Praxis Technology was entering its fifth year.
I had helped start it in 2003. My titles included president and CTO. The actual job was being the person somebody called when a server, network, firewall, backup, or monitoring system needed to work.
Praxis handled systems and network consulting. The equipment changed by client. Cisco, F5, and Juniper on the network and security side. Linux and Windows Active Directory on the server side. Router access lists, policy-based routing, load balancing, Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking, Exchange, backups, scripted installs, and the ordinary pieces between them.
Praxis started while I was working at the University of Colorado. It continued when I moved to SimAuthor and rebuilt an aviation software company's network and data center. It was still running beside Beatport.
Most of the consulting happened outside the normal workday. I wrote proposals, estimated schedules, installed equipment, documented the setup, handled invoices, watched alerts, and answered when something broke after the project was supposed to be finished.
Monitoring came through Zenoss, Zabbix, and Nagios. Backups needed a central place. Server builds needed scripts. A client system had to be understandable to somebody besides me when I handed it back.
That handoff was the hard line between consulting and a full-time job. At CU, SimAuthor, or Beatport, I could keep changing the same environment. A Praxis client needed something its own people could run after I left.
Praxis was not a product startup or a clean full-time chapter. It was systems and network work beside everything else, and the existing client work still needed to be handed back properly.