On the European Sourcing extranet between 2010 and 2016, the infrastructure ran on self-administered OVH dedicated Proxmox VE servers - no managed cloud layer, no Kubernetes, no externalised ops vendor. Every B2B catalogue served in 7 languages, every traffic peak, every version upgrade rested on my ability to read the cable, the network, and the OS. For an SMB like Medialeads, externalising ops would have cost more than running it in-house - but the hands-on had to be solid.

I industrialised the environment end-to-end: provisioning with Vagrant + Chef and more than 25 custom cookbooks (Apache, MySQL, Memcache, RabbitMQ, monitoring), Apache hardening (TLS, security headers, disabled modules), DNS BIND management, Postfix SMTP configuration, cross-instance MySQL master-slave backups, and system monitoring with mail alerts. On the application infra side, I daily operated the dedicated sql1, sql2 and web servers, handled catalogue traffic spikes, and orchestrated the automated imports from the 26+ supplier connectors.

Stable infrastructure for more than 5 years without any major incident, cost of an externalised ops contract avoided (net gain for Medialeads), and the know-how built up made it possible to absorb without friction the gradual SVN to Git migration in January 2016 and the gradual Symfony 2/3 rewrite.

That polyvalence on tech and field remains my identity baseline. 20 years after my first Celiane servers (Linux/Debian, Apache, BIND, Postfix), I can still read a network diagram, open a server terminal, debug a DNS issue - and that differentiates me today against the majority of SaaS CTOs who lost that reading. It is exactly what makes me relevant for a scale-up role in regulated industries (NIS2, hybrid cloud + on-prem).

Before the web, I spent years in field customer advisory roles: MC Multimedia Sales Specialist (2007), BAC Pro Maintenance Audiovisuel, Electrotechnique et Mécanique (2003), BEP Installer Counsellor for Home Equipment (1998). The deliverable was not a Git commit but a customer leaving satisfied with their kit installed at home. When I landed on the European Sourcing extranet facing demanding B2B buyers (agencies, European distributors), I understood the diagnostic-advisory-installation patterns applied identically.

I applied the advisory sales patterns to the digital product posture: systematic user interviews before each major evolution (what the buyer is looking for, in what context, under what constraint), paper prototypes validated by buyers before code, structured restitution of technical trade-offs in business language (a promotional-products buyer should not have to understand TF-IDF). On sensitive evolutions (search, pricing, markings), I even reproduced the diagnostic-installation-follow-up sales pattern: identify a need, propose an adapted solution, accompany the adoption.

Extranet adopted by B2B buyers with minimal training, low rejection rate on shipped evolutions, and the trust built up made it possible across 6 years to hold the Software Engineer then Senior Software Engineer role as a true business interlocutor - not a simple executor.

The field empathy forged at 16 in retail stays embedded in my CTO posture today: a technical decision must remain legible business-side without loss of fidelity, and the best way to verify it is to go to the end user. That is exactly what makes me effective in CTO advisory at ACCENSEO on field-heavy industries (food trucks, viticulture, automotive, hospitality) where the digital product is just one tool in a very physical value chain.