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For over 30 years in the IT industry I have performed most jobs ranging
from System Management to support of the applications, installing software upgrades,
upgrading hardware, deinstalling and moving computer hardware. I have sought to keep
up with the latest advances in computer hardware and software products. Including
learning PC's to Web Page creation and from TNS I to 'S' series Himalaya. ( TNS I
was the first real range of Tandem systems in 1984 )
I have worked for one of the largest computer firms at the time, Burroughs Machines, and then one of the instigators of fault tolerant solutions,Tandem Computers. With the merger of Compaq, Tandem and Digital they became one of the top world-wide computer companies and now I am pleased to work for one of the largest banking corporations in the world - Citigroup part of Citicorp and Banamex in Mexico. My apprentiship gave me a strong grounding in mechanical and electronic engineering and over time I have received fantastic training from both Burroughs and Tandem for a complete range of systems, software and periferals. My ethos is to always strive to do my best and learn new skills where possible. My career spans engineering and mainly system software, and I've had the pleasure to serve and support many great institutions such as the Bank of England, and many banks in England in a trusted position and for 4 years from 1991, as their Support Specialist in the Tandem Non-stop Support Centre (TNSC). I specialised in 'General Guardian products', and continued management of the internal TNSC systems. I became the internal systems manager to the EBDC - European Business Data Centre, one of 4 world-wide Data Centres serving the applications and platforms for the Tandem / Compaq community of over 1000 users. I remotely managed many of the remote internal systems in many cities in Europe. In 2000 I moved to Citibank and continued to learn new skills including OpenVMS, Tivoli, and Citi bespoke applications whilst continuing to harness my main Tandem skill set supporting and developing solutions for the Tandem servers and users in London, Meerbusch and Mexico. I take great delight in solving obscure problems whether computer related, electronic or those that require an alternate solution. My hobbies reflect my nature to learn and include designing my own 3D printer, using microprocessors, DIY, electronics, and at my allotment for relaxation. Any spare time I devote to my family and as a techincal volunteer to REMAP, a charity dedicated those with disabilities by building solutions to help their lives be improved. (www.remap.org.uk)
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| I am currently part of the Citi Global Automation group, based in London with duties to help and assist the Tandem infrastructure based in Mexico. I have designed automation solutions to assist Command Center staff and users, saving many thousands of hours in manual effort. |
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| I was asked to join the automations group to continue building automation solutions for the Mexico Command Centre. |
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| I was selected to join the Operational Process and Efficiency Group where we were tasked to find efficiencies and savings within EMEA. During this time I also designed an instigated a new Metric concept to display historic data within Excel spread sheets saving over 2000 man hours in 2012. Due to my knowledge and experience on Tandem servers I was seconded to assist the Automation team in London to automate many Command Centre manual activities. |
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I joined Citigroup in 2000 as a senior support specialist for a new Citi application that was to run on the Tandem infrastructure, as the only person in EMEA with Tandem skills I was placed in the OpenVMS group where I developed a flair for DCL programing language on the OpenVMS platform. I supported the Tandem systems connected to the CHAPS network. This required not only knowledge of the systems, TCP/IP, X25 and SNA links but also an understanding of the LCI and LEI applications, together with the links to the Cosmos regions on the IBM mainframe. I also maintained the disaster recovery protection using my TMF and RDF experience. I had access to Citibank's 'S' series systems in Europe to maintain my 'S' series knowledge. I performed system management tasks on Tandem Nonstop and OpenVMS servers within London and Meerbusch to maintain the applications high availability. Duties included problem management 1st and 2nd level, system software patching, building scripts on both platforms in TACL and DCL to assist and monitor server environments and automate manaual tasks. One of my first duties at Citibank was to install Prognosis and OMF to enable monitoring of system resources, XYGATE as the security package and EMON together with Prognosis to enable event forwarding to Tivoli, the Bank's chosen central operations platform. Therefore I have knowledge of all these utilities. I was also requested to make a comparison between RDF and Extractor Replication (ER) to protect and provide contingency to the Citi Diners application hosted by Tandem. ER was chosen and I was key to install this in our environments in Meerbusch. Previously, using my hardware knowledge I can detect, diagnose and replace any failed component without the need to wait for another support group to get involved. This saved delays and reduces any system, application or user problems to a minimum.
