Technology: Consultant, Contractor, Developer and Manager
My Story in Technology - 3 decades in Corporate IT.
Ready to work in your enviroment and bring that experience to your Technology problems.
I have experience running Technology:
- $2M anual budget
- Capex and projects $1M anually
- 14 team members
- Vendor management
- 3500 users
- over 50 sites accross New Zealand
- Hands on as well as hands off management
- DevOps development
Success is no longer about changing strategies more often, but having the agility to execute multiple strategies concurrently. And success requires CEOs to develop the right leadership capabilities, workforce skills, and corporate cultures to support digital transformation.
Technology
Technology across many years.
Linux/Unix/BSD, HashiCorp Consul, Nomad, Packer, Docker/Podman, Buildah, LAMP Stack, LAPP Stack, C/C++, Java, SIP, networking, VMWare, Citrix Xenserver, Linux KVM, Oracle OVM.
Consul, Terraform, Nomad, Docker, Podman, Nerdctl, Jenkins, Ansible, X86 servers, Cisco networking, firewalling, SANs, workstations, VMs, mobiles...
Project
I've been involved with and run projects delivering Technology across a national, multi site major retail company in New Zealand.
My last project was running the delvery of a Telecommunications vendor change over after completing the RFP. This was budgeted at $700K including hardware costs to deliver.
Project work started in January 2020 - Covid-19 introducted some delays but not much.
- Firbre optic installation into sites
- Mobile services
- Land line services to SIP
- Network services
Other projects
- Major replacement of IT systems
- Hardware upgrades
- Server replacments
- Migration of infrastructure from Support Centre to Data Centre
- New store locations
- National Wi-Fi roll out
...and more, the day to day Technology work in a major coropration running internal Technology services directly.
Team
Culture and "Walking the Talk"
I have been part of and built a high performing IT team.
In my corporate experience I've been in an environment that followed a Visions and Values based culture. Every 6 months leaders were reviewed by anonomous team review about how they matched the Vision and Values, and how the business was performing.
When managing the IT team I had results above 90%.
What are the learnings?
- Know your team
- Treat everyone with respect
- "Walk the Talk" as a leader you need to be out front and leading by example
- Be up front and address issues when they happen
What started me on Technology?
Do you know how your interest in Technology started?
I can describe how mine did...two books:
- The Soul of a New Machine on Amazon and on Wikipedia.
- The Cukoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage on Amazon and on Wikipedia.
While these are from before the internet and out of another time...it's amazing to read them again and see how relevant this all is to todays world!
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.