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Michael Rishi Forrester

1996 to now, in four phases

Thirty years, one road

Initiation, then the architect, then leadership, then consultant, trainer and evangelist, with a turn toward AI along the way. Scroll to travel it, or jump to a year from the bar at the bottom.

  1. Initiation · 1996 to 1999

    1996

    Half running the systems, half teaching them

    My first job put two things in one title: keep the technology working, and teach people to use it. Thirty years later the job still has both halves.

    Compris Technologies · Technology and training manager

  2. 1998

    An ISP in the dial-up years

    Unix and Windows NT administration for BellSouth's internet service, and training the IS staff who ran it with me.

    BellSouth.net · Unix and NT administrator, trainer for IS

  3. The architect · 2000 to 2011

    2000

    Becoming an architect

    Contract work through Majere Enterprises, my own firm, and the first architect titles: Unix architecture at Trisect Systems and Starband Communications, then architecture and training engagements at Hewlett Packard and CheckFree.

    Majere Enterprises · Contract architect

  4. 2003

    The only IT person in the building

    I came in as the sole administrator and architect for a production network, brought it up to enterprise standard on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and moved the servers into a colocation facility.

    Memberclicks · Infrastructure architect

  5. 2006

    One machine becomes many

    Technical lead for shared virtualization projects across BellSouth's business units, on AIX logical partitions.

    BellSouth / AT&T Southeast · Technical infrastructure architect

  6. 2007

    SAP on five hundred virtual machines

    Architecture and engineering for a virtualized SAP implementation: five hundred virtual machines across fifty Sun servers, facing EDS's customer every day.

    EDS · Integration engineer

  7. 2009

    First technical hire in a new market

    OnX was expanding from Canada into the United States and I was its first technical person here, working from the CTO's office on strategy, presentations and architecture. VMware and Citrix certifications followed in 2009 and 2010.

    OnX Enterprise Solutions · Senior technical consultant, virtualization

  8. 2011

    Building the appliance

    Designing and launching SAP business-intelligence appliances, virtual and physical, from technical feasibility to cost projections.

    Claricent · Principal product engineer, virtualization

  9. Leadership · 2012 to 2019

    2012

    My first leadership role

    WorthPoint's IT department had left with little notice. I came in under contract to replace it, then came back as Director to run operations and move the company out of its Qwest data center onto Amazon Web Services.

    WorthPoint · Director of Infrastructure and Operations

  10. 2013

    Student data, held to a higher bar

    Running IT operations on AWS for a nonprofit building secure data services for educational agencies, with Chef and a DevOps practice. The company closed in August 2014.

    inBloom · Senior Manager of IT Operations

  11. 2014

    Outages from forty hours a month to under one

    In my first three months, outages and failed deployments dropped below an hour a month. Engineering moved to DevOps and then from waterfall to Scrum within the year.

    Inform, Inc · Director of Engineering Operations and DevOps

  12. 2017

    A platform on Kubernetes

    Grew the team from thirty to seventy and put the infrastructure on a Kubernetes platform that cut its cost by forty percent.

    IgnitionOne · VP of Technical Operations

  13. 2018

    Architect, evangelist, trainer

    Architecture for Honeywell's connected enterprise, and teaching the teams who would build on it.

    Honeywell · Principal Digital Architect, Connected Enterprises

  14. Consultant, trainer, evangelist · 2019 to now

    2019

    Consulting, at scale

    My own practice again, with three long engagements: DevOps and cloud training at Web Age Solutions, platform architecture at ThoughtWorks, and certification architecture at AWS.

    The Performant Professionals · Founder and Principal

  15. 2022

    The AI turn

    November 2022, and the work began turning toward AI. Everything along the road from here is some part of that turn.

  16. 2023

    Teaching becomes the job

    Courses on Kubernetes, DevOps and AWS, and talks on KodeKloud's behalf, including two at KubeCon Europe.

    KodeKloud · Principal Training Architect

  17. 2026

    KubeCon Europe, Amsterdam

    Two talks at KubeCon in March: how Kubernetes actually ships, with Mumshad Mannambeth, and what beginners need to know about AI on Kubernetes.

  18. 2026

    Agentic AI, in production

    Working with leaders and organizations on putting AI into production without getting burned.

    Accenture LearnVantage · AI Business Stream Lead for Leaders and Organizations

  19. 2026

    A book and a keynote

    Agentic DevOps with Claude Code came out in September, and in October the MCP Dev Summit keynote in Toronto on governing MCP for a workforce the size of a city.