Erez Ben-Ari is a long-time Technologist and Journalist, and has worked in the Information Technology industry since 1991. During his career, Erez has provided security consulting and analysis services for some of the leading companies and organizations in the world, including Intel, IBM, Amdocs, CA, HP, NDS, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and many others. His work has gained national fame in Israel and he has been featured in the press regularly. Having joined Microsoft in 2000, Erez has worked for many years in Microsoft's Development Center in Israel, where Microsoft's ISA Server was developed. Being a part of the release of ISA 2000, ISA 2004, and ISA 2006, Erez held several roles, including Operation engineering, Software testing, Web-based software design, and testing automation design. Now living in the United States, Erez still works for Microsoft, currently as a senior support escalation engineer for UAG.
As a journalist, Erez has been writing since 1995, and has written for some of the leading publications in Israel and in the United States. He has been a member of the Israeli National Press Office since 2001, and his personal blogs are read by thousands of visitors per month. Erez has also written, produced, and edited content for TV and Radio, working for Israel's TV Channel 2, Ana-Ney communications, Radio Haifa, and other venues.
Erez is also the author of the hugely successful title Microsoft Forefront UAG 2010 Administrator's Handbook, also by Packt Publishing. The administrator's Handbook has received all five-star reviews on Amazon and is considered to be the most comprehensive guide to UAG in existence.
Rainier Amara is a confirmed IT professional with more than 15 years specialist experience in the field of Internet security and remote access. From a young age, Rainier was already renowned for his inquisitive nature and attraction to all things electronic, and by the age of 8 he had already embarked on journey that would feed his passion for IT.
It was in his early teens that he received his first personal computer, but his professional career took off at the age of 18, when he served in the French National Army as a communications engineer. From there Rainier has travelled the world in various roles and has not looked back since.
Rainier now works in the Microsoft EDGE security team as a support escalation engineer, where he is responsible for providing customers and partners with the highest levels of expertise and advisory services on Forefront UAG and DirectAccess.
Outside of work Rainier spends as much time as he can with his wife and three children doing lots of crazy and wonderful things, and when not being a dad he enjoys downhill mountain biking in the French alps.