The Very Important Parallels Professional (VIPP) Program

Alex Cooper (aka Dr. Conti) is a freelancing virtualization specialist and renowned speaker/presenter within the virtualization sphere. Over the past 15 years, Alex has supported the virtualization needs of over 120,000 users, in the process becoming one of 20 people awarded a Microsoft MVP for Remote Desktop Services.

Andy Milford is the CEO and Founder of RDPSoft, a Parallels VIPP, and a 7x Microsoft MVP in the Enterprise Mobility / Remote Desktop Services area. His company, RDPSoft, is dedicated to producing affordable tools that make monitoring and managing RDS and other EUC environments much easier for admins. He is also a published author in the area of how to properly secure Remote Desktop environments, and runs a YouTube channel, RDPHard, featuring videos on how to fix and optimize RDS environments. Prior to starting RDPSoft, Andy was the CEO and Founder of Dorian Software, a log management company acquired by Ipswitch in late 2009.

Carl Webster, aka Webster, is an independent consultant specializing in Citrix, Active Directory, and technical documentation. He is the most active person in the Citrix Zone on Experts Exchange and serves the broader Citrix community by writing articles and providing FREE PowerShell scripts at CarlWebster.com. Webster, a CTP since 2009, is a founding member of the Citrix Technology Professional Fellow program. He has a long history in the IT industry, starting with mainframes in 1977, moving to PCs and application development in 1986, and then shifting to network engineering in 2001. Admins in small to mid-sized businesses appreciate not only his PowerShell scripts, but also his detailed and thorough approach and prescriptive guidance.

Over 20 years of experience in what is now called 'Cloud Computing' business. Started several companies in this market and successfully developed them into profitable businesses, always delivering unique, ease-to-use and affordable tools. Helped several well known companies in this space with their vision and product strategy that ended up leading to several large OEM deals with very large manufacturers. In Canada I am the owner of IQBridge Inc., a Citrix partner specialized on delivering Citrix solutions to enterprise class customers.

Some of my personal achievements over the years:

• Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 2001.
• The first person ever to be awarded the Microsoft MVP award specifically for Terminal Services and then re-awarded every single year since 2001, based on his contributions in the Citrix/Terminal Services areas to the community and to these technologies.
• Citrix CTP since 2009.
• VMware vExpert since 2014.
• One out of seven people in the world to have all three awards from the main three players in this space.

Specialties: VDI, Citrix, RDS, TS

Esther works as a Solutions Architect at cognition IT, where she designs and implements Citrix solutions. In this role, Esther has been awarded as a Microsoft MVP and Citrix Technology Professional (CTP). Over the years, she has become a respected professional in the STEM work field and EUC community, presenting at international events like E2EVC, PSConf.EU and Citrix Synergy.

I first wrote software in 1980 as a teenager and then for 6 years from 1988 after graduating from the University of Manchester with a Computer Science degree. In 1995 I became involved with Citrix and have moved in the EUC sphere ever since with a number of stints at Citrix partners in the UK and a long tenure at AppSense (now Ivanti) after coming up with the idea, and writing from scratch, a security product in 1998 that became AppSense Application Manager (now Ivanti Application Control).

In 2009 and 2010 I was awarded the VMware vExpert title (the first 2 years of the program) and again in 2020, the Citrix Technology Advocate honour in 2019 and both Citrix Technology Professional and Microsoft MVP in 2020.

Currently I am a self employed consultant providing a mixture of services to end customers, Citrix partners and software vendors, specialising in troubleshooting and software development.

Julian is working as a Cloud Architect for CANCOM in Stuttgart, Germany. He has over 13 years of experience working in the EUC industry. These days, Julian is specialized in designing and automating cloud computing and virtual desktop environments. The tech stack he focuses on includes Parallels Remote Application Server, Microsoft Azure, and Citrix virtual apps, desktops, and networking.

Kristin is a managing partner of RDS Gurus Consultancy, a consulting firm specializing in Remote Desktop Services (RDS) implementations and benchmarking for both on-premise and cloud deployments. Also a writer, she co-authored the Microsoft Windows 2008 Server Terminal Services Resource Kit and the Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services Resource Kit. She has also written several RDS benchmarking white papers. She currently blogs at www.rdsgurus.com.

Kristin has been a Microsoft MVP for Remote Desktop Services (Enterprise Mobility) since 2009 and a Parallels VIPP since 2016.

I’m an IT professional with over 15 years of experience in the IT industry. My primary focus is End User Computing (EUC), especially performance testing EUC environments. I work with all large and small organizations across the IT stack, storage, networking, and infrastructure. In my personal life, I’m keen on exercise and compete in triathlons, obstacle races, and running. You will see me around at EUC Forum events as part of the steering group — I enjoy being involved in community events.

