Ash Giddings Email & Phone Number

United Kingdom

Reporting to the Director of EMEA Technical Services, I assumed the role of Product Manager shortly after HelpSystems acquired Halcyon Software. I managed the product development process from concept through to release including competitive analysis, workload prioritization, product release planning, working with early adopters, developing marketing messages to accompany product launch plans, sales team training and partner awareness. My role included analyzing and understanding the latest technology advancements to identify market opportunities for future enhancements and solutions in-keeping with product line and overall company goals.I was able to articulate a products value by performing industry talks, conducting webinars, writing whitepapers and creating powerful marketing collateral.

United Kingdom

Core Responsibilities:• Managed the launch plan of new products including collateral production, pricing, promotion and sales training that deliver business results.• Competitive positioning by conducting regular in-depth market research and analysis. • Understand the latest technology advancements and work with teams in identifying optimal opportunities and solutions.• Ambassador and regular speaker for Halcyon Software and its solutions at international events.• Monitor existing business metrics and create strategies and/or revenue models that ensure return on investment in order to achieve maximum business profitability.• Articulate a product’s value proposition through personal contact with partners and direct customers.• Writing and positioning whitepapers.• Provide input into the strategic company product roadmap.

Peterborough, United Kingdom

At Halcyon Software I headed up the Technical Support team where there are staff based in the UK, USA and Australia. In addition to the provision of technical support I was responsible for major incident handling and communicate with people of all levels up to IT Directors from a technical and pre / post sales perspective. I’m a natural communicator being both a regular speaker to large audiences at seminars and dealing with one to one discussions during major problem determination. I was also responsible for Problem Management and trend analysis reporting within the company where I reported to the Technical Director.

Northampton, United Kingdom

I worked as part of a team supporting a number of clients within the Managed Services area of Getronics. Getronics were the first company in the United Kingdom to successfully market the Shared Services concept and had a number of high profile customers using the iSeries i890. My role involved 2nd and 3rd line support in a 24/7 dynamic environment, disaster recovery tests, management of logical partitions, performance analysis and the management and support of several high availability environments using DataMirror’s ICLUSTER software.In addition to the Shared Services flagship service I also provided technical support to more than 20 other AS/400’s hosted throughout the United Kingdom.Getronics were the market leaders in ITIL Training and I successfully passed both the ITIL and PRINCE2 Foundation qualifications.

Kettering

I had 4 members of staff reporting to me and was not only technically responsible for them but also nurtured their career development within the company. I often deputised for the Service Delivery Manager, where up to 14 members of staff reported to me for all aspects associated with the day to day running of a European Data Centre. I was particularly key in the introduction of OLA’s throughout the IT department and other initiatives including major incident handling and problem reporting across the business.I was technically responsible for all aspects of support for RCI Europe’s midrange environment which encompassed 2 AS/400’s, (640 #2239 and 170 #2291), 70-80 Windows servers along with three different platforms running various UNIX servers. Major projects completed include; justification, planning and implementation of processor upgrades, operating system upgrades, performance analysis, disaster recovery, capacity planning and the replacement of the unattended operations platform. These projects culminated in the spending of in excess of £1M.In addition I was the technical midrange lead for a major Ethernet rollout throughout Europe.

Burton Upon Trent

Duties included the responsibility of one shift comprising of four operators supporting fourteen AS/400's & one RS/6000 over two local sites. In addition to supervising all operational work, the Shift Leader was also accountable for the overnight & weekend Helpdesk for all midrange, LAN & hardware / software issues that were encountered.Bass Brewers’ housed one of the largest centralised AS/400 sites in terms of processing power in Europe & vast experience has been gained in the following areas, Token Ring, APPC / APPN, Rumba/400, PC Support, Midas, Mimix, CL Programming, Query, DFU, Siteview, Opticonnect/400, AFP Printing & BRMS/400.