Bill Calkins

Bill Calkins is an Oracle Solaris 11 Certified Professional, works as a Solaris Subject Matter Expert for Oracle Corporation, and participates in the development of the Oracle Solaris 11 certification exams. Bill is the owner and president of UnixEd and Pyramid Consulting Inc., IT training and consulting firms located near Grand Rapids, Michigan, specializing in the implementation and administration of UNIX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows-based systems. He has more than 20 years of experience in UNIX system administration, consulting, and training at more than 300 companies. Bill is known worldwide for the Oracle Solaris textbooks he's authored, which have always been best sellers and used by universities and training organizations worldwide. It began with the Oracle Solaris 2.6 Training Guide in 1999 and subsequent books for Oracle Solaris 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Many of you have written with your success stories, suggestions, and comments. Your suggestions are always welcome and are what keep making these textbooks better with each new release.

About Me:

I've been writing Solaris books since 1997 and have been working with Solaris since 1984. I began my career in 1983 as a Unix System Administrator with an office furniture company, Haworth Inc, in Holland MI. My first system was a Sun-1 with a motorola 68010 processor and 1 MB of RAM. I was managing 12 diskless clients networked to a few Sun 68010 servers running some very early version of SunOS- 4.x. Like many Unix Admins back then, I had minimal prior computer experience, my experience was in mechanical design/engineering. I had to go back to school and "re-tool".

After 12 years, I got a bit fed up with the corporate life and decided to break away and go out on my own. I also understood, that to really get good in this field, I had to be exposed to many different environments and flavors of Unix. Therefore, I began my real training when I started Pyramid Consulting in 1994- providing Unix consulting and training services to corporations. Since then, I've worked at over 200 companies providing Unix and Open Systems support on just about every flavor of Unix that's been put into production. Because corporations only call on consultants when there are problems to be solved, the training I've received over the past 12 years has been priceless. Where else do you get paid to learn! I've also trained hundreds of system admionistrators in Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.

I began writing Solaris books in 1998. Why Solaris? It's not that I favor one version of Unix over another, besides, as a consultant, I need to be unbiased. The publisher was looking to fill the void on Solaris books and I thought "Why not a certification study guide". At the time there were countless books on Microsoft certification, but nothing on Unix. I had also just attempted to pass the Solaris cert exams unsuccessfully. In Solaris, there are countless ways to accomplish a task; many are correct, but Sun was looking for their answer- not mine. The only way to get these answers were to take Sun training courses or buy a course guide in the aftermarket for $500. As a small business owner, this was an expensive proposition. So I decided to write my own training guide. Not a cram book, but a book that really taught you the material. Something that could also serve as a daily reference guide. I remember how it was to learn this topic, so I've made these books as easy to understand as possible. I believe that's the niche I have in this market- I know the material very well, I have a great deal of experience, and I can communicate the material to new users in a way that they can understand it. I consistently receive 5 stars on my training courses because I make the material relevent and understandable.

Over the years readers have written me with what they've liked and disliked about the book. Now, seven revisions later- we have a textbook that is perfect for those wanting to learn Solaris Administration. It's also a great book for those admins that want to learn more about their craft. I guarantee, every experienced admin will learn something from this book. Every time I update this book I learn new things, I'm convinced you will too. It's written in a way that new Admins can understand it. My goal is not to impress the reader with what I know, it's to present the material in clear, easy to understand terms. I provide lots of step by step examples (in my courses I call them mini-labs) that are relevant to daily operations. The material is presented the same way I present it in the classroom, in fact, it's the same material I use in the classroom.

I hope you enjoy my books- some tell me it's one of the only technical manuals they've been able to cuddle up to a fire with. Well, I personally have better things to cuddle up with, but to each their own. Enjoy the read and, whether you decide to pursue certification or not, good luck!