Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

What does it take to succeed in networking when complexity is constantly increasing, and change never slows down? In this episode of Next-Gen Network Heroes, host Bob Slevin sits down with Troy (David) MacDonald, a network engineer at Blue Origin and former U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer, to explore a career that spans from infantry beginnings to designing and managing large-scale, mission-critical networks.

Most people think great network engineers are defined by technical expertise. This episode challenges that idea. Because what Troy McDonald shows is that the real differentiator isn’t just technical skill—it’s the ability to translate complexity into clarity. From military operations to enterprise networks, one lesson keeps showing up.

Your SIEM only holds a slice of your telemetry. Your data lake holds the rest. We'll show you how to use that to your advantage for investigations, threat hunting, and reporting. Why your data lake beats your SIEM for investigations – Your SIEM keeps a short window of expensive, filtered data. Your data lake keeps everything. When something goes wrong, that difference matters more than you think Threat hunting without the handcuffs – Hunting across months of data in a SIEM is painful and costly. We'll show you how a well-planned lake makes broad, deep searches practical and affordable.