Jon Saperia Email & Phone Number

I retired last year and almost never look at this site any more.

I retired from Harvard in May of 2018 and now live in the southwest. I consulting on topics of interest related to enterprise software, operations, and management and controls systems for IAM.

Cambridge, Ma

Analysis of enterprise applications and operations in a highly distributed environment. Developed recommendations on use of cloud technologies, approaches to disaster recovery, new systems & networking architectures, and monitoring and control software to support a cloud and distributed data center environment.Created integrated approach to the delivery of critical applications and services. A key concentration is creation of a software engineering team that will develop an open source platform to be used to manage every aspect of our service delivery environment from software release through deployment, configuration, monitoring and fault resolution. Platform designed to manage physical and virtual computing environments as well as provided by third party cloud vendors. (Documented on GitHub as open-integer/integer).

Consulting in all areas related to standards-based IP management software. Clients include commercial, public, and government/DoD agencies. Since 2006, extensive work on NM and architectural issues on DoD Transformational Satellite System (TSAT). Most recently developed an architecture for extremely large scale Smart Grid, Internet-based application platform. Participant in the NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Panel’s Cyber Security Working Group.

Created short and long-term management software strategy for broadband over power line communication vendor including 'smart grid' applications. In less than three months, hired staff, completed requirements and development infrastructure and created first release of new management system based on AdventNet technology shown at major trade show. In addition, designed and led development of a new generation of management software for the broadband transmission nodes in the power line network. Capabilities included current, voltage, utilitity communication infrastructure management.

Responsible for group that managed IP network operations and all software developed and used to run this CLEC and provide a variety of services to customers. Services included pre-paid phone cards, conference calling facilities, and business and residential VoIP services using a variety of technologies (H.323, SIP, etc.). Functions included billing, account management, customer and reseller facing software, diagnostic software and management tools. Rapidly expanded team to develop new generation of software based on newer technologies such as: Java/J2EE and Oracle/MySql.

Identified market opportunity for new generation of IP service management software that significantly reduces OPEX enabling cost-effective delivery of complex services such as Voice over IP or timely delivery of financial data in modern IP networks. Based on design I developed, brought a team together that included engineering, marketing and business development in less than 8 weeks from initial funding. Brought initial versions of software to test market customers in less than 6 months keeping investor costs to a minimum. The software supports management functions that span the areas of fault, configuration, accounting, performance and security. This breadth of functions combined with the ability to support different technologies across a wide vendor range, enables effective service management in an IP environment at reduced cost while ensuring conformance to service level agreements.

Consulting with a wide range of equipment and management software vendors to reduce time to market in all areas of the architecture, design, development and deployment of management technology for ISPs, equipment vendors and management application developers. Projects ranged from architectural and detail design work of next generation management products, to network management software assessment and migration strategies for network operators. Reduced cost of operations for network operators by identification of optimal product combinations and reducing redundancy, in some cases, hardware reductions of almost 50%. Deployment recommendations based on analysis of products from HP, InfoVista, Riversoft, SMARTS, Agilent, MicroMuse, and others. Devoted significant time to the IETF in the operations and management area and worked on the development of requirements for configuration management and evaluating how different technologies can be applied to that area.

Defined network management architecture and high-level element and network management design and functions that helped close early test customers to help secure additional funding. Software was delivered on time and within established budget. Worked with other designers on architecture and design of system so that management functions were effectively integrated with all other elements of the system and customer environments reducing development costs and improving time to market. Functions developed for all areas of fault, configuration, performance, accounting and security. Built and lead an effective development organization of over 20 engineers working on management applications, Instrumentation, Command Line Interface, and base SNMP technology. During this time I also continued my IETF participation (see IETF section on last page).

Identified new market opportunities in IP management area and led effort to capitalize on those opportunities. This new software created added value to company, BGS was sold to BMC for $300M in March 1998. Built new development organization to implement a series of products based on a new architecture I developed for standards-based network and enterprise-wide capacity planning and performance management. Grew staff to 15 permanent and consulting engineers, a QA department of 4, Project Management, Release Engineering, Documentation and Support Personnel. Designed and helped implement development environment and test network for project. The product known as BESTview was an INTEROP Best of Show Finalist in September 1996. Served as co-chair of the IETF Application MIB working group in the IETF and co-author of the System Application and Application MIBs. Was a co-author of one of the SNMP proposals evaluated in current effort to bring scalable security to the SNMP framework.

Helped Digital open new revenue streams in both the field service and product areas through the delivery of a series of popular IP management software releases known as the Management Station for Ultrix. Lead development of a suite of applications focusing on issues of fault, configuration and performance management with emphasis on router configuration change management. Liaison to IETF for the Network Management area. Provided leadership to several sites on IP technology and operational concerns as internal IP network grew beyond the 20,000 mark. Assisted in: refining topology, router selection, installation, and operation. Installed and helped implement first secure gateway which uses IP tunneling for virtual point to point link to the Internet.

Hire and manage staff of senior level professionals dedicated to development and introduction of a new generation of network-based workstations. Provide overall program direction to product management, development, and external organizations. Architectural work to evolve product in existing, new, and developing standards such as SVID (versions 2,3, and 4) X-Windows, NFS, TCP/IP, etc. Member of architectural committee that defined user interface standards and mechanisms for implementation as well as data integration model and high-level communications/server architecture for a distributed processing environment. Product management of existing ARCNET based LAN.