About Me
Thanks for visiting! My name is Thomas F. Abraham. I’m a long-time Microsoft technology expert in both development and systems engineering, having covered everything from C/C++ to COM to C#/VB.NET to Exchange Server and ISA Server. For about as long as I’ve been in the technology business, I’ve been involved in both sides of the house. I can talk C++ one minute and firewall installation the next. That usually scares and confuses people. 
After leaving behind the 1980′s Apple II world, I made the jump to PCs in 1990 and picked up the C language in MS-DOS. That led to the creation of my own one-man software company, Bayridge Software, that served the Searchlight BBS community from 1992-1998. During that time I picked up C++ in MS-DOS, and a few years later moved to Visual C++ for Windows. Over the following years 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 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. I sometimes still miss C++, but 95% of my development work since 2002 has been in .NET, both C# and VB.NET.
I re-joined Digineer, a management and technology consulting firm, in early 2004. In all, I’ve been consulting for about 12 years now. I am an Enterprise Consultant for the Technology Solutions Group, which means I spend the majority of my time working with our clients on architecture and development, and the rest is spread across candidate interviews and various internal initiatives. I hold the MCPD: Enterprise App Dev, MCSD and MCTS: BizTalk 2004 and 2006 certifications, and am a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
In my “spare” time, I run several projects hosted on Microsoft’s CodePlex open-source site. 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.