Resume

Skills

• Understanding and seeing the potential of new technology
• Planning and implementing new technologies
• Internal presentation of new strategies
• Liaison with suppliers and evaluation of supplier proposals
• Troubleshooting IT infrastructure problems
• Leading and working in teams of diverse multi-disciplinary IT analysts
• Over the last decade I have attended 3 Microsoft European TechEds, and many Storage, Virtualisation and Data Centre international conferences and symposia.

Microsoft Certified Professional

in the following:-

• Windows NT/2000/2003,
• Exchange 5.5,
• Systems Management Server 2

ITIL

Foundation (V1)

Managers Certificate in IT Service (V2)

Experience

Technical Services Manager (2011 –2013)

Civica Luton ITO (Apex House, Upper George St., Luton, LU1 2RD)

Liaison with Civica Group IT on the design and migration of Luton Councils server infrastructure from two in-house data centres to a new Civica data centre. This encompassed the replacement of all server, SAN and NAS equipment and the virtualization of almost all remaining physical servers. This was achieved in a period of major institutional change, integration of systems between Civica and Luton BC and a major expansion of desktop virtualization, while maintaining strict availability SLAs. (over 99% availability achieved over the period)

Technical Services Manager (1999 –2011)

Luton Borough Council (Townhall, George St., Luton, LU1 2RD)

Designing, implementing and managing the Councils IT server infrastructure, and managing a staff of 16 senior server analysts supporting 75 physical servers hosting 300 virtual servers (originally 250 physical servers). The servers provided the environments for many hundreds of local government applications, on both Wintel and Solaris platforms to over 3000 users. This encompassed desktop and application virtualization via Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) to over 500 users on LAN, remote working and hot desking. Full in-house Exchange email provision and with the use of ITIL based procedures and System Centre Configuration Manager and Operations Manager software the service was rated as Rationalized with many Dynamic features in the Microsoft Optimized Infrastructure program.

During this decade I headed the team responsible for the design introduction key milestones of technology to the council including, centralised desktop management and deployment, SANs, NAS, inter and intranet provision, virtual tape libraries (with one of the first UK implementations of de-duplication), server virtualisation, thin client desktops and application virtualisation. This was also a decade of rapid change involving migration of servers from NT through Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008; the migration of PCs from Windows 95 through NT and XP to Windows 7; migration through the various MS Office versions; and the data and SAN growth from <1Tb to >70Tb. We also designed and commissioned 2 new data centres and handled the migration from a single data centre to a dual data centre with full power and environmental autonomy and service fail-over.

Senior Technical Services Analyst (1997 –1999)

Luton Borough Council (Townhall, George St., Luton, LU1 2RD)

In the mid 90’s it could be seen that the cost and power of micro-computer systems would replace the mainframe and the central Computer Department and the PC User Support Functions were be merged. My new post was key to this and I took over principal responsibility for small (Windows) and mid-sized (Solaris) servers, data centre management and desktop networking strategy. During this period I was responsible for the introduction of email, initially MSMail, migration from MS-DOS to Windows, Windows for Workgroups and Windows 95, the evolution from SuperCalc and WordStar to MS Office and the provision of Internet access via the internal network

Principal User Support Analyst (1987 –1997)

Luton Borough Council (Townhall, George St., Luton, LU1 2RD)

This post was created to oversee the introduction of the first 50 PCs to the council. It was my personal decision that these were to be IBM compatible rather than proprietary architecture. The growth of PCs in the council, like other organisations was rapid, and I was lead in managing this growth to over 1,000 PCs, the introduction of networking, which evolved from Apricot’s VxNet (an MSNet variant) through 3Com’s 3+ (a forerunner of LanManager) to Microsoft’s LanManager and NT. At this point personal computing oversight remained with the council’s financial function rather than the Computer Division, who solely provided ICL mainframe services.

Senior Assistant Accountant (1978 –1987)

Luton Borough Council (Townhall, George St., Luton, LU1 2RD)

This post centred on the management accounting and costing for the councils services primarily using ICL mainframe computing. This role put me in the natural position to oversee the introduction of the first personal computers available, before the introduction of IBM PCs, utilizing such technologies as multi-user C/CPM and SuperCalc and WordStar, amongst the first spreadsheet and word processor applications.

Education

HND Business Studies (Luton Technical College, 1974)

(this also qualified me as a member of the Institute of International Accountants)

GCE A-level Maths, Economics, British Constitution (Luton 6^th Form College, 1971)

GCS/CSE Maths, English, Physics, Chemistry, Commerce (Icknield High School, Luton, 1969)