Mike Barnes Email & Phone Number

Responsible for:- managing the technical support team- defining and running processes for pre- and post-sales technical operations- project managing customer deployments- defining whole-lifecycle propositions- writing and delivering customer training and documentation

Authored, designed and published "An Infinite Number of Monkeys: A Guide to Effective Business Communications". I wanted to put down on paper my perspective on business communications, and how the technology we use influences business process... and vice versa. The book covers unified communications, collaboration and social media/social networking as foundations, as well as themes such as BYOD, security, cloud and organising around information.I've also now published "The Long Way Home", a children's sci-fi story.As well as simply writing, the work involved a good deal of research in order to provide more than just opinion; I also designed and type-set the whole book, set up publisher links with Neilson, published the book in paperback through Createspace's print-on-demand service, and created a Kindle-format version. Though in many ways a labour of love, the experience has been extremely valuable to me in terms of exploring aspects of business communications beyond my core expertise. I also designed and implemented the complementary web pages.

Linked World provides communications consultancy services, through which I offer my expertise in Unified Communications/Collaboration and emerging corporate use of social networking tools. My speciality is Cisco UC, with experience in older technologies such as SS7 and of large projects in the hosted/managed space. I can help you with buying decisions, making the most of your investment, and in training, documentation and other forms of knowledge transfer.

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As Change Manager at Cisco, my role was to own the HUCS lifecycle for the BT HUCS project from requirements capture through to delivery and sign-off. I created a robust delivery process and led customer and delivery negotiations, also taking on the creation and maintenance of per-release and product documentation such as the high and low level designs, and the HUCS product description document.I also worked with the Cisco BU responsible for HCS, providing feedback of our project experiences, particular in terms of documentation, in order to capture lessons-learned and improve future releases.

As an SE on the BT account, I was responsible for the infrastructure voice projects in which Cisco was engaged with BT. This included the MMVoIP and VoIP Port product suite, providing hosted corporate voice and UC services, as well as the SP interconnect product, “IP Exchange”, and BT’s hosted contact centre product.The products I was responsible for included Cisco Unified CM (UCM), Cisco Contact Centre Enterprise (ICM/NAM), Cisco Unity, Cisco PGW, Cisco AS5400, Cisco MGX 8880 and the Cisco CUBE-SP (SBC) and the range of Cisco IP Phones and smaller gateways.Ongoing sales activities involved maintaining an understanding of BT’s market and objectives, as well as the impacts of their corporate structure, and positioning new Cisco products accordingly. As part of run-rate business, I handled end-of-life communication and uplift projects – building priced proposals and high-level designs.During much of the 9 years I was the lead technical interface to BT, and was instrumental in moving the relationship from one of a "box buying" CAPEX-based model to a true service wrap with OPEX-based pricing (the solution known as ‘HUCS’, now re-branded ‘HCS’).On a day-to-day basis I managed the customer relationship from a technical perspective, maintaining a structure of meetings, calls and other dialogue, working with the Account Manager to define the account plan. Where support escalation was required, I was involved in case analysis and customer messaging.I responded to a number of customer tenders (RFI/RFQ/RFP/ITT) including a successful bid for BT’s 21CN project where Cisco won the contract to deliver voice gateways as well as extensive IP routing and switching equipment.As part of a cabinet office multi-vendor group, I participated in meetings to define high level requirements for the voice (and related) services used around government and affiliated organisations. This fed into the Public Service Network (PSN) and Government Conveyance Network (GCN) initiatives.

* Joined to lead design aspects of an Alcatel/BT IN system.* Moved into the role of UK design authority for the BT chargecard replacement platform, an existing project.* Was made team-lead (1 report) for UK pre-sales and business development.* Worked throughout with colleagues in Belgium, who provided global tendering and engineering support.* Responsible for working with sales team to provide timely and professional responses to customer bid documents, also for providing design support to UK design, solutions and sales teams.

* Joined Concert as a direct employee rather than work-packaged from BT. Continued the same core role as when with BT.* Owned the core voice network design (detailed call flows), and the voice billing design.* Designed Concert replacements for the MCI DAP (their proprietary IN) and billing mediation systems. Provided detailed technical support to diverse groups such as marketing and billing teams to enable end-to-end service solutions for voice services and in particular billing.* Due to my proactive approach and global teamworking abilities, I won a "Top Honors" award (Concert's Chairman's Club programme), and a place on a trip to the Cayman Islands.

* Started with BT in the Network Intelligence Engineering Centre (IN).* Worked from the outset on global projects, mainly Concert but also BT Joint Ventures Telfort and VIAG. This involved a fair amount of travel within Europe and to the US.* Designed solutions alongside MCI colleagues using the DAP control technology from MCI.* Worked on various projects including a proposal to implement a VoIP network interfacing to the DAP, new voice services (VPN enhancements and global Inbound services).* Eventually was one of the key designers working on replacing the Concert systems when the MCI alliance ended with their merger with Worldcom. This involved working closely with vendors and marketing teams.

Bsc, Computing

Education record

A levels: Business Studies, Maths, Computing AS level: Maths GCSEs: Biology, French, English language, English literature, Physics, Maths.