Founded software company to simply and securely connect enterprise systems using industry best practices, SOA patterns and the Avato hybrid integration platform. Designed and developed initially for use at one of Canada’s largest credit unions to eliminate integration issues, the solution produced an immediate dramatic reduction in risk and project costs during a major core banking upgrade. Then, throughout its first year in production, Avato sustained a flawless track record, with zero defects, lost messages or outages while processing over 400 million messages. Now available and fully customizable for any integration project, Avato provides sustainable, flexible maintainable message routing, logging, queuing and transformations, and “runs like a brick” with virtually no visible performance impact. As a J2EE application, Avato is a powerful, polite and welcome guest in any Java or .Net enterprise application environment.Based in downtown Vancouver BC, with a satellite office in Victoria, BC, Avato provides products and services to organizations including Coast Capital Savings Federal Credit Union, Provincial Health Services Association (PHSA), Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA), Fraser Health (FHA), Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), Interior Health (IHA) and others in the financial services and health care industries.

With over $15B in assets, Coast Capital Savings is Canada’s largest credit union by membership, servicing the needs of over 500,000 members. Working closely with Coast Capital Savings since 2010, most recently architected and implemented integration systems between the Temenos T24 core banking system and the Aspect UIP system as part of a massive contact centre conversion project. Greatly enhanced the Avato platform to include new constructs leveraging XSLT, HTML5 and J2EE, delivering 33 mission-critical interfaces and web services. Designed and implemented new forms of automated testing and information aggregation logic controls based on XSLT, invented new day-in-the-life record/playback features for testing interface traffic under real-world scenarios, and added new capabilities to the T24 banking system including automating the BrowserWeb user interface from another desktop application, implementing new XML-oriented data exchange mechanisms, and consolidating other information systems behind a newly refined federated enterprise services layer, reducing costs by minimizing the need to customize the core banking system itself. Supported the project through a tremendously successful go-live and used Avato to identify issues with connected systems, providing critical information and guidance across technology vendors, and to minimize conversion day member impact to under 2 minutes. To date, Avato continues to operate flawlessly, with no reported post-go-live defects, in keeping with the tradition established by the initial 1.0 launch in 2013.

BCPRA provides critical patient, physician, data, statistical, analysis and decision support systems for all patients in British Columbia with renal, kidney, dialysis, heart, lung and other organ transplant needs. For the BC Provincial Renal Agency and indirectly, the BC Transplant Agency, through a contract with Sierra Systems, lead a dozen developers, solution and data architects in the implementation of the PROMIS modernization project for BC Renal, including patient snapshot, treatment modality and end of life planning systems. Reporting to the senior directors of the BCPRA and PHSA, Made dramatic improvements to inter-team and cross-team dynamics and developer productivity by engaging and empowering team members, implementing best practices and effectively tailoring agile methodologies. Resolved tough problems in integration and core Java EE. Periodically fulfilling the role of project manager, I measured and forecast the project deliverable dates and guided the overall project direction and strategy through the stabilization and implementation phases. Implemented automated build processes and also acted as release manager, ensuring the product was built and deployed consistently across environments. Further contributed to sound infrastructure planning, go-live strategy and defined production lifecycle release processes. Tools and platforms used included Java EE (J2EE), Oracle ADF, JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo, Solaris 10, Oracle 11g, PL/SQL, Oracle WebLogic, HP Quality Center, JSF, JHeadStart, Ant, JDeveloper, Groovy, sql-plus and SQLDeveloper.

For a major core banking conversion project at one of Canada's largest credit unions, designed and developed the Avato Hybrid integration Platform that simplified and accelerated connectivity, resulting in a significantly positive effect on the project schedule while reducing cost, risk and scope. Invented leading edge systems leveraging Java EE, SOAP, XML/XSLT and JMS. Successfully reconnected legacy systems and interfaces to the new T24 core banking system without requiring any third party protocol modifications or vendor involvement. Co-designed, deployed, maintained and supported RHEL/JBoss EAP web tier systems and high availability in general. Supported development, interface, infrastructure, functional test, SIT, UAT and go-live streams. Contributed to process maturity and SOA while modelling the Enterprise Architecture in UML. Went live on Feb 8th 2013 and has been running 24x7 with zero issues and zero maintenance ever since. See http://www.temenos.com/Press-Releases/2009/Credit-Union-selects-T24-Model-Bank-Software-replaces-core-systems/ for more information about the project at Coast Capital.

