Interview: Erez Ben-Ari, author, Microsoft Forefront UAG 2010 Administrator's Handbook.

Ben is the author of our recently published Microsoft Forefront UAG 2010 Administrator's Handbook which helps you take full command of Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway to secure your business applications and provide dynamic remote access with DirectAccess.

Erez Ben-Ari is a long time Technologist and Journalist, and has worked in the Information Technology industry since 1991. During his career, Erez has provided security consulting and analysis services for some of the leading companies and organizations in the world, including Intel, IBM, Amdocs, CA, HP, NDS, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and many others. His work has gained national fame in Israel, and he has been featured in the press regularly. Having joined Microsoft in 2000, Erez has worked for many years in Microsoft’s Development Center in Israel, where Microsoft’s ISA Server was developed. Being a part of the release of ISA 2000, ISA 2004 and ISA 2006, Erez held several roles, including Operation engineering, Software testing, Web-based software design and testing automation design. Now living in the United States, Erez still works for Microsoft, currently as a senior support engineer for UAG.

As a journalist, Erez has been writing since 1995, and has written for some of the leading publications in Israel and in the United States. He has been a member of the Israeli National Press Office since 2001, and his blogs are read by thousands of visitors per month. Erez has also written, produced and edited content for TV and Radio, working for Israel’s TV Channel 2, Ana-Ney communications, Radio Haifa and other venues. He has also recently co-authored a training course for TMG, Microsoft’s enterprise-class firewall.

Do visit his blog at
http://blogs.technet.com/b/ben/

Packt: Your book is published now. How is the feeling of being a published author?

Ben: The feeling is fantastic, as this is the culmination of many years of work, both as an engineer, and in the publishing industry. I’ve dreamt of being a writer since an early age, and becoming a published author is by far one of my proudest achievements.

Packt: What benefits did writing a book bring to your specialist area?

Ben: This is the 1st book that was ever published about UAG, and is the first time in history that it has been documented to such an extent. This gives the products users a great way to learn about it, and make the best use of it. Until now, the only option for most companies was to hire external consultants, at very high costs, and now, many of these costs can be eliminated.

Packt: Our authors usually have full-time jobs whilst writing for us. Was this the case for you and how did you approach managing your time?

Ben: I wrote this book while being fully employed as a senior security engineer by Microsoft, and while writing as a freelancer for several publications throughout the world. This, of course, presented many challenges. To be able to balance my various professional and personal commitments, I came to an agreement with my family, which detailed the amount of time I would invest. Thanks to my superior time-management skills, and writing abilities, I was able to honor that agreement, and still beat the publishing deadlines repeatedly.

Packt: Whilst writing your book, did you find that it overshadowed personal life in any way? How did you deal with this?

Ben: The toughest aspect was probably the fact that my wife was 5 months pregnant when I started the book, and it was clear that the baby would be born in the middle of writing. Would I be able to juggle both being a 1st-time father, a full-time employee of Microsoft and a quality-author? At times, I wasn’t sure, but somehow, I did it! I actually had a laptop with me in the hospital, and wrote two full chapters in the 3 days post-delivery. That was quite an ordeal, yes somehow, I was able to make my wife feel so well taken-care of, that she never noticed!

Packt: Do you have any advice for other authors who may be interested in writing for Packt, but are still unsure?

Ben: My advice would be to go for it, of course. Being an author is not just about making money or getting fame…it’s also about self-realization and self-improvements. By committing your knowledge to paper, not only do you learn quite a bit yourself, you also fulfill your potential as a human being. This is definitely one of the most fulfilling feelings I ever had, and I highly recommend it!

Packt: Do you have any tips for other authors, or tricks that you learnt whilst writing, that you'd like to share?

Ben: Having to write down hundreds of pages can be daunting. I’ve written a lot during my career, but when faced with such a gargantuan task, even I was a bit iffy. The trick to doing this right is breaking it down to pieces, and having a good reviewer (or co-author). Create a solid table-of-content, and then break each chapter into 10-20 pieces (or topics). Then, write each piece as an independent article. Later on, review the text, and see where you can improve the integration, to turn the collection of articles into one continuous chapter, and the chapters into a book.

Packt: How did you find the overall experience of writing your book for Packt?

Ben: As a journalist for 15 years, I was used to working with editors (some of whom were quite tyrannical), but with a large-scale project like this, things are much more tricky. It took a certain amount of time to achieve a smooth workflow, working with all the various parties involved (acquisition editor, production director, technical editors, reviewers, co-authors etc), but the result speaks for itself. Thanks to all the great work done by everyone, we were able to release the book as RAW, which is a unique achievement, and makes me very proud.

Packt: During the writing process, did you come across any issues/ difficulties that affected your writing and how did you overcome these?

Ben: I already mentioned the baby and the other tasks I was involved with, but another challenge was the review and co-authoring process. I needed to complete each chapter, which included writing 6000 words on average, producing around 20 screenshots (which often required building complex scenarios in the lab), having everything verified by my co-author, Ran (often requiring more than one iteration of corrections), and all that within 2 weeks. A few times I had to switch chapters around to make the deadlines, and yet, somehow, Ran and I managed to remain friends!

Packt: Was there anything interesting that happened during the writing of the book?

Ben: The birth of my son, of course! I’ve often been warned that raising a baby would be a total nightmare. “You’ll never sleep again” and “Your life is over” were words I heard from pretty-much everyone during the course of the pregnancy. When Sol was born, I was only 60% into the book, and I was really scared that having him around would slow me down, and prevent me from finishing the book on time. Interestingly, I discovered that I was either very lucky, or that everyone was lying. Sol has been nothing but an angel. He rarely ever cried, and my wife, Paula, was also amazing, and did her best to let me focus on my work. I’m not going to say everything was easy-peasy, but it turns out you CAN have a baby, a full-time job, and write a book without missing any deadlines!

Packt: How did Packt’s Acquisition Editors help you - what kind of things did they help you with and how did they support you throughout the writing process?

Ben: Stephanie, my acquisition editor, was a key player in the success of this project, of course. I hope other writers make her life easier, but I sure didn’t! She had some tough decisions to make, like how to handle the release of SP1 for UAG. Should we include this info in the book, even though it means a possible delay in release? Perhaps we should just release that info as a web add-on chapter? Despite this and other tough calls, she was always cheerful and supportive, and helped me through the ambiguity and hardships!

Packt: What projects, if any, are you working on at the moment?

Ben: I’m currently developing a training course for UAG, which would be offered by training centers around the US and Canada. This course would allow administrators to acquire the kind of hands-on experience with UAG that the book can’t offer, and will serve as a great way to complement the book. I’m also working on writing up many additional pieces of information on my blog, which would complement the book and offer solutions and guidance to issues that we were unable to cover in the book, due to size constraints.

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