With my management, software, application, problem solving and hardware skills I am able to offer 'complete' solutions for any problem my users may have. I leant learning Digital's VMS - DCL language and also Tivoli as part of the banks central operations for all hardware platforms. Using my OpenVMS, DCL and Apache Web server skills, I designed and built a Virtual Safe Application, This was to remove a major audit issue in 2003. This application was to store and control the release of passwords and used by over 15 countries. It stored over 6000 critical functional accounts for various internal servers on most of Citi's platforms. The majoritory of passwords were automaticaly updated by SSH strings, to the servers, periodically or when they had been requested by support staff. At Citi I was also previously part of the zlinux team as an SA trained on Suse linux to provide support for Data warehouse and Citi Anti money laudering applications. Successfully completed training to ITIL foundation training - 2007. |
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Project managed the complete data center relocation from Stockley Park to Reading, including reinstallation of all equipment and servers. I was responsible for day to day operations to one of the four Tandem worldwide data-centers.(now Hewlett Packard) 1st and 2nd level technical support to > 1000 European users. 1st and 2nd level pathway application support. Liaison between 4 worldwide data centers. Project managed and instigated all software, hardware and application upgrades for the EBDC including all system moves. Provided support for all European based Regional Offices for system installations and system software and hardware upgrades. Diagnose problems on our current CLX and Himalaya platforms, and where required, will replace any hardware or system software. The platforms I was responsible for included K20,008 , K10,004 , K20,002 , K1010 , K1004 , K1002 Provided 24 hr by 365 day support to all internal users. Performed Y2K compliance testing in the Scottish manufacturing facility. Created the data-centers tape monitoring routines to automate all data backups for disaster recovery requirements. Created most of the TACL Macros and Routines currently in use. |
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In 1991 I joined the TNSC support staff as a product support specialist providing customer support in the following products RDF, PNA, TACL, Multilan, TCPIP, Transfer, DSM Install/Sysgen, OMF, Netbatch, TMDS, Guardian 90 Utilities, Netmaster, Expand, Coup, ROF. I had a daily working knowledge of TMF, Measure, SQL, Pathway, RSC, VHS, PC's, Windows 3.11/95/NT, TACL programming, Basic programming, Microsoft products Word , Excel , Access, NT and Tandem Webserver, MS FrontPage, Tandem Internal PSMAIL, Visual Basic programming, Communications, NSK B20-D45. This was based in our Stockley Park office near Heathrow. I also managed the TNSC's internal live and 'crash and burn' system. I was also part of the on-call rota prividing 24 x 365 EMEA customer support. |
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In 1987 I was the primary on-site engineer at Lloyds Bank in London and responsible for all hardware and Guardian software problems. I planned and performed all installations, upgrades or system relacations on all Tandem processor types in the many systems they owned. Together with our engineering team I also support our Tandem customer base and I provided our London clients with all IPM releases on a monthly basis. |
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I Joined Tandem in 1984 as a Customer Support Engineer and supported Tandem's customer base, mainly in London. I formed part of our customer support rota. I was the site engineer for the Bank of England and Midland Bank. I was one of the first engineers in London to 'shift to the left' for software training and support. To gain experience I was tasked to manage the internal systems in our Tandem london base in Finsbury Square. (NSII and TXP) and build many TACL scripts to start and stop processes and activities. |
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| I Joined Burroughs after completing my apprenticeship. In my 8 years I was trained on a broad range of equipment that spanned from calulators, cheque encodes, mechanical and electronic printing terminals, printers, tape and punch machines to some of the largest mainframes at the time and their associated periferals. |
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| To enhance my range of skills I requested and was trained on some of the largest Burroughs mainframe at the time, B6900 and training included the perfiferals such as open reel tape drives, disc packs, and chain printers. Our training also included fault finding using osscilocscope and the ability to read complext logic diagrams, and single step the mainfram to detect the failed component and replace it. |
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My duties were to support general products within our banking and commercial customers, products ranged from printing
calculators , cheque encodes to gold ball style end point terminals. In the majority of cases we would fix down to component level.
My main area covered the Surrey area and included banks such as Barclays, Midland, Lloyds and Nat West and a few building societies. |
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In 1972 I was accepted to study at the MOD in London for a 4 year apprenticeship in Electrical Engineering. The four years were structured to
teach us various practical skills ranging from metal skills, electronics, and circuit design. We also attended college for theory relating to electric engineering,
I also graduated with a ONC in Electrical Engineering.
During the first year were were taught in working with various metals and skills gained included bending, welding, forming, turning and drilling. The second year was dedicated to assembling projects such as building an ossciloscope and included all aspects from creating the case from sheet steel to building the circuit bords and creating it's wiring loom. The third year we were to design and build our own projects, mine included a modular unit for testing cuircuits and included a variable power supply, sine wave generation and test meter. The last year we attended various specialist campanies for 1 or 2 months, where they taught us the shills they required in their industry. |
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| Old stuff |
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| Following the merger of Compaq, Tandem and Digital it was necessary to consolidate real estate and therefore in May 1999 we were informed that our office at Stockley Park, Heathrow would be closed at the end of August. All systems and support staff were to move to Worton Grange, in Reading. As I live in Bromley, Kent the other side of London, this made the move for me totally impracticable. |
| I was commissioned to project manage the systems move to Reading, support the Y2K for Tandem and train my replacements in Munich. The project move was a complete success with shutdown on Friday evening and systems and applications available on Saturday afternoon and evening. ( This was also due to the hard work of the 'team' of my fellow colleagues ). |
| I accepted Compaq's redundancy package at the end of January 2000. |
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| I was born in London in 1956. My parents, understanding my flair for technical subjects, sent me to Stanley Technical High School. I completed a four year Apprenticeship in Electrical Engineering with the MoD in 'Aqulia' Chislehurst. Also studying at Bromley College for Education. In my final year I was outsourced to various companies for job experience and took an interest in computers. I then joined Burroughs Machines. |
During 9 years with Burroughs I received training on a vast majority of the product range from calculators to the largest mainframe, a B7900. I was tasked to support the commercial and banking customers and four mainframe sites in the Surrey area. To bridge the gap between hardware and software, I learned the machine code programming language and was then able to provide a complete solution to the majority of customer problems. |
| I joined Tandem in 1984 |
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