About

Michael Iem graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering in 1987. Michael joined Tandem Computers in Silicon Valley where he worked in Large Systems Marketing support with Fortune 100 companies for 9 years. Michael filled up 2 passports traveling the world helping convert customers to client server technology and helping account sales representatives win the big deals.

He started his career at Microsoft in Microsoft Consulting Services Advanced Technology Group in 1996 where his first project was to manage Microsoft’s Internet Banking Server. He then moved to the BackOffice Group where he was product manager of BackOffice Server and author of the “BackOffice Server Performance Characterization and Reliability white papers.” Next, he spent several years as Product Manager to build and launch Visual Studio .NET in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division. Having launched the newest .NET Development platform Michael saw the opportunity to get Windows Server 2003 product out the door to millions of customers and joined the Windows Server team focusing on the Small and Medium Business customer segment. Michael was consistently rated as one of Microsoft’s highest rated speakers and was on stage with Steve Ballmer for the Windows Server 2003 launch in San Francisco (April 2003). He spoke at industry events such as Microsoft TechEd and the Professional Developers Conference.

After almost 20 years of experience working for 2 major companies, Michael left Microsoft in January of 2004 and started his own consulting company, The Ziem Group Inc. The Ziem Group, Inc. is a consulting group focused on project management, product marketing, conference management, partner community and communications. The Ziem Group does a variety of projects for companies all over the world, delivering results that can be measured. It’s no surprise that clients continue to renew contracts year over year. The Ziem Group continues to grow year over year and take on new and exciting projects.

Michael Iem is an avid Mountain Climber who has summited Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, and spent 3 weeks hiking in Patagonia South America in their winter of 2008. Michael also worked for NASA in during the summers at college while at Purdue and helped design the Space Station and managed a team of over 100 student engineers to put experiments on the Space Shuttle at Purdue. He joined the Army after graduating high school and served in the Army Reserve for six years. He is an avid photographer and travels the world taking pictures at the crack of dawn.