Meet Andy Grant
Over the next week, I’ll be interviewing a few Questies here on the blog. Today, it’s Andy Grant.
Pretend you’ve never met me. Introduce yourself with your name, your location, and where you’d rather be right now.
My name is Andy Grant, I’m located in San Francisco, CA and I would much, much rather be in Costa Rica right now.
What do you do at Quest, other than answer emails from me?
Currently, I’m the product manager for LiteSpeed for SQL Server / village idiot.
How long have you been with Quest, and has your job changed along the way?
On paper I’ve been with Quest for almost nine years – it’s amazing to write that. What I mean by ‘on paper’ is that I was actually part of an acquisition by Quest in 2003 of the former company that I worked for called Leccotech. I’d been there since early 2001 and my coworkers and myself were grandfathered in as Quest employees. At Leccotech I had been a sales person and pre-sales engineer for a software product that eventually became the SQL Xpert technology in our Oracle and SQL Server offerings of Toad, Spotlight and Performance Analysis. During and after the integration process I worked strictly in the role of pre-sales engineer actually focusing on Performance Analysis for SQL Server. At one point at the end of 2003 an opportunity arose to join a newly created product marketing team with a group of really great and exceptionally bright folks and I decided to try a change. From then on I have been fortunate enough to have my hands in marketing everything for Quest from freeware to enterprise product offerings as well as bring our SQL Server community initiatives to maturity. So much fun. Recently, I was offered and took the role of product manager for our LiteSpeed for SQL Server product and am now able to fuse my marketing and technical experience into evolving our very successful SQL Server backup and recovery offerings. Never a dull moment!
If you could have any other profession, what would you do?
A surf instructor in Tahiti.
Mac or PC?
I go both ways.
At the end of yet another grueling 80-hour workweek at Quest, how do you unwind?
I’m a huge fan of ‘barley and hops’ therapy after a long work week, for sure.
When you belly up to the bar at SQL Server events, what do you order?
I’m a beer man, but was recently introduced to Firefly vodka – a vodka that is flavored like sweet iced tea. Sound gross? Not so fast! Mix it with some lemonade and it makes one helluva Arnold Palmer. As a southerner living on the west coast, I really miss my sweet tea and this stuff is tasty!!!
What music are you listening to right now?
I created a station on Pandora for music similar to that of MGMT and it is awesome.
What’s your favorite Quest product, and why?
LiteSpeed for SQL Server – I’m the PM!
Do you ever get tired of hearing me talk about blogs and Twitter?
Never, I learn something almost every time.
