Kevin Cook Email & Phone Number

Wimbledon, England, United Kingdom

A very mixed role. Platform and application migration, operations support, technical support, project, consultancy, programming.Disaster recovery, performance issues, automation.Provide consultancy and project resource. (Further application automation, migrations, addressing audit points, increasing IT security, development of tools for application support staff - are current examples).Automate all the previously manual processes involved in running the month end suite. Involved extensive program development (CL/SQL) and interaction with outsource providers and business units.Design and develop an Iseries audit report utility which will enable selected staff to monitor key users and ascertain which objects have been subject to change. This was to address a key external audit point.A key role in the operational migration of one companies data into the existing central database.Significant participation in a real disaster recovery exercise when the main production machine became unusable.Reconfigure the application testing infrastructure to include isolation of testing code sets, new databases and larger Iseries server. Assist the new IT service provider (Selection Services, Bromley) both during the take on of the service and subsequently to help provide deeper understanding of the supported applications and operational processes.Continue to provide a degree of production application support – mainly, but not exclusively IBM Iseries based.Provide support to the CAF testing team when required – mainly, but not exclusively Iseries based.

Generally -Provide ALFA application and general IBM Iseries support. Train internal staff and handover operational duties.More specifically -Training Brookland staff in aspects of the ALFA application and Iseries platforms.Physical relocation of an Iseries machine to another locationApplication of system software maintenance to Iseries platformsDevelop and implement application alert modules to detect conditions which may jeopardize service to the supported businesses.Develop and implement housekeeping routines to facilitate the delivery of robust service to the supported businesses.Provision of production application and operational support.Provision of application testing support (test database creation, conducting some testing, restoring, printing, analysis of errors).Provide significant assistance when the entire IT service outsource arrangement was moved from Brookland to Selection Services, Bromley.

Upgrade AS400 system software on UAT platform (OS/400 5.3.0.) by 18 months worth of maintenance. Install IBM CICS Transaction Server and FairIsaac Stategyware on AS400.Day to day operational and technical support of the production, pre production, disaster recovery (all LPARs on a variety of machines) Design, develop and implement a robust, expandable and easily maintained automated application alerts framework on the Iseries (CL & SQL).Develop and implement 16 individual alerts (to run on the alerts framework) to monitor a variety of business critical service components (CL & SQL).Install JDK 1.4 and required PTF packages.Operationally assist with a large application migration to the AS400 platform.Design, implement and operationally support the production printing infrastructure required for expanded business operations on the AS400 platforms.Build and test the newly migrated business application on an AS400 Disaster Recovery platform.Collect and report performance statistics, suggest areas for possible application (SQL) tuning.Day to day technical and operational support (backups / restores / batch runs / security / printing / performance / capacity / software maintenance).Setting up the MIMIX product to provide object/file replication for the ALFA application between production and DR AS400 platforms for the purposes of business continuity.Justify, negotiate, acquire and install an AS400 spool file management product (Print Manager – Macro4).Provide ‘day to day’ operational and technical support for the test and growing production AS400 environments. Resolve problems in the short term and suggest longer term solutions if appropriate. Design, develop and implement an invoice splitting tool using Macro4 ‘Print Manager’ and AS400 CL to locate and distribute invoices of a certain type to specific print destinations. Support for business service migrations, UAT and PRE production testing. Setup and administration of AS400 security.

Provide operational/technical assistance during an application migration from ‘OS/390 mainframe (MVS)’ to Windows and AS400 platforms. Review, acquire and implement a complete printing infrastructure for the new AS400 and Windows based Asset Finance application.Re-locate a production AS400 from Cheltenham to Redhill, take on and document operational processes. Eventually, assist with the merge of this independent platform onto the larger production ALFA environment. Provide ‘day to day’ operational and technical support. Resolve problems potentially spanning multiple and diverse platforms (includes AS400 and Windows).AS400 capacity planning and upgrades.Support for business service migrations and new business service implementations.

MVS/ESA V3 to OS/390 1.2 migration + all non IBM software. All platforms – DR, test, development and production.OS/390 1.2 to OS/390 2.5 migration + all non IBM software. All platforms – to include DR, test, development and production.Configure new mainframe with 4 x LPARs, develop/implement and maintain I/O configuration using HCD.Build 4 x OS/390 2.5 systems – install and customize all non-IBM software on the new systems.Day to day support, problem resolution and fix application.Assembler language exits coding.Millennium testing.

Croydon, United Kingdom

In brief-Head of the IT services organisation with both Direct Line group internal and external customers.Fast moving high pressure environment requiring high availability and measured service delivery.Responsible for 60 staff and a 20 million annual budget.Responsibilities -Provide a robust and cost effective IT service to each member company of the Direct Line Group and Privilege Insurance. Develop and maintain a technical infrastructure throughout the country upon which a robust IT service may be provided. Ensure that the IT service is never seen as a constraint to business activities. Produce and manage an annual budget of £20M. Negotiate hardware, software and services contracts. Maintain key customer and supplier relationships.Manage a department of 55 people (4 direct reports).Some achievements -Major hardware acquisitions including the installation of the first Hitachi Skyline processor to go into full production in the UK.Completely changed the IT service support organisation to operate as a provider of IT service to multiple companies in place of being the IT department of just one company (insurance) – great use of the emerging ITIL service delivery model.A total revamp of the central disk storage strategy resulting in a shift to EMC and very early production use of remote disk mirroring (SRDF). Provision of an extremely reliable and responsive IT service to all supported businesses.

Education record

Education record