Present



As an IT Counsel associate, I am asked to come back from time to time to complete specific pieces of work for the IT Counsel. The project I was involved in was to consult on a NetWare 5 upgrade for several senior companies that the IT Counsel have long term contracts with. Both Government and Private sector. As well as documenting how each project would take place, I also had to provide a feasibility study detailing, costings for personnel, equipment, Gantt charts, SWOT analysis, capacity planning, Impact Analysis and contingency plans. These type of projects are operating system non specific, however did call from my experience and skills with both Novell and Microsoft products, as well as Compaq, Dell, 3Com and Cisco hardware. Using formal techniques from both Prince and SSADM methodologies.

This contract was just a three week long position to visit the clients 5 offices around the UK and produce a report on their IT setup. As a consultant I have had substantial experience with a number of differing IT systems and their setup, and so was in a position to advise B&B of how they should be setting up their Wide Area Network environment. The 5 offices are setup within a Wide Area Network (WAN), and local offices are running NetWare 5, GroupWise Email, Border Manager, ZEN Works as well as ManageWise, along with Windows 98 and Windows NT desktops. I also had to install and configure a Firewall to allow monitoring, and connection access to and from the Internet. The Firewall was Border Manager, which is a core Novell product. This was in addition to providing skills training on the use of Firewalls and how it was setup throughout the company.

I have just completed a three-month consulting position for WS-Atkins with several of their clients who are moving to Novell's NetWare 5. Along with Design of NetWare 5, I was tasked to provide some onsite training to the technical staff present. This skill's transfer is primarily dealing with supporting NetWare 5 over a multi-site organisation. Also along with NetWare 5, I have been designing and deploying Novell's GroupWise as an email system, using a managed ZEN desktop environment, through Border Manager Firewall system. The Firewall system, was installed and training was given to local support staff, on the use of Firewall monitoring and intrusion techniques. These suites of Server and client applications compliment each other very well and help maintain a complete company system. This position was a month rolling, although scheduled to finish at the end of November, it continued through December as the main user rollout was re-scheduled. A second WS-Atkins client had a number of NDS issues, which I had to fix for several sites around London and Europe, in a live system.

I was brought into the IT Counsel's organisation to manage a number of high profile clients that the IT Counsel were dealing with. Many included Government institutions, which were in need of various systems being redesigned, managed or Office moved. My focus was Technical Project Management along with Consultancy, usually my remit was to visit an office, collect data as to how various projects had been run and then to ascertain and develop a project, which would get them back on track. This often involved, reworking the initial project plan, presenting my project plan to senior management and then resourcing the project until its conclusion.

I was brought in to look at the companies NDS system. Several external agencies had placed personnel within RHM who were there to sort out NDS issues between several offices around the UK. Unfortunately, they had no luck at this. This was on account of their lack of experience with Border Manager and the NDS. This was a three-week project, which centred on Border Manager VPN's NDS and NetWare 4.11. Due to my Border Manager and NDS troubleshooting experience I got the system back up and working again, and updated company procedures on maintaining a stable VPN and NDS environment, throughout the organisation. Also looked at patching the current NetWare level, looking at how they're Lotus Notes systems worked with NetWare. My services have been retained by RHM for future NetWare work. As this was a live system, I first had to replicate the environment within a test lab, so that the work I was doing could be validated before it could be transferred to live system. This position also in involved a lot of client liaison at the satellite sites, and knowledge of VPN through Border Manager.

I was first introduced to AAT back in January of 1999, since that time I have worked on a retainer basis, in which I have set and continually developed their NetWare systems, along with their Internet presence, their firewall systems and their International Email environment. This has been my "pet project" where I have been allowed the technical freedom to build an organisation from the ground upwards, without having to rely on the abilities of other technical staff. This company does have an IT manager, however I have been fortunate enough to have been given a wide berth when designing, implementing and training the current IT staff on site at the London Head Office. So much so that this long term client now have plans to expand their operation into Europe, giving myself once again the opportunity to demonstrate my technical abilities in the Wide Area Network Arena. I have used Border Manager along with a NetWare 4.11 environment, with GroupWise as their main email client.

