Hi, I am Mike Parker – thank you for stopping by. I have lived in the county of Suffolk in the UK since birth. Currently residing in the village of Westhall with my wife and two daughters, it is a beautiful part of the English countryside.
Being born in 1980, I have been fortunate to see the explosion of the microcomputer industry and the evolution to mobile devices and cloud computing. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but my parents managed to still provide me and my sister with a whole array of wonderful computers, always bought second hand. Commodore Vic 20 and 64, Sinclair ZX81 and a Spectrum in a weird aftermarket enclosure, Atari XEGS and 800XL and my go-to machine even today, the Amiga.
I didn’t find school particularly stimulating except my fascination with computers led me to spend a lot of time in the computer lab and even going in during the summer break and helping Ivan Bunn, the school’s IT technician, DTP wizard and all-round inspirational guy, setup the computers for the new school year. To many Ivan is a renowned Suffolk historian. To me, he will always be the one person at school who supported my interest.
After leaving school in 1996, I attended college, doing a BTEC National Diploma in computer studies. Being a bit of a maverick (read nightmare), I never handed in the last programming module and so didn’t get the certificate however an admin glitch still allowed me to attend university, on my first-choice course, broadcast engineering at Liverpool John Moores. I loved Liverpool but soon found I wanted to be back with computers and left after Christmas. Broadcast engineering interested me because of my love of radio communications (I was enthusiastic about CB radio in the 1990s) and I worked several years at a local theatre as their sound and lighting technician.
After some bar and retail work, I took the plunge and started the egotistically named “Mike Parker Computers” (the shame!). Operating from a managed office space, I built, upgraded and troubleshooted PCs for the local area. Being on an industrial estate, I began picking up business computer and networking jobs. Sometime soon after, I met Andrew Bell who had a business in the managed space, selling websites and photography work. We combined our skills and created a partnership called “Advanced Network Solutions”. ANS was a one stop shop for any business IT requirement, websites, IT support, server provisioning and admin, networking etc.
One of our clients was a plumbing and heating merchant who also ran a department store. After working with them for about 6 months, we could see a need for full time IT support and management, so I went to work for them. This is 2002. By 2007, having played with eCommerce and marketplace selling, we created a new company for a dedicated online retail project. That project became buyaparcel.com. Originally IT director, I became CEO some years later.
During the early years of Buyaparcel, we formed a “super band” company, taking the best knowledge of IT, marketing and operations and offering complete eCommerce solutions to businesses. The company was called LRG Software and offered our own eCommerce package as well as doing other IT development and hardware/networking projects. The company didn’t run for many years, but we did do a couple of large eCommerce solutions for multi million pound companies that are still trading online today.
Buyaparcel is now a £25M revenue company and employs 37 people. In 2018 we migrated all our workloads from our on-premises servers to Azure. During the process I learned how to be self-sufficient on Azure and decided in December 2019 to try and get my Azure Fundamentals Certification. I passed and that learning didn’t stop. I now have the following certifications:
Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Fundamentals
Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals
Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals
Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Network Engineer Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Microsoft Certified: Cybersecurity Architect Expert
Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert
Microsoft Certified: Azure Support Engineer for Connectivity Specialty
Microsoft Certified: Azure Cosmos DB Developer Specialty
Microsoft Certified: Azure Virtual Desktop Specialty
Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate
Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals
In addition to my real-world Azure experience for Buyaparcel, I also run an Azure/M365 tenant for a local charity. This very website is hosted from my own personal Azure subscription.
As well as a lifelong computer fan, my interest in science and tech goes beyond that. I am a UK full licence radio ham having passed my Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced exam in 2008. I love learning about space and I’m afraid I do fall into the “IT guy who loves sci-fi” stereotype, especially Star Trek. I love to build high end PC rigs. My home workstations currently consist of an Intel i9 13900ks / Nvidia RTX 4090 / 128GB RAM / 2x 1TB NVMe & Intel i9 13900k / Nvidia RTX 4080 / 128GB RAM / 1TB NVMe, 1TB SATA SSD.
I love electronic dance music and when I was in my teens and twenties, “lived for” going clubbing. Being in my 40s, I can’t go as much now but it’s still nice to go out for an evening sometimes and soak up the night club atmosphere. As well as going to the club, I am a huge live music fan, having been to dozens of gigs including Elton Jonn, Phil Collins, The Eagles, Chris Rea, Within Temptation, Belinda Carlisle, Seth Lakeman, Lionel Richie, OMD, Foreigner and many more. My wife and I love to Ski and Kayak, although this has been harder since starting a family but hopefully my daughters will take an interest as they get older so we can go do these things together.
Retro computers and the demoscene have a particularly special place in my heart, especially the Amiga platform. As well as using Amiga computers, I like to repair, restore and upgrade them. I have also been learning about, and supporting Ukraine in any way I can. I think Ukrainian bravery and culture is amazing and their democracy should be defended. I have travelled a lot around Europe and have visited the USA three times and Japan twice. Favourite food is Indian – I love a nice hot curry!
I look forward to sharing my Azure interests with others via this website.