Founded technology start-up company to create new-to-the-world security, monitoring and visualization software products for corporations, governments and consumers. Designed and developed secure, scalable web applications using Java EE and client-side software products using C++. Designed cloud architectures for Sun/Oracle Solaris clusters. Created products and private label brands based on an in-house proprietary cross-platform, cross-language library of core technologies written in C++ and Java over a period of 13+ years. Launched products, applications and services for Microsoft Windows, Sun/Oracle Solaris and Mac OS X, including North America's first aggregated multi-institution transaction notification system, which can now privately send spend and fraud alerts to account and credit card holders at over 300 financial institutions.

For BC's largest health insurance provider, led teams with technical implementation of the ACES project to automate health and dental insurance administration and replace legacy mainframe systems. Provided training and mentoring to development staff and contractors. Designed and implemented development processes, release processes, product lifecycle and CM processes. Guided the project through technology and implementation decisions, improved efficiencies and empowered teams to deliver under budget and ahead of schedule. Maintained and ensured correct operation of systems in Production after go-live. Designed and implemented gaps, defect corrections, integration systems, build systems, automated testing systems and deployment systems using Sparx Enterprise Architect, XML, XSD, XSLT, VB6, .NET, Ant/Nant, C#, Managed C++, COM+, ASP.NET, SVN, JavaScript, SQL Server, Apache, Luntbuild and Subversion (SVN) in a Java-based asynchronous Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) environment. Designed and implemented code management strategies, patterns and processes for parallel releases and multi-phase concurrent development efforts.

Designed and documented enterprise architectures and system integration for one of BC’s leading providers of health and dental insurance. As system architect and developer team lead, empowered PBC’s employees and contractors to deliver under budget and ahead of schedule on critical phase of a multi-million dollar project. Work included code review, mentoring, process design, gap analysis, system design, implementation and integration of COM+, Visual Basic, C# and ASP.NET systems with over 6 million lines of code into a Java-based Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture.

Strangeloop’s AppScaler won Best of Tech-Ed 2007 – see www.strangeloopnetworks.com/news_newsrelease_0608_techedwin.html .Designed and developed management and analytics user interfaces and supporting cross-platform C++ network facilities for Strangeloop’s ASP.NET / AJAX AppScaler network accelerator appliance. Designed to make ASP.NET web sites scale without any code changes, the AppScaler is capable of providing more than 10 times throughput and speed increases for ASP.NET-based web sites. The management, network communications and analytics systems implemented by Mr. Stevens successfully controlled and instrumented the appliance under loads of thousands of requests per second.

MMSI, a Komatsu company, has 80% of the world market share for mining systems. Developed and implemented Java 5 / J2EE 2.0 training course for Modular's engineering teams. Acted as mentor to company's architects. Captured requirements and use cases and defined architecture for Next Generation products under CMM/RUP guidelines. Reverse engineered legacy C++ systems, transformed proprietary language systems to C++ / SQL, designed production, historical and real time databases, designed upgrades to J2EE, Windows 2003 Server and Microsoft .NET 2.0.

Founded software and consulting company in 1990. Engaged in design, coding, packaging, marketing and distribution of real-time Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) software products (see MIDImouse below) until roughly 1993, when a shift to contract development was made. MIND over MIDI later became an incubator for Virtual Perception Systems in 2005.