This position was to act as a consultant to the SID (Strategic Information Development) group for a number of clients both national and International who were looking at, or are using Novell's NetWare 5 within their organisations. I covered all aspects of NetWare 5 from green field set up to picking up the pieces of an existing system, ranging from Migrations from previous versions of NetWare to new NDS and site design. These often ranged from single office environments to multinational client systems, dealing with various connection mediums to the Internet and to the outside world. From here, a stable platform was built to deploy such GroupWare packages as ZEN, GroupWise, ManageWise, and Border Manager. ZEN was always rolled out with the introduction of NetWare 5 to manage and maintain a secure desktop environment. As one of the few NetWare 5 Specialists that BSG had, I also worked on a number of NDS design and rollouts for various clients. Setting up Test labs and performing extensive package and hardware analysis was also part of my routine, as BSG had a very impressive array of hardware and software systems for their clients. All of the NetWare Servers were running a whole host of GroupWare and third party applications, and often combined in a mixed Server environment with Microsoft NT or UNIX platforms. As a Wide Area Network Specialist I was also tasked with faultfinding and network analysis for BSG customers.

This position was two weeks long, however, I was asked to consult for a legal company and train their technical team on the upgrade procedures and operations of GroupWise 4.1 up to GroupWise 5.5. My course included all aspects of GroupWise from Post Office Migration, to Multiple Domain systems, and all the Gateways included within GroupWise. As well as discussing a ZEN rollout policy for secure desktops

Tibbett and Britten are one of Europe's largest logistics companies, with some 50 offices around the UK and Europe. They manage logistical information for a number of multinational transport, retail and distribution companies. Having evolved from 3 separate companies, my main goal was to analyse all three individual systems within the current email environment and merge them together to form a single email system. This cover's the entire company and all 3,000 employees at multiple sites. I head up a team of 4 GroupWise full time staff, and currently working on deploying GroupWise 5.5 system running on a Novell 5 server platform to the office environment. I have also developed and installed the GroupWise WebAccess system, which allows Users to connect up to the Tibbett and Britten Email system from anywhere in the world, providing they can gain access to the Internet. Supervising the main transfer of company paper information into Document management libraries, along withorganisingthe training of the users also takes up a large proportion of my day. I have also had to work closely with the development of the company Intranet environment and the tie in with GroupWise 5.5. Working with ZEN to deploy a managed desktop environment has proven very useful to standardise the working environment with the Users across the company.

At TBWA I had many responsibilities, the first was to oversee the introduction of GroupWise as an email transport system. Migration from an MSMail environment, this involved firstly designing a structured system that could grow as we brought on-line a whole host of European and global offices. Taking the primary domain, which was located in London, a GroupWise 4.2 post office system was implemented and then I along with several colleagues had to visit each of, what was at first 28 offices located within Europe and US and install a GroupWise server and install the desktop clients.

Much of this work also was aided by the upgrade to IntraNetware 4.11 and a move towards a more NDS based WAN system. Working closely with Novell, I have set up GroupWise over a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN), an Async Gateway system, Local Dialup, and more recently using Border Manager across the Internet. In fact Novell have published our site as a reference and have stated that we have the largest Novell/GroupWise deployment currently in operation over Europe, with some 3000 users and some 17 post offices. Managing the day-to-day operation of the NDS and Wide Area Network, and planning a "pro-active" response to system upgrades taken up most of my time whilst at the European offices. A major project I dealt with was Disaster recovery procedures and of site storage and replacement of equipment. Another role of mine was to implement a European ISDN based solution to all TBWA and TBWA International offices for the Macintosh range of computers based on an ISDN call system.

Once again working throughout Europe, and the US, my role was to co-ordinate, and implement this solution throughout the Apple range of Graphic servers and workstations. I also have been responsible for setting up SLA and MLA agreements with such organisations as Compaq, Apple and Adobe, working with the Compaq range of Novell based servers, utilising GroupWise, ManageWise, FAXServe and Arcserve.