5 SharePoint Answers: Chris McNulty on Performance Tuning and More

We pitched these 5 questions at SharePoint expert Chris McNulty. Here’s what he said.

#1: What do you think is challenging and/or important for people to learn about SharePoint/Office 365?

Its twofold.  On-premises SharePoint offers tremendous flexibility but also carries with it a lot of IT responsibility to understand and apply best practices to get the best performance.  In the cloud(s) there are also choices between SaaS and IaaS that introduce new administrative complexity.

Chris McNulty, SharePoint expert

Get out of your comfort zone.  If you’re a developer, take an IT class, etc.  Even if you identify as a “SharePoint” person, I guarantee you will find great useful information if you attend a SQL Server session.  Finally, meet at last three people outside your industry and platform of choice.  It’s a live event:  Get to know people behind the technology. 

#3: What do you drink at SharePint?

Coke Zero.

#4: What are you most looking forward to at September’s IT/Dev Connections?

Microsoft’s been rolling out a much integrated view of our technology future over the past year.  Its been about six months wince SPC - and IT/Dev Connections helps me understand where that vision is connecting and where the tech world still sees challenges.

#5: Give us the “elevator pitch” about your presentations--what are you going to talk about?

I’m going to be presenting on best practices for tuning and accelerating an on-premises SharePoint farm (Optimizing and Accelerating Your SharePoint Farm) - and also showing how to move to Office 365 or Azure (Double Up! Moving to SharePoint on Azure and SharePoint in Office 365) in case you don't want to support on premises anymore.

About Chris McNulty:

Chris is CTO at Hi Software. Drawing on his experience as CTO for Dell, formerly Quest, Chris is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP, MCTS, MCSE, MSA and an MVTSP. A frequent speaker at events around the globe, Chris is the author of the “SharePoint 2013 Consultant’s Handbook” among other books. He also blogs at Chris McNulty.net and SharePoint For All. Prior to Dell, Chris led the SharePoint consulting practice at KMA, a Boston-based Microsoft Gold Partner. He holds an MBA from Boston College in Investment Management and has over twenty years’ experience in financial services technology with John Hancock, State Street, GMO, and Santander. He lives with his wife Hayley, and his family in Milton, Massachusetts.