Thank you, everyone, for coming back. I want to talk to you a little bit today about where I'm thinking in terms of the future of some of our product space. And I'm going to do it in a very abstract way, focusing on identity as the core of what we do, obviously. But before I go there, I just wanted to reflect on the previous session with ING and one of the bugbears that I've had through my career, which started in this space in sales engineering. So I spent a lot of time talking to customers.
And that's about when you actually embark on a journey to implement any kind of IAM-based solution, the importance of adopting and taking on board the fact that you're making a change. And change, in my perspective, means change. And it's not just a technology to try and paper over the cracks.
It's about adopting it wholeheartedly and changing the processes as well because invariably, that's the thing that caused you to look for a new technology, because what you were doing currently did not make the grade. So just something I wanted to add a little bit on there that you get the best out of the tools by changing the process as well. So any of you who are looking for additional projects and projects and products in that space, just take that to heart.
Well, today, I've ironically picked a title that dovetails into Mark's session earlier where he had the DeLorean and the flux capacitor, so back to the future. And it's just because whenever we do these kind of things, we start in one space, and we moved on to another. I am the new head of product here at One Identity. I've had this role for about a fortnight now.
Before that, I was head of PAM products here at One Identity. And that brings me to my six months that I've been on board with One Identity. But prior to that, I worked for another vendor in this space. So I thought it was important to start with this important piece. You see lots of people get up and say-- and start talking to you about things. But why should you pay any attention to me?
So my background, hard though it is to believe, I have been in IT for more than 35 years now. I'm sure you're all thinking, not more than two, Brian, honestly, out of school. But it is that long. But I think what's cool for me is that I haven't just always been in vendor land. I have been on your side of the table. And I'm addressing a room full of customers and partners in that regard.
I have worked in smaller size. I have worked in original equipment manufacturers producing hardware. I've worked in software vendors. I've worked in some large enterprises as well as a whole variety in between. It sounds like I'm some kind of serial job hopper. But I assure you, it's not been the case. And I've held senior IT roles in nearly all of those.
I started in support many, many years ago and have worked in R&D through hardware, all sorts of kinds of stuff there in enterprise-level architecture, operations, product management, sales engineering. So I've had a good spread. As I say, been on both sides of that table. So I understand how the relationship works, what your needs are, what our needs are, and how we can best deliver against each other.
11 plus years in PAM now in multiple functions. As I say, I started in sales engineering. I helped build what's quite a large organization now across EMEA and APAC. Did some architecture, did some product, and have moved back into product now.
A few notable companies over the years. You can probably guess which one of those has been the PAM vendor that I spent most of my 11 years in before I joined here. And that's beyond trust. Obviously, one of our key competitors. It's always good to have great competitors out there, because they drive all of us harder to deliver more. I spent some time at GlaxoSmithKline. Last time I was there, I joined for a three-month contract that took me six and a half years to finish, not because it was bad but because we had a lot of stuff to do. And that involved implementing everything, including things like the Swift gateway to actually do their foreign exchange banking.
Operations at the BBC. For those of you who know of the BBC in terms of its buildings, that famous donut building, which is television center, is where I worked. And I ran IT as an operations manager there for a good few years in the mid '90s. And I started my career in Amstrad. Hands up. Anybody here knows Amstrad as a company? That's a fair few. The normal question I get when I say that I work for Amstrad is, do you know Alan Sugar? And yes, I do know Alan fairly well. And I worked very closely with him for many years.
But I got-- that was my first job out of school. And I got that job because I'd been playing with Sinclair computers since I was 13. And I applied for a data entry job because my grandmother found the ad in the paper. And you have to apply for jobs that your grandmother finds. And they called me in and said, actually, would you rather do tech support for Sinclair, because, unfortunately, we bought the company and fired everyone? Often a problem. So if at any point after Amstrad acquired Sinclair, and you did any kind of interaction because you had one of those machines, it was me you were talking to because I was the only one.
So I've been around for a bit of a while. And just recently, I also co-authored a book
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