The SysAdmin Group

The SysAdmin Group provides Information and Communications Technology (ICT) expertise to customers including government, large enterprise, small business, ISP, and software development industries. Customers include: CNN Internet Services, IBM Global Services Australia, Ericsson Data Australia, Department of Justice (Victoria), University of Melbourne, and Telstra.

Services include system administration consulting (strategic review of practices, audit, architecture, training and mentoring work), information security (audit and strategic review), and software development (embedded systems, mission critical systems, system management frameworks).

Owner, Principal Consultant

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is one of the world’s largest providers of VPN services, enabling millions of users in 180+ countries to protect their privacy and security online with just a few clicks. It operates thousands of servers, pushing over 1Tbps through our global network.

As the Director of Service Operations, I was responsible for ensuring the smooth operations of our core products and global infrastructure, for uplifting the capabilities of our Product Operations department, and for contributing thought leadership on operational excellence to the wider organisation. My teams included the company’s 24x7 response team, and our operations engineering, SRE, infrastructure, and insights teams.

Director of Operations Services

HGC Global Communications

Reporting to the Chief Digital Officer, as Head of Software Engineering I was responsible for delivering the “future state” IT organisation; to lead the transformation of engineering practices, introduce Agile software development, automated testing, continuous integration and delivery, and the many other DevOps practices; to drive the move towards a continuous software delivery model; to introduce cloud-native and microservice-based architectures and designs, API-based integration and mediation, a cloud operating model including new practices such as Site Reliability Engineering, and a digital architecture tying all this together.

Head of Software Engineering

Huawei Technologies

The team was responsible for establishing and promoting standards across the GTS organisation, and with our customers and industry partners. 

My role was to help define and evangelise the new digital organisation and transformation journey. This included a focus on the changes that software development, system operations, and other teams must undertake as part of embracing digital operations and practices such as Cloud, CI/CD, and DevOps. 

The role involved liaison with a number of industry bodies, such as TM Forum, ETSI, and The Open Group, and developing proposals, presenting conference papers, and contributing to development efforts as appropriate. 

Contributions included:
* Thought leader on digital transformation. Member of Huawei NFV2020 core strategy team.
* Lead interface on DevOps to ETSI, TM Forum.
* Presentations at Mobile World Congress.
* Publication of TMF IG1137 “NetOps to DevOps” white paper.
* Publication of Future Mode of Operations (FMO) white paper.
* Presentation at Open ROADS Singapore event.
* Significant contributions to ETSI NFV TST006 report on DevOps.
* Cloudification stream lead and principal contributor to Orange Joint Innovation Project on Future of Operational Support Systems (OSS).
* Publication of Huawei-Orange Future OSS white paper.

Principal Operations Architect, Strategy and Architecture Practice

Telstra

Automation Enablement was focused on changing the way Telstra provisions and manages infrastructure and services, and at the forefront of moving Telstra IT to a cloud engagement model, where IT services are much more standardised, change friendly, and self-service. We built a new engagement portal (consolidating over a dozen others and presenting a service catalogue), a next generation cloud enablement platform (service definition and orchestration), and DevOps type services supporting continuous integration and delivery (and deeper operations and development integration).

My team had Engineering ownership of all of these platforms, and for driving services to be delivered via API and the cloud enablement platform.

I also led the team building our community-developer-focussed API Management platform.

Manager Automation Enablement

Telstra is the largest national Telecommunications and Internet Service Provider in Australia, with approximately 20,000 servers providing services to over 40,000 staff and millions of customers.

Part of the Technical Services group within IT Infrastructure Services, the team sets standards and evaluates technology for deployment across Telstra. My team's portfolio is diverse, covering a number of domains including Automation, System Management platforms, Configuration Management platforms, Change Management, Network Monitoring, Database Technologies, Middleware, and Software License and Asset Management (and previously included IT Security including our PKI platform). The team was responsible for building a number of shared services in these domains, including database factories (Oracle, SQL Server, and Oracle Application Express) and system management platforms (Oracle Enterprise Manager, HP OpenView BAC user experience monitoring, Symantec Veritas Operations Manager, BMC Atrium Orchestrator, and BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management).

I was one of the technical leads building our internal cloud and next generation data centre. My responsibilities included system management, automation, user portal, and enterprise integration.

An organisational restructure in July 2010 saw the department's responsibility extended to cover "whole of Telstra".

Key projects that I led include: the building of an automated provisioning platform (internal self-service infrastructure delivery) with VM provisioning time cut to under an hour; the building of a new enterprise-wide managed batch processing service (BMC Control-M) to consolidate and replace all existing platforms; building several system management platforms; and deployment of a new PKI platform and migration of all of Telstra to that new infrastructure.

Manager Cross Platform Services (IT Infrastructure Services)

Dodo Australia / Acquire Asia Pacific

Dodo is a national Internet Service Provider in Australia. Acquire Asia Pacific is a call centre with offices in Melbourne and Manila (Philippines) servicing clients in Australia and the USA.

My responsibilities included managing the Internet operations for Dodo, and the internal IT operations and service desks for Dodo’s Melbourne office, and the Melbourne and Manila offices of Acquire. I was the head of the IT organisation for the group of companies, with the Melbourne and Manila IT teams reporting to me. I reported to the Chief Operating Officer (COO).

I was responsible for overseeing all aspects of network, server and desktop service delivery, including all network links, data centres, core infrastructure, servers, desktops, and software. Responsibilities included team hiring and management, vendor management and liaison, network capacity planning, server management, incident management, process definition and implementation, internal system development, and liaison with other departments.

Group Technical Manager

USENIX Association

Board Member

The System Administrators Guild (SAGE)

SAGE is the professional association for practising system administrators. Its mission is to advance the status of computer system administration as a profession.

I was elected to the SAGE Executive Committee in 1999, and President from 2003 to 2005.

President

Mitel Networks

In June 2001, Mitel Networks acquired e-smith, inc.

My title changed, but my e-smith duties remained. In addition to these duties (CIO, VP Operations, VP Professional Services), I was also responsible for business integration of the e-smith unit with Mitel, including financial processes (SAP integration, billing, etc.), technical support, network operations, and channel training.

Director, Network Operations

e-smith, inc

e-smith is a provider of a specialised Linux distribution for small enterprises, providing all services that one might require of an office server and Internet gateway. e-smith was acquired by Mitel Networks in June 2001.

My areas of responsibility included: the internal network and information systems, the production (customer-facing) Internet network operations, product technical support, and professional services. I was a member of the executive management team.

Chief Information Officer/VP Operations/VP Professional Services

I have built a career on leading organisations through change, adapting and leveraging leading edge technologies and techniques, and building high performing teams. I have run infrastructure teams, engineering teams, technical support teams and professional services teams. I have been driving automation into system administration and related activities for over 25 years. I first implemented agile software development practices in an engineering startup in 2001. The cultural aspects of DevOps - continuous improvement, collaboration between engineering and operations, automation and risk-oriented controls - are ones I have instilled in every team I have managed for over 25 years. 

I am a true believer in building and empowering high performing teams and organisations. 

In the course of my career, I have held roles including developer, Head of Development, Head of Software Engineering, System Administrator, Principal Operations Architect, Principal Consultant, Director of Network Operations, and CIO. I have taken roles that not just talk about the need for change, but deliver that change.

I have also contributed back to the advancement of the industry, having held the industry positions of President of The System Administrators Guild (www.sage.org), President of the League Of Professional System Administrators (www.lopsa.org), and board member of The USENIX Association (all peer-elected positions), and spoken at over 30 conferences.

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