Remko Weijnen is a systems development engineer for AWS in the Windows EMP team with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry. With a developer background and a specializing interest in security and application and desktop delivery, Remko has become a renowned professional within the Dutch channel. He is a co-founder of the Dutch Citrix User Group.

Ryan Mangan works as the CTO at Systech IT Solutions, an application delivery and desktop virtualization specialist company based in the UK, where he focusses on end-user computing and emerging technologies. Ryan is an end-user computing specialist with a great passion for virtualization. A speaker and presenter, he has helped customers and technical communities with end-user computing solutions, ranging from small to global 30,000-user deployments.

He is the owner and author of ryanmangansitblog.com, where he posts articles about remote desktop services, VMware, Microsoft Azure, KEMP, and other products and technologies.

Ryan has been awarded VMware vExpert since 2014, has been a member of the NetApp United program since 2017, and was awarded Technical Person of the Year in 2017 by KEMP Technologies.

Samuel Legrand is the owner and an IT consultant at LegSam Consulting, a French company specializing in end-user computing. He designs, implements, and maintains EUC solutions for his customers (from 10 to 40,000 CCUs) with the guideline “keep it simple.” He enjoys both learning from and teaching others, and is a trainer at Exia-Cesi, a French group specializing in providing higher education. Along with his Parallels VIPP status, Samuel is a Citrix Subject Matter Expert. He shares his technical adventures, problems, and solutions on his Blog, via Twitter, and at community events.

Silvio Di Benedetto is the owner of Inside Technologies, specializing in private and public clouds, virtualization, backup and disaster recovery, security and identity management, and collaboration and mentoring for products based on Microsoft, Veeam, and Parallels.

Silvio Di Benedetto is founder and CEO at Inside Technologies, a company focused to drive into the future all the organizations thanks to power of Information Technology. Passionate about cultures that foster innovation and collaboration, he drives companies to fast turnaround of value to increase ROI.

He’s Microsoft MVP for Cloud and Datacenter Management since 2012 and Parallels VIPP since 2016.

Technology evangelist and independent consultant Thomas Poppelgaard is a Microsoft MVP and Citrix Technology Professional virtualization and graphical specialist who helps businesses adopt new technologies. Thomas is a speaker at conferences, webinars, seminars, and roadshows and has presented at events as varied as Citrix Synergy, BriForum, NVIDIA GTC, HPE Discover, and E2EVC.

Thomas has worked in the IT industry for more than 20 years, with the biggest technology consulting companies in the world. Since 2013, he has worked at Login Consultants Germany, taking the role as Senior IT Architect and Managing Consultant as part of the management team. He shares his knowledge with the worldwide community via presentations on events, social media and old school printed media. In addition to his daily job, he writes books, whitepapers and articles for the German IT-Administrator Magazine. Thomas has been also awarded as Citrix Technology Professional (CTP) since October 2009 and LoginVSI Technology Advocate since 2018.

Trond Eirik Håvarstein (aka Eric) is a Citrix consultant specializing in Citrix and Microsoft technologies. With great passion for virtualization, he offers the virtualization solutions best suited for the user's needs. As an author, blogger, and speaker, Eric has grown a reputation for insight in both South America and his native Norway.

Serdar Goksu is a Senior Solutions Architect at the Assista. He has over ten years of experience in the EUC industry, and has worked on many assessment, design, and implementations projects for end-user computing (EUC) solutions. He has worn many hats in his time working in IT, including web design, project management, support, engineering, and designing. He has a great deal of experience with virtualization and cloud technologies, including Parallels, Citrix, VMWare, Microsoft, and AWS. In addition to his VIPP awardee status, he has received other industry awards, including Citrix CTA, VMware vExpert, and Microsoft MCT. Serdar can be found sharing his EUC expertise with the community via forums, social media, and his active EUC-focused Blog.

Ryan Ververs-Bijkerk is a self-employed Technologist at GO-INIT, focused on EUC at the development level. Ryan's top priority for customers centers around user experience in centralized desktop environments. With his developer skills and agile mindset, Ryan is capable of quickly understanding and addressing his customers' needs. Ryan is a bit lazy - but in a good way, because he is all about automation of repeating tasks to save his customers time and effort. Community is very important for Ryan as he is an active blogger and has published multiple tools. Ryan is also a member of the Remote Display Analyzer team and TeamRGE. Ryan currently holds the status of Parallels VIPP, Citrix Technology Professional (CTP), NVIDIA vGPU Community Advisor (NGCA), and VMware vExpert, and has been awarded several times as a Microsoft MVP.