How Microsoft MVP Steve Weiner solves your toughest Microsoft challenges:
As a Microsoft MVP, Steve belongs to an exclusive pantheon of technical titans.
Microsoft gives its Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award to a select few subject matter experts (SMEs) who all share one thing in common: a fiery passion for sharing their expertise with Microsoft’s community and customers.
How “select” is it? Fewer than 4,000 individuals across the entire world are part of Microsoft’s MVP program. They all are all solvers of impossible challenges, fixers of nightmarish issues, and creators of innovative tools.
We at SHI are beyond proud that Microsoft awarded Steve Weiner, Principal Architect within our Advanced Solutions Group (ASG), the MVP award for security and Intune, recognizing his commitment to helping people and organizations resolve complex issues within their Microsoft environment.
Steve is a marvel in his field; within the last five years, he’s helped set up Intune over 1,000 times and developed a new tool to migrate Windows devices across new and existing tenants. Seeing how useful this tool was, he then made its entire codebase open source.
Of the 4,000 global Microsoft MVPs, fewer than 100 are recognized for their work with Intune, making Steve’s expertise especially invaluable.
We sat down with Steve to discuss what it means to be a Microsoft MVP, what sorts of challenges MVPs are uniquely equipped to help with, and how working with an MVP can make the difference between a headache and a head start. And at the end, we’ll show you how you can solve your own pain points with Steve and his team.
What does it take to become a Microsoft MVP?
In speaking with Steve, it’s clear from the onset why he’s an MVP: his knowledge of the Microsoft portfolio feels unmatched, yet his answers and explanations are casual, grounded, and simple. Steve earned his prestige in part because of his personal YouTube channel, in which he’s shared insights to the masses across around 100 videos.
“Anyone can be an expert in something,” Steve explains, “but if you’re not sharing that knowledge, what are you contributing to your community? That’s what MVPs are all about. Spreading knowledge, sharing our work, making the lives of our peers easier.”
Steve pauses. “Sometimes, it still doesn’t feel real. Since 2016, I’ve been looking up to other MVPs – reading their blogs, watching their videos. Now they consider me a peer. I still can’t believe it.”
That’s the power of a Microsoft MVP: they’re not just technical experts. They’re practitioners. They live, eat, sleep, and breathe Microsoft. And through their invaluable contributions to the Microsoft community, they incidentally build communities around themselves.
When should an organization consider getting help from an MVP?
In working with Microsoft’s technology, Steve contends there’s a balance between what an organization wants to do and what Microsoft’s existing tools allow. MVPs can leverage their expertise to bridge the gap and create novel solutions to widespread problems.
Case in point: a pharmaceutical company with 15,000 users approached Steve with a unique challenge. They were divesting into two unique entities and needed to migrate roughly half of their devices to a completely new tenant.
Per Microsoft’s instructions, the company was told to completely wipe and reenroll 7,000+ devices, an endeavor that would have required more manhours, risk, and expenditure than was acceptable.
That’s the kind of challenge Steve enjoys the most. When he’s told something is impossible – in this case, migrating devices without having to wipe and reenroll – he makes it his mission to make it possible.
Within four weeks of hands-on coding and testing with his team, Steve had a working prototype of a tool that could migrate the company’s 7,000+ assets through just a single device reboot.
“Organizations will often run into a problem and think, ‘we can’t be the only ones with this issue,’” Steve says. “And then they wonder, ‘why in the world isn’t there a solution to this?’ That’s when someone like an MVP can help: when it seems so obvious that a solution should exist, but all your research tells you it doesn’t.”
An MVP’s key differentiator: really good listening skills
When a Microsoft MVP like Steve approaches a customer, his goal isn’t to sell a trendy solution or upsell new software you haven’t tested or researched. It’s to listen to your story, understand your pain points, and figure out the best way to resolve them.
“More often than not, pain points arrive with change.” Steve says, cracking a reflective smile. “People are set in their way of doing things. Some organizations use tools and processes originally built for Windows 95, or device management strategies developed during the Windows XP days. Their first reaction to a new tool, version, OS, etc. is ‘we can’t do that.’ My job is to ask them why.”
Steve goes on to explain that, in many cases, the solution to an organization’s problem is right in front of them – they just need a new perspective to help them see it.
“I avoid getting super technical. I understand the customer’s pain point and why what they’ve tried to do isn’t working. Now, it’s my turn to make sure they understand what will work, why it’ll work, and how we’ll get there. Being able to explain change is a big step toward overcoming it.”
Learning your current state, understanding your goals, and bridging the gap between them enables a Microsoft MVP like Steve to break down the many ways a solution might benefit you, from day-to-day IT operations and end-user productivity to ROI, total cost of ownership (TCO), and more.
That’s where Steve believes he and his team are especially successful – helping you understand pros and cons in a way that’s easy to understand and report to your stakeholders.
The future is zero trust. A Microsoft MVP helps you get there
Steve and his team have a clear vision for the future of device management: zero trust. Though he believes the term is slowly morphing into a buzzword, Steve is confident the framework behind the buzz is critically important for the security of organizations’ end-users, devices, data, and network.
“So many people get caught up in the buzzword, shouting from the rooftops that they need zero trust without fully understanding what it is or how to get there,” he says. “It doesn’t help that the materials out there from NIST, etc. are so gigantic and impenetrable. I want to make it tangible for our customers. I want to make it feel real.”
Zero trust is the organization-wide practice of least privilege access – the idea that users should only have access to the data relevant to their day-to-day functions. The goal? To prevent data breaches by stopping unknown or unprivileged entities from accessing critical information.
“It can sound overwhelming, especially for larger organizations,” Steve tells us. “That’s why I explain it in increments. To get buy-in, there needs to be wins across the whole process. I show them what it’ll look like to, for example, implement multifactor authentication (MFA), and how long that’ll take. Just from that improvement, security is stronger. Files are safer. The organization sees the value. Then we tackle the next step.”
By breaking a framework like zero trust down to a series of incremental wins, Steve and his team turn an iceberg into an ice cube. The obstacles standing in the way of progress become easier to bypass. Stakeholder support is easier to upkeep. Your organization won’t have to wait for a giant, sweeping rollout to see improvements in your security posture.
And that, in many ways, is the core of what makes a Microsoft MVP so valuable for your organization – they make the impossible possible.
Resolve security and device management challenges with a Microsoft MVP by your side
Of the 4,000 worldwide Microsoft MVPs, fewer than 100 have been recognized for their work with Intune. When you have a tricky device management or deployment challenge, Steve and his trusted colleagues within SHI’s ASG team are the resources you can depend on.
Steve and his team can help you:
- Modernize your device management and deployment strategies with Intune.
- Solve complex issues that have plagued your teams for years.
- Seamlessly adopt the latest Microsoft solutions.
- Integrate a zero trust framework across your organization.
- And much more!
To get in touch with Steve or learn more about how SHI can help your organization implement zero trust and modernize device management, contact us today.