Thanks for visiting! My name is Thomas F. Abraham. I’m a long-time Microsoft technology expert in both development and systems engineering. I’ve worked with quite a mix of technologies and products over the years: on the development side, C/C++, COM, MSMQ, C#, VB.NET, Windows Forms, TFS/Azure DevOps, Docker, WiX and many more, and on the systems side, Active Directory and Windows administration, PowerShell, Exchange Server, SharePoint and more. For about as long as I’ve been in the technology business, I’ve been involved in both sides. I can talk C++ one minute and firewall configuration the next.
I taught myself the C language in the MS-DOS era. That led to the creation of my own one-man software company, Bayridge Software, that successfully served the Searchlight BBS community for more than six years. During that time I picked up C++ in MS-DOS, and a few years later Visual C++ for Windows. I worked with MFC, ATL, COM, COM+/MTS and more in all kinds of cool, high-performance service and GUI apps such as Nasdaq SDR. During the same time period, I spent countless hours in systems engineering for my employers’ IT departments, implementing and maintaining everything from Raptor firewalls to Active Directory to Exchange installations.
In January 2002, the development side of my world changed as I switched to .NET 1.0 working with Microsoft Business Solutions (now Microsoft Dynamics). Soon after, in June 2002, I co-wrote the book “VB.NET Solutions Toolkit”, published by Wrox Press. Since then, .NET has been my primary platform.
I’ve been a technology consultant in various architect, team lead and development roles for more than 20 years. In January 2014, I founded IllumiTech Consulting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In my “spare” time, I run several open-source projects. The biggest and most complex is the Deployment Framework for BizTalk, and the others include Environment Settings Manager and the BizTalk BAM Typed API Generator.
I appreciate all feedback, and please contact me if you have any questions. Thanks for reading.
