RingoSystems · Vol. 01
Feature 01 — The Principal
pg. 03
Feature 01 · The Principal

The engineer who taught
infrastructure to manage itself.

Three decades on, the principal architect at Canada's first Microsoft Cloud Partner is teaching a language model to do what he does — one PowerShell script at a time.

01 · Profile 12 min read

I have been building IT infrastructure since the late 1980s, and what is striking when I look at the arc isn't the variety of technologies — though there is plenty of that — but the consistency of the underlying instinct: find the waste, remove the manual step, make the system run itself.

It started with retail networks at Pier 1 Imports. Then Arthur Andersen, where I helped design server infrastructure and data center implementation for XM Satellite Radio, and architected directory services for the Chevron / Ultramar Diamond Shamrock energy merger. Hitachi Consulting hired me on its founding day. Seven years as Chief Technology Officer at Triencon Services — designing hybrid public-private clouds, deploying pervasive encryption, hardening Active Directory for electric grid control networks under NERC CIP. Citibank, as Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure for North American Credit Cards Business Operations. Simmons Bank. And now Steeves & Associates, where the work has converged on the strange and lovely intersection of cloud-native endpoint management, DSC v3, and the practice of training language models on the discipline itself.

I live near Alberta Beach, where my home lab mirrors the enterprise patterns I deploy at scale — and where my cat, Chaos, continually stress-tests the exit door sensor automations. The work I am most engaged with right now sits at the intersection of agentic engineering and infrastructure: building tools that let tens of thousands of Intune-managed endpoints configure, secure, and remediate themselves, and training a custom LLM on the corpus of knowledge that makes that possible.

He doesn't pursue technology for technology's sake — he brings a business-based perspective to infrastructure. Randy Green, Retired CTO · via LinkedIn
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Continued In this issue
Feature 02 · The Toolkit

A working inventory of the practice.

Enterprise endpoint management, from silicon to cloud — automated, secured, and built to outlast the next reorg.

01

Endpoint Management

Cloud-native device management at scale. Intune-first architectures with zero-touch provisioning, compliance policies, and automated remediation across large enterprise and retail fleets.

Intune· Autopilot· SCCM· Graph API· Entra ID
02

PowerShell & Automation

Production-grade modules, Proactive Remediations, custom DSC resources, and CI/CD pipelines. If it can be scripted, it should be — and it should run unattended.

PowerShell 7+· DSC v3· WinGet· Pester· Azure Functions
03

Security & Compliance

Application control, conditional access, certificate-based auth, and security baselines that actually ship. From NERC CIP to retail PCI — security at every layer. CISSP certified.

App Control· CISSP· Conditional Access· LAPS
04

AI & LLM Engineering

Fine-tuning domain-specific models, building local inference infrastructure on consumer GPUs, and integrating AI into operational workflows. Not chatbots — real utility.

Ollama· QLoRA· GGUF· Claude API· RTX 5080
06

Cloud & Hybrid Architecture

Azure-first infrastructure design. From hybrid public/private clouds at energy companies to Azure Functions for config delivery — always with cost discipline.

Azure· Docker· REST APIs· NuGet· ProGet
07

Infrastructure & Home Lab

Unraid servers, Ubiquiti networking, smart home automation, and bespoke ESP32 firmware connecting to home automation via Matter over Thread. The home lab is where enterprise patterns get tested before they ship.

Unraid· UniFi· Homey Pro· ESP32· Matter/Thread
Feature 03 · Selected Work

Tools and platforms born from real problems in endpoint management.

Each one began as a problem I needed to solve at scale. Open the entries below to read the full feature on each.

001 Active

DscForge

DSC v3 Configuration Authoring Platform

Full-stack PowerShell SPA for building, validating, and deploying DSC v3 configurations. Multi-provider AI assistance, GPO import, ADMX knowledge base, and live package search.

PowerShell 7· DSC v3· HTML/JS SPA· Ollama· Claude API
Read the feature
002 Active

RingoLLM

Your endpoint management co-pilot.

Domain-specialized LLM fine-tuned on Windows endpoint management data. Multiple versions shipped on HuggingFace. Custom training pipeline with synthetic Q&A generation, quality filtering, and local GPU inference.

Qwen 3 8B· QLoRA· Unsloth· RTX 5080· Ollama
Read the feature
003 Active

IntuneGovernance

PowerShell module for Intune fleet operations

A governance module for managing Intune at enterprise scale. Firewall remediation, fleet analysis, risk scoring, compliance reporting, and automated policy generation.

PowerShell· Graph API· Intune· JSON Export· Azure Blob
Read the feature
004 Active

CISDSCForge

Multi-Standard Security Baseline DSC v3 Generator

An agentic Claude Project that ingests CIS Benchmarks, Microsoft OSConfig baselines, HardeningKitty finding lists, and other hardening standards to generate production-ready DSC v3 YAML configurations.

Claude Project· DSC v3· CIS Benchmarks· OSConfig· HardeningKitty
Read the feature
005 In Progress

Aria Concierge

Local-first agentic personal assistant

A self-hosted personal AI built around a temporal knowledge graph. Privacy as architecture — local processing, PII scrubbing, no data leaves the lab. The Concierge agent operates via MCP and manages its own infrastructure.

Python / FastAPI· Neo4j· Qdrant· Ollama· MCP
Read the feature
006 Architecture

R.I.N.G.O. Platform

Resource Instrumentation Normalization & Governance Orchestration

Azure Function-based middleman for DSC v3 configuration delivery. SCEPman cert auth, tiered processing, and Proactive Remediation compliance bridge. Typically under $7 CAD/month regardless of seat count.

Azure Functions· SCEPman· Blob Storage· DSC v3· Entra Groups
Read the feature
Feature 04 · The Arc

A chronological reading of the career.

From the floor of Pier 1 in 1996 to the home lab in Alberta Beach in 2026 — thirty years of teaching infrastructure to behave.

2019— Present
Principal Infrastructure Architect
Steeves & Associates
Cloud-native endpoint management at scale. Tens of thousands of Intune-managed devices. DSC v3 architecture, custom LLM fine-tuning, agentic engineering practice.
2017
Director, Infrastructure Architecture
Simmons Bank
Enterprise infrastructure leadership in regulated banking. Endpoint, identity, and security architecture across the bank's footprint.
2016
SVP, Global Infrastructure
Citibank — North American Credit Cards Business Operations
Global infrastructure leadership for one of the world's largest consumer credit operations. Scale and accountability at the highest level.
2009
Chief Technology Officer
Triencon Services
Seven years as CTO. Hybrid public-private clouds. Pervasive encryption rollout. Multi-node DirectAccess IPv6 VPN. Active Directory hardening for electric grid control networks under NERC CIP.
2005
Associate Director, IT
ORIX USA
Financial services infrastructure. The pivot from pure consulting into enterprise IT leadership.
2002
Senior Systems Engineer
Hitachi Consulting
Founding-day employee. Helping build the practice from zero.
1999
Senior Systems Engineer
Arthur Andersen
Server infrastructure and data center implementation for XM Satellite Radio. Directory services architecture for the Chevron / Ultramar Diamond Shamrock energy merger.
1996
Lead Network & Technical Analyst
Pier 1 Imports
The first chapter. Retail networks. Where the instinct to find the waste, remove the manual step first found a place to practice.
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End of Vol. 01 · No. 01
RingoSystems · 2026