so I’m joined here by Mikael Jensen from Denmark who is somebody that we’ve known for a while. You actually participated in a Tech Field Day event at VMWorld back a few years ago and some other Field Day events and it’s great to catch up with you.
Mikael Jensen: Thank you it’s great to be here again.
Stephen: It’s a long trip from Denmark to Las Vegas but it’s great to be able to have you come in tell us a little bit about your background and sort of what do you focus on what are your interests in technology?
Mikael: Oh I started in the IT about 25 years ago and whether something called virtualization in 2003 and in 2003 in my previous job we actually went into production and I haven’t looked back since then. It’s been an amazing journey and it’s been real fun to follow VMware from a company with just free product to. I don’t even know the number today but the company has changed a lot and I can see now a tendency to move more and more into security and with the present threats that makes a lot of sense. So my focus right now is actually a lot on disaster recovery and that fits quite well into what we embed us at the moment.
Stephen: iIt’s very interesting that there is this crossover between, well basically traditional storage roles like disaster recovery and replication snapshots backup and the security space because most storage and security people have traditionally been different people but increasingly it seems like the technologies are crossing over and a lot of today’s Security Solutions not all of them of course but a lot of today’s SecuritySolutions use storage Technologies and so you know you’ve been to storage fieldday and security field day do you think of yourself more as a storage person asa security person as a generalist
Mikael: I probably was called Jack of all trades I cover a huge area probably because I’ve been in the smallI IT departments so I should be able todo a little of everything but I also have had a necessity to become a specialist basicall.y I think right now most RTP in some degree are also security people right now. It’s the tech service are getting bigger and bigger and the target just have to be lucky once we have to be logging all the time and basically right now I think a lot of security are based on lock using stores technology makes a lot of sense and I expect AI will also play a huge part looking really forward to see what’s happening in that area.
Stephen: yeah that you may know is an area thatI’m really interested in as well the AI. We did our Utilizing AI podcast we didAI field day and I agree with you that from my perspective things like security lend themselves well to AI because especially machine learning algorithms one of the the best uses for machine learning is to detect anomalies and to also not detect not anomalies in other words I feel like machine learning has the ability to filter better than hard rules which is what security has always relied on and so I do think that there’s going to be a huge AI powered revolution in detection intrusion detection. I also think that there’s a possibility of generative AI helping in configuration of systems. Would you say that AI is relevant there as well?
Mikael: that will be I guess, I think so definitely. It’s also interesting to see how Peg up has changed. When I started Bage, l was just used if someone deleted a file now it’s a actually last defense against ransomware and the challenge will also be to be sure that your backup data is actually clean and I also see AI as a part of using this technology just to search out for what’s in your backup data because we know eventually dormant for a longtime and your backup is the first target.
Stephen: So given your areas of interest, what do you see here at VMware Explorer this year or generally coming from VMware that addresses these concerns?
Mikael: the disaster recovery initiatives and carbon black really like the sad recovery where you can spin up your backup VMS in a safe environment sandbox loads carbon black and just find out is this a good state.
Stephen: So most of the people in our industry I think would describe themselves kind of as nerds. They get excited about technology, they get excited about things and it’s not just about like computer technology. I think people nerd out about all sorts of things you know I nerd out about. I have a whole a whole range of nerdy hobbies and I see the same thing with you as well. So tell me a little bit about yourself what are your nerdy hobbies?
Mikael: I got a lot many IT stuff with the home lab gadgets 3D printing and when I get a bit tired of high-techI try to go sort of back in time to the Viking Age spending some time being a Viking.
Stephen: Well and you are, yeah.
Mikael: Yeah, going in the right outfit running around with a sword and the most important, drinking Mead.
Stephen: Exactly and Mead is a whole, a whole new thing you were telling me about. Tell me a little bit about the Mead culture in Denmark, it’s been rising for a couple of years.
Mikael: So mead is just not mead there. It’s a whole lot of different kinds based on different type of honey and of course on different plants to give it a different flavors and yeah you can spend a lot of time trying it all out.
Stephen: I imagine you could and I’ve seen the pictures of you in Viking outfits with swords. Tell us a little bit about that what do you do there. Is it just dressing up or is there more?
Mikael: Dressing up is just a part of it. We are Viking so that’s also fighting and the fighting is not rehearsed. It actual combat but with certain rules.
Stephen: So you can’t kill people.
Mikael: No. We sometime unfortunately using blunt weapons but we have been talked about MMA and it’s a sport for men in in sites be to the real battle.
Stephen: Now I would love to see, uh no, I would not love to see bloodshed there but I would love to see what this looks like. So how did you get into technology? How did you get into IT as a younger person?
Mikael: Um just interest, started looking at computers in in high school looking what’s happened since then. It feels like eight years ago. I think my first computer was in Ulivati 286 travel machine. You have to only use elevated parts because no other thing worked but I became interested in how did it actually work and try changing with IT. And that was the small start and a couple of years later I was logged to be able to work for a distributor and it just been a long journey from then.
Stephen: How about when did you get on the internet for the first time?
Mikael: So that would be in 94, 95. I actually started out with the MSNI was a beta test on Windows 95 and Yata was Summit here on MSN but not that much and the speed was terrible. So I think switched to the internet really fast after that actually started with the home banking as the way in.
Stephen: That’s funny. How about today what kind of content do you create how do you help the community where do you share information what’s your world?
Mikael: yeah, I’m a former VMod leader and that helped kick a lot of it off and also you shouldn’t think when you hang me on this video but I actually talk a lot. I prefer meeting people in person. So I have been writing some block material, but not that much. I actually spend more time in the community just connecting with people and try to to help out. Something that has been really great with the VMware Community is you could always get help and I just tried to pass it on.
Stephen: I think that’s the real Spirit of the community and that’s what we’re excited about. That’s why I started Gestalt IT was to try to get a community of people around me to support me and to help me and it’s worked out amazingly, you know. Here we are in Las Vegas. we’ve got a dozen people coming to hear Tech Field Day presentations, we’ve got all sorts of gatherings, it really is amazing what the power of community can do for people and their careers and I really appreciate having a chance to meet you again in person it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you and thanks for hopping on here and helping us get to know you.
Mikael: Thank you.
