Extremely excited to be named the first Chief Technology Officer at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Managing a successful team of subject matter experts, with responsibility for a capital budget circ. £1m, and operating budget of £1m. Leading procurement activities, realising our Infrastructure principles – Simplicity, Modern, Resilient, Virtualised with High Availability. Secure by design, with our Data Principles of 3 copies of all data always (on immutable storage). • Replacement of the Firewalls with Palo Alto. Delivering best in class levels of network protection.• Aruba Edge networking ensuring that local connectivity and availability are achieved.• Enhancing the Campus Aruba WiFi infrastructure to deliver better service to the University’s users and guests. WiFi 6 throughout the Campus. New services for accommodation (home-from-home).• Transformation of the University Virtualisation Infrastructure with a Nutanix HCI running on Lenovo hardware. Consolidation of the data centres, reducing costs and management. Introduced web scaling infrastructure. Resilient and available whilst a secure file system ensuring secure approach. • Rubrik backup – Replacement of the tape solution with an immutable ransomware safe solution. Sensitive data search and early warning for data changes.• Azure Hybrid Cloud – Introducing the capability, working with Windows Virtualised Desktops (WVD).• Palo Alto IaaS Firewalls – ensuring that our Hybrid-cloud is secure by design.• One Identity IAM system – leading the replacement of the bespoke university system.• Cyber Essentials Plus – Certification for the university• Software Application Store (Liquit) – implementation of end-user application deployment, Any App, Any Device, Anywhere.• Implemented Scrum methodology (DevOps) – to ensure all work is tracked and completed in a timely fashion.

Whilst ensuring the continued successful running of the day-to-day infrastructure operations, without compromising the need to build new capabilities for the university. During this time Key projects delivered:• F5 replacement of TMG's Web Application Firewalls• VoIP - Replacement of legacy telephony with a full Unified Communications Platform using Mitel.• Dynamic Disk Pool - Implemented High-Speed data access to the Apple Mac desktop environment.• Implementation of SolarWinds – monitoring platform for our operational environment.• Rollout of the Teams – enabling a key tool for the communications of our users.• OneDrive – moving our users to have Cloud as primary storage for personal files – savings in the infrastructure and better availability to make the users more mobile.• Chairing the Change Advisory Board (CAB) additionally the Technical Design Authority (TDA)

Managing a successful Infrastructure group to deliver numerous projects, whilst maintaining business as usual. The group is made up of 22 staff and is responsible for all levels of the IT Infrastructure, from the desktop to the datacentre, including all server platforms and virtualisation. Reporting on service levels, staff performance and project deliverables, budget management, and supplier engagement to ensure the University gets the best value for money whilst conforming to purchasing regulations.Performance management and daily engagement in motivating staff. Excellent communicator and ability to resolve conflict at all levels.• Hardware refresh of the virtualisation platform with £1.5million investment.• Control of a portfolio of projects, re-prioritised and re-focused to ensure delivery• Delivery of the Bespoke Identity management system with full account auditing for 50k accounts.• Lead for the migration of staff and student email to cloud-based services (Microsoft Office 365) improving staff productivity, student experience and avoiding the future expenditure of approximately £2m• Virtual Learning Environment replacement – Blackboard is a critical technology platform for the University which was significantly enhanced as part of the TELT Strategy, Introducing SSO for our users.• New Service desk created.

Leading Domain Services – which consists of 6 members (inc. 4 VMware VCP’s, 4 MCSE Exchange Experts, 2 application and web developers). We operate the Virtualised VMware environment running 350+ servers across 5 campuses with 36,000+ Active Directory accounts using predominantly Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 servers, we also use a mix of other Windows and Linux hosts. The VMware Infrastructure is installed on 54 HP blades and connected to 2 EVA 8100 Enterprise class SAN arrays separated across 2 data centres. We employ a disk to tape backup system for DR and user data recovery. I have responsibility for all day to day management of the team: appraisals, task setting, time management, recruitment, motivating, technical accountability and project management. I am a key member of the Computing Services Infrastructure management team. On a technical level I am heavily involved in the design and development of the University Identity Management System: using Service Broker, XML components, Linked Servers, Integration Services and Reporting Services. Management of the Central University systems including the Virtual Learning Environment. Adept in aspects of Internet programming and an understanding to the protocol level of web technologies. Technical lead for the University web platform both internally and external: IIS web farm using load balancers and Forefront TMG servers and also 3rd party applications.

Managing web services within the University and developing web applications for the University such as People Search, Staff training database, custom DHCP management and Computing services service management system. Instrumental in Computing projects such as migration to Exchange and defining University Identity Management systems also 3rd party applications such as Blackboard VLE, QuestionMark, Coveo (website index service) and central database services.

Contracts included working at the Grimaldi Centre in Monte Carlo for Couture International 2001 (trade Fashion and Jewellery) Conference, working in Bucharest for the European Bank of Reconstruction Development. Primarily the role consisted of database and application development for large and small organisations: creating, supporting and developing bespoke solutions using database and web development including some server management. The position involved working on Client sites to deliver solutions mainly on my own. Requiring very strong interpersonal skills and problem resolution to provide solutions on time and budget.