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Todd Wanke, Technical Director Development Team

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As part of our new Collaboration blog I wanted to introduce myself as the Technical Director responsible for Microsoft’s Notes Migration development team. I have had an exciting 10+yrs career here at Microsoft: from the mid 90’s as an early architect of microsoft.com, software developer, GPM of dotcom initiative, leading the development of the past two versions of Windows (Windows 2003 & Windows XP SP2) to now leading the Notes Effort. From my perspective, taking on & leading this effort was a perfect fit w\ my strong development background, 4+ yrs running two of the world’s largest development projects, building\running a large virtual team & my broad customer experience.

Upon arriving, we assembled an amazing group of people focused 100% on this initiative, consisting of Program Manager’s, Testers, Developers & most notably, a cross company virtual team consisting of resources from across the multiple product groups. In addition, with 50++ yrs of Notes expertise in the team, we no longer think of Notes Compete as just an “Exchange problem” or consider “rip and replace” a viable option (historically something I was told we’ve done). But rather, for customers running Notes wanting to leverage the value of the Microsoft Collaboration Platform, our approach is centered on helping the customer seamlessly make the technology transition to their desired end state - which could equally be a COEXISTENCE and/or a migration approach.

The team in place is remarkable; no question, the strongest team I have been apart of. Our recruiting efforts have been world-class & we maintained an incredibly high-bar for new hires. The initiative is surrounded w\ a lot of passionate people & cool technology. I couldn’t be more excited for our future, the products\tools we are building, the partner community, our customers & the pipeline we have making the transition.

I look forward to sharing many additional thoughts, topics, technical information & hearing from you on our approach & feedback you have.

- todd