From server rooms
toAI.

IT STARTED AS A STUDENT

From the classroom to running the college’s IT.

While studying at Bergen Technical College in 2003–04, I began running the IT environments at its two sites, Strandgaten 193 and Margaretastredet. That gave me practical responsibility for servers, workstations, networks and everyday infrastructure before I had finished my studies.

One of the first modernisation projects began with electricity use. The classrooms still had CRT monitors and long opening hours; on some days the premises were in use until 10 p.m. On BKK.no I found an energy calculator that let us compare the existing equipment with new LCD displays, which I remember consuming around 45 watts.

The calculation showed a surprisingly large difference. I no longer remember all the assumptions, including whether we used actual operating hours or continuous operation. It was more than twenty years ago.But I remember the result: the calculation indicated a payback period of less than two years, and the college bought complete classroom sets.

The equipment also had to be deployed efficiently. With Norton Ghost and imaging, I installed standard configurations across whole classrooms instead of setting up every PC from scratch.

It was an early lesson in two principles that have stayed with me:Measure before deciding, and standardise what can be standardised.

THE FIRST MAJOR SHIFT

A fault pointed towards a different way to build IT.

At itslearning I encountered a security problem involving DCOM in the existing server infrastructure. Rather than only repairing the immediate issue, I recommended virtualising the internal servers with VMware.

The point was more than reducing the number of physical boxes. We could establish a controlled starting point before upgrades and patches, standardise environments and recover faster if something went wrong. A server no longer had to be a physical machine.

NOW IT HAD TO SCALE

From a few servers to an entire infrastructure.

itslearning was growing, and its infrastructure had to grow with it. I worked on networks, server rooms, cooling, storage and connectivity, and on planning a physical relocation that also required moving the email system with very limited downtime.

It became clear that IT is more than the server. Power, cooling, networks, suppliers, risk, people and timing have to work together.

FROM SERVER ROOMS TO SERVICES

IT gradually moved out of the room.

The following years combined migrations, virtualisation, terminal servers, data centres and eventually cloud services. Office 365 entered the picture early. Email moved from Domino to Exchange. Customer environments moved into data centres. VMware became an everyday tool.

Technology was changing, but the work increasingly involved moving between old and new without stopping the business along the way.

HYBRID BECOMES THE NORM

Cloud did not replace everything. It connected to everything.

The work became increasingly hybrid: on-premises infrastructure, Azure, Microsoft 365, identity, MFA, Conditional Access, security and automation. New services had to work with existing systems, often where stability and security mattered more than adopting the latest technology at any cost.

During this period I also worked with business-critical systems supporting physical trading in the electricity market. That made the connection between digital infrastructure, reliable operations and the physical energy system more tangible.

BACK TO THE FOUNDATIONS

Hybrid infrastructure, backup and disaster recovery.

My final year in consulting also took me back to the foundations: virtualisation, backup, recovery, networking and preparedness. I worked on a hybrid solution where production, local backup, an offsite copy and disaster recovery had to form one coherent chain.

An existing VMware platform served as a temporary disaster recovery target while we planned the move towards a modern Hyper-V solution. Alongside this, I worked on network segmentation and clearer boundaries between production, clients, infrastructure and other zones.

Professional learning in 2026:AZ-104 · AZ-800 · AZ-801: Azure administration and hybrid Windows Server environments.