BLive competes with WebEx, GotoAssist, and Microsoft Live Meeting. Empowered and guided the product development group at BLive Networks. Designed the flagship product BLive, a hosted sales and support tool featuring online conferencing, desktop sharing and instant messaging. Implemented host software in C++, back end in J2EE and client software using the Internet Explorer Browser, JavaScript, Applets and ActiveX Plug-ins. Provided and managed subcontractors.

NCS Pearson is the leading provider of school administration and education systems in the US. Working with Discovery Software under CMM/RUP guidelines, designed and developed key portions of NCS’s flagship product, the Concert Online Education Community. The product, then code-named NCS4School, was designed to be the center point for the education of over one million simultaneous users, providing the advanced levels of security needed to protect the profiles of school children in the US. Worked side-by-side with hundreds of developers to design and implement key modules including Grading and Lesson Planning for Student, Teacher and Parent using J2EE, Oracle 8i and the BEA Portal Server. Designed architecture of key J2EE system components and helped improve scalability and efficiency of data access systems.

Designed migration of MarketMAX's high-volume retail decision support system from a 2-tier C++ MFC/Windows NT architecture to a cross-platform multi-user NT/UNIX 3-tier web/ASP model. Played key role in facilitating the sale of technology to Amazon by defining the scalable Solaris J2EE implementation that was required by Amazon. Worked with MarketMAX's architects to define web based, B2B and J2EE versions of MarketMAX software. Lead MarketMAX's C++ team to port the core OLAP-style retail planning engine to a JNI component interfacing with the ATG Dynamo J2EE Application Server. Reverse engineered and provided documentation and UML models for legacy systems. Helped initiate model centric development processes, improve developer productivity and increase code reuse and object-orientation, decrease developer ramp-up time, and helped MarketMAX move to a multi-tiered web-centric architecture.

Working with ADP's development group, designed and developed the foundations for Sales Alliance. Designed and coded functionality to manage vehicle sales, customer management, inventory management, data catalogue management, finance and insurance calculations, taxation, reporting, and automated forms printing using C++, COM, Visual Basic and Sybase SQL. Designed and built componentized connectivity to external data systems including credit bureaus, credit applications, industry data sources, and Unix/Pick legacy systems integration. Designed and implemented COM based O/R Mapping service layer in C++, which was used effectively for over 15 years subsequently as an application development platform. ADP management in Chicago called it one of the “most successful development projects ever undertaken at ADP”

Developed numerous systems on numerous contracts including Vancouver Port's PortView project (which won the 1996 Windows World Open), Provincial Judiciary (Office of the Chief Judge), and front-end teller systems and back-end GEAC to SQL Server integration for Surrey Metro Savings (now Coast Capital Savings).

Designed and implemented embedded automated parking and credit card processing systems in C++ using DOS windows under OS/2. Design and C++/Visual Basic implementation of Windows host software to control parking system and download credit card transactions via modem. Achieved certification of parking systems developed for Vancouver International Airport software with financial institutions. Directed five programmers and provided/managed subcontractors.

Developed GFX digital tourism kiosk applications for AT&T. Designed interactive client/server multimedia systems that operated over ISDN. Programmed and designed geographical menuing/mapping systems, evaluated authoring systems, reviewed designs and produced various graphics and database utilities.

Designed user interface, functional specification, high level C++ design, interface protocol and detailed development schedule for the 386/VGA Display module for Creation's 24 track digital audio system, RADAR.

As an independent software developer, created UltraMIDI, a real-time MIDI mapping, routing and transformation application for live music performance on the Atari ST. Originally published through MIDImouse Music, UltraMIDI was later renamed Slave Driver and sold through my own company, MIND over MIDI Productions (see 1990 Electronic Musician review at http://mindovermidi.com/SlaveDriver.html). Slave Driver is still today considered by many to be the fastest and most flexible MIDI mapping tool ever created. While working with MIDImouse Music, also developed software copy protection and distribution systems, cross-platform code and GUI libraries and PCM Sample Editors for various keyboards. Developed software using C, 68000 assembly language and GFA Basic, developing object based techniques in anticipation of the first C++ compilers becoming available.