My
professional Information Technology life
It started in 1988, which is when I got my first job
supporting Information technology installations that included hardware
maintenance and repairs as well as the installation/support of software and the
resolution of problems that arise from such deployments.
I trained as an Electrical/Electronics Engineer,
learnt to program in Basic, ForTRAN 77 and Pascal but it was not long before I
realised that most of the hardware components even where they could be fixed
our customers preferred to replace faulty systems and have their systems
functional in the shortest possible time so they could get on with their work.
This became the excitement of my whole career, looking
for working, functional, cost-effective and enduring solutions to problems my
customers have.
Addressing
thorny problems
Most of my working life has had me in consultancy
positions crafting methods and processes of getting disparate systems and
applications to work together, the first of which in those days was mail-merging a Dbase III address database into a
formal letter in Wordstar, working
with Lotus 1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics for
presentations, then being an expert for a legal publishing company working for Xerox Ventura Publisher,
Dbase III, WordPerfect, CorelDraw
and many other utilities.
When I worked for a further education college, I laid
out the plan to migrate from the then expensive support structure and archaic
network operating system of RM
Machines to more open and cost-effective third-party systems running on
Novell Netware 3.11 and more contemporaneous Microsoft Windows and Microsoft
Office software on the clients.
Server
Support & Software Distribution
After that project, I ran Novell Netware environments
for an actuarial firm and then for an insurance firm offering remote support to
over 20 sites in the United Kingdom and abroad. By then, I was already Novell
Netware Certified and was ready for my new assignment at an oil company where I
deployed the first software distribution process using Microsoft SMS 1.1.
From 1996, I have designed, built, supported and
trained people and teams in Microsoft
SMS 1.1/1.2/2.0/2003 and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007
in the finance, insurance, computer services, aviation, banking and electronic
consumer goods industries.
Changing the
organisation
Software Deployment for me has not just been a tool,
it has been a method that extends to the improvement of the interaction that
users in an enterprise have with the systems that can make them more productive
in their work life.
The basic concept that has governed the work I do is optimising
and perfecting the user experience such that what the user needs is available
in a timely and affordable manner, meaning that the support frameworks have to
be streamlined, the solutions have to be easy and the ideas have to be
repeatable with respect to device, usage and access.
That is what makes my work fun and challenging, I
always look forward to opportunities that are receptive of progressive change
and it is my job to ensure that the process of change is as seamless and
pain-free as possible.
This blog will serve as forum to offer ideas, bring
together opinions and highlight different aspects of my career.
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