
Architecture Consultant
AT&T Global Information Solutions (NCR)
- Joined in February 1992 as a UNIX and Relational Databases Technical Consultant in the Systems Engineering Division, supporting the NCR System 3000 platform, NCR’s UNIX SVR4 MP-RAS, the relational databases running on it — Oracle, Sybase, Informix and Ingres — and NCR TOP END.
- In late 1993 NCR Australia was restructured and renamed AT&T Global Information Solutions, and my role was redefined to Architecture Consultant, guiding customers, internal business units and third party solution providers on technology strategy: enterprise architecture and planning, the selection of standards and protocols, methodologies and tools for solution design, and policies for procuring and deploying enterprise systems.
- Consulted to various organisations, including St. George Bank, Franklins, Rockmans, and Telstra.
- Awarded NSW Branch Employee of the Month twice, in 1992 and 1993: once for supervising the resolution of a customer incident where the customer was deeply dissatisfied and threatening litigation, and once for the design, project management and delivery of a system to a customer.
Architecture and design
- Designed the architecture for a retail bank’s branch automation and sales platform, then joined a worldwide solutions development and marketing team that extended the architecture for sale to banks in other countries.
- Lead architect and project manager for the design and implementation of a special purpose transaction management and load balancing system, regulating decision support access to the Teradata database at a major Australian airline.
- Consulted to a regional building society on client/server architecture and its application development environment, and provided training on NCR Top End.
- Business analysis and implementation of a management information and transfer pricing system, and of a system for tracking key performance indicators.
Consulting and technology
- Pre-sales and post-sales consulting in UNIX and RDBMS technologies, product training for customers and other consultants, technical liaison with the database vendors, and performance benchmarking and application porting services.
- Created and maintained the internal mailing list on UNIX database technologies, and acted as primary technical liaison to several major database and UNIX vendors.
- Assisted in porting several major applications to the NCR platform, and helped supervise, construct and execute major performance benchmarks on behalf of customers and vendors.
- Provided course instruction on database design.
- Internal consulting to the Field Engineering division, formulating a unified services strategic plan for providing technical support services to a major bank.
- Evaluated third party technologies — a client/server development environment, and a performance analysis and benchmarking tool — for possible inclusion in AT&T’s product offerings.
- Acted as project manager resolving critical performance issues at customer sites, including a ladies’ fashion retail chain, an electrical product distributor and a major telecommunications company.