Check out Life @ 45 Degrees

My name is Tim Van Broekhoven. 39 years of age. Father of a beautiful daughter, science enthusiast, tennis player and an Enterprise Architect for 45 Degrees.

As many other IT pro’s, I started out as a junior consultant mainly in IT Support roles. In that capacity, I had the pleasure to work in many great companies such as Johnsson & Johnsson (Janssens), Agfa, Donaldson and the University Hospital of Antwerp. This was long ago when a cloud was something that caused precipitation and difficulties to get a tan. With experience came new opportunities mainly in implementing Active Directory (NT4 to Windows 2000, yes – really) and after that the hardware virtualization wave.

Following my early consulting career, I moved into managed services for ISP’s at ASPEX (SD Worx subsidiary). During my 9 years at ASPEX I fulfilled different roles starting as a junior system engineer, to Program Manager and finally managing the business temporarily as GM ad interim. I would have assumed the GM role permanently, if not I was called to join Microsoft in 2017 to become one of their Digital Advisors. As a DA, I worked with customers to outline their Digital Transformation journey together with the Microsoft Services teams.

Finally, after 3 years at big corp Microsoft I embarked on a new journey as an EA for 45 Degrees, where I appreciate the no-nonsense culture, the human approach and my new awesome colleagues who often have 20+ years of experience as well and provide many learning opportunities working together.  

Why did you join 45 Degrees ?

45Degrees is focused to be a strategic technology partner for customers. In that capacity, 45Degrees want to make sure customers get the most out the new capabilities Cloud computing offers. This is challenging but very fulfilling and allows me to grow as a professional. Furthermore, as part of the Cronos group 45Degrees offers stability even though it’s a start-up/scale-up and a virtually endless supply of IT skills to support the programs I outline. This is a key advantage when engaging with customers, almost always there’s someone within Cronos working on the topics that are of most interest to our customer base.

What projects did you do so far ?

I am mainly working on projects to outline digitization strategies providing a basis for programmatic transformation, both from a business and an IT perspective. Concretely, I am currently working with 3 customers on 3 different types of projects:

1. The creation of an Agile IT team to support a major Digital Transformation effort
2. Putting down the foundations of a Cloud Centre of Excellence
3. Developing a new Operating Model for a DevOps team, enabling cloud capabilities to complement their on-premises environment

The type of customer is typically a large enterprise (€500Mio+ revenue) and even Bel20 listed.

Additionally, I am doing an internal project around Program and Project Management practices within the group. This gives me a great opportunity to network and to have an impact on our success as a team.

What do you like about working for 45 Degrees ?

See: ‘why did you join’. Also, the approachability and willingness to cooperate by anyone in the Cronos family.

What are you most proud of during your time @45 Degrees ?

The fact that I am already able to contribute to the success of 45Degrees, and the MiCronos cluster in a meaningful way.

What are your professional ambitions ?

I believe that the role of technology is to make life better for all creatures, and not just for shareholders. It is my mission to apply technology to improve life on this planet from a triple bottom line perspective: people, planet and profits. Not just the latter. Therefore, my ambitions will always be in line with those values. Any role I may (want to) have in the future should always enable me to have a bigger impact on achieving what I value in life.