Michael Barlow Email & Phone Number

Manchester, England, United Kingdom

Manchester, England, United Kingdom

Home Office, Data Services and Analytics• Planning and delivery of a transition project to move services and roles away from incumbent supplier to Home Office sourced team comprising permanent and contract staff whilst maintaining delivery cadence.• Production of Statements of Work to ensure that objectives are clearly stated and delivered according to wider programme goals and timescales.• Key contributor to the design and recruitment of a new team structure to improve ways of working and ensure that the costs associated align with the budget forecasts• Close liaison with Commercial Directorate to produce and progress supplier contracts and supporting documentation.Home Office, Cyber Security Operations Centre• Review of software patch management practices through close co-operation with internal and external teams providing support and maintenance to Home Office IT estate.• Review of operational practices of threat and vulnerability management (TVM) solution including:o Reallocation of licences to ensure critical coverage.o Changes to improve efficiency of contract.o Improvement in time taken to complete scans by more specific targeting of sites.o Training of key staff in CSOC, ITOC, and DevOps teams

Warrington, United Kingdom

• Delivery of programme of improvements to key internal infrastructure and business applications including:o Upgrade of Service Management and Billing solutiono Migration to the cloud of Print Management solution including database clean-up and improvement of automated reports from 40% to over 85%

Bolton, United Kingdom

Responsible for management of all IT infrastructure for the Acorn Care and Education Group, the UKs leading independent provider of specialist education, foster care and residential care for vulnerable children and young adults.Key Achievements• Stabilisation of the IT infrastructure through major Active Directory consolidation and multiple O365 email migrations. Disaster recovery built-in through replication between on-premise servers and further offsite replication to a server co-located within the ISP data centre. o Prioritisation of areas for improvement based on risk assessment and business need. o Preparation of proposals and supporting business cases for board approval. o Creation of master project plan to deliver multiple sub-projects using appropriate methodologies. o Management of all projects through to completion including adjustments where justified.• Creation of a Service Desk with back office technical support using a blend of experienced staff, internal promotions and apprentices. Average monthly call rate of approximately 800 incidents and requests. • Ongoing assessment of infrastructure and vetting of IT requirements for viability followed by project start up and management through to completion. • Creation, testing and ownership of disaster recovery plans and contribution to business continuity planning. • Production of management reports for board meetings detailing service desk activity, key achievements, points of risk and opportunities for improvement.

Ellesmere Port, Cheshire

Sole UK IT presence for an international leader in hazardous waste management and recycling. Responsible for all areas of IT infrastructure, inclusive of data, voice and video conferencing, for 17 locations across the UK.Key Achievements• Reduction of multiple support agreements leading to the selection of a single strategic partner providing outsourced service desk, technical support and project resource. Immediate benefits realised including significant cost savings and service improvement.• Delivery of project to integrate multiple sites nationwide onto pan-European MPLS network. Follow-up projects to migrate on-premise MS Exchange servers to a single Office 365 tenancy and consolidation of multiple legacy domains onto newly created single Windows 2012 AD domain.• Integration of multi-site acquisition again including server consolidation, email migration, hardware refresh and transfer of network services.• Major telephony review for mobile and fixed services undertaken. All services transferred to single supplier resulting in a reduction of over 50% in call charges and line rental. Project also launched to replace legacy landline switches with Avaya IP Office.• Project management of all IT services to help establish a new head office and transfer of services and resources.

Warrington, Cheshire

Focussing on threat posed by Windows Server and Workstation operating systems not being patched to the necessary levels. This role was the key point of liaison and escalation between key stakeholders including IT operations, IT security, service management and representatives from the wider business.Key Achievements• Creation and ownership of IT Security Patch Management Policy and supporting process documents for the WINTEL estate of approximately 10,000 workstations and 1,000 servers (Windows, Citrix, VMware).• Point of contact between IT operations and stakeholder representatives to ensure full understanding and agreement for all releases including risks posed by non-compliance.• Coordination and management of software maintenance schedules for existing services and devices with representation for all changes and releases at the weekly change approval board.• Management of a risk register for non-compliant servers / services.• On-boarding of new projects to ensure correct software levels at go live with agreement for subsequent updates and provision made for maintenance windows.

Prescot, Merseyside

Numerous roles ranging from hands-on support through to consultancy.Key Achievements• Creation of disaster recovery solutions to cover the Windows server estate for Vertex and several key clients. Consultation with the business to determine the criticality of the systems and subsequent recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO). • Design and implementation of multi-tier anti-virus solution ahead of Y2K. • Windows infrastructure lead on a project to provide billing services for TXU. Circa 1,000 call centre staff and devices migrated between the two company’s infrastructures. • Project lead in a team responsible for the delivery of a major Windows server virtualisation and NAS project.

Prescot, Merseyside

Role transferred from Vertex to Capgemini under TUPE before being brought back in-house at termination of contract.