Shane Mercer Email & Phone Number

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I'm delighted to announce my new role at ThunderLabs. In this role, I am committed to helping our customers by providing fresh, effective approaches tailored to their unique environments.Our three-stage development plan is designed with our customers' success in mind:1. Enhancing Existing Offerings: We will build upon our current services, integrating additional methodologies and offerings to help our customers deliver comprehensive digital solutions. We will introduce a new adaptive business architecture to help our customers refine their approach to software delivery, reducing complexity and ensuring higher reuse of assets across projects.2. AI-Assisted Development Team: We will establish an in-house AI-assisted development team to deliver cost-effective, high-quality solutions tailored to our customers' needs. This initiative will significantly reduce development costs and improve project outcomes, ensuring we provide exceptional value.3. Full End-to-End Product Development: Our goal is to evolve and offer a full end-to-end product development capability. This will enable us to deliver complete SaaS and AI-powered solutions from concept to deployment, enhancing our customers' ability to innovate and succeed. In time, we will also offer an at-cost service to startups and other entities where equity is available.We will help customers leverage AI in different parts of their business. We understand the concerns surrounding AI and are dedicated to using it as a tool to assist and augment human capabilities, not replace them.If you're in Sydney and have insights, views, and ideas you'd like to share to help us build our business in a way that supports you, I'd love to hear from you. Let's grab a coffee and chat about your realities and the challenges you face.Otherwise, if you just want to know more or collaborate, let's talk about how to harness the power of AI and digital solutions to help you drive success in your organisation. Please reach out!

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

With the release of ChatGPT 4.0, it became clear that AI was poised to be one of the most significant technological shifts ever seen. My early and extensive background in Systems Programming and Architecture provided the perfect foundation for delving into this coming-of-age field. Recognising the immense potential and implications of AI, I made the decision to dedicate the last 18 months to an intense exploration of all aspects of AI technology.This comprehensive journey included:1. Attending online Machine Learning lectures from leading universities, gaining academic insights into the theoretical foundations of AI.2. Closely following industry trends by watching interviews with prominent AI leaders, analysing diverse perspectives on AI's current state and future trajectory.3. Integrating GenAI tools into my daily workflow, with a particular focus on advanced prompt engineering and AI-assisted code generation.4. Designing, building, and training hundreds of Neural Networks, providing hands-on experience and deeper insights into the intricacies of AI systems.5. Exploring various AI models, architectures, frameworks and platforms.This immersion has enhanced my ability to identify practical AI applications across industries and provide strategic guidance on AI use cases and integration. My experience bridges the gap between deep software architecture knowledge and cutting-edge AI expertise.For businesses looking to innovate, I offer a unique blend of technical proficiency and business acumen. Whether you're aiming to enhance existing systems with AI, develop new AI-driven products, or navigate AI integration, I can provide valuable insights and hands-on experience. My approach ensures AI solutions are not only technologically sound but also aligned with your strategic goals, delivering tangible business value in this new era of technology.

Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

Needless to say, like many other people, my plans to permanently relocate to Sydney (March 2020) didn’t factor in the Covid-19 craziness. From a personal perspective, I managed to get caught in every single lock-down on both sides of the Tasman, finding myself in the worst possible place at the worst time. While this limited my work to NZ based opportunities, I was still fortunate to be able to work on some amazing initiatives, which included:Contract with NEC Innovation, working on iQuarantine, this was an innovative mobile solution for Covid-19 self-managed quarantining, based on proven NEC biometric face recognition technology used in NZ Govt.Worked with a small team to bring a novel Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) to the NZ market, based on 2020 & 2021 research, that came out of the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, in Israel. My role focused on innovations that would provide us with a competitive advantage in the market; when we presented to investors, we needed to demonstrate benefits using digital technologies, that would be hard to copy (included creating IP and filing a provisional patent). Following on from this, I then assisted with the setup of the first hyperbaric chamber in NZ (outside of two hospitals) to deliver the Israel protocol. This included designing and creating a multimedia software solution, to manage the HBOT sessions.The past 11 Months, has also seen me undertake a significant refurbishment of my 29-year-old house in NZ, prior to putting it on the market. My need to own this was due to the lack of availability of almost any type of trades-person in NZ, and delays caused by Covid-19 outbreaks in the first half of 2022.

New Zealand / Australia

Joined the Certus team after they acquired Core Technology and responsible for building one of the largest Digital Business portfolios in A/NZ. My focus was to bring more UX design and delivery to our enterprise clients; using a multi-speed IT approach that respects enterprise constraints AND delivers the speed required by the business driven initiatives.To achieve this, I was privileged to work with, and lead a team of talented professionals in the areas of UX/UI Design, Enterprise Software Development, Integration, Architecture (Cloud/Infrastructure) and Product development. My responsibilities involved all business aspects, including strategy, planning, budgets, P&L management, risk management, HR, sales, client management, vendor management, delivery and support.As a key part of the delivery capability within Certus, Solution Partners are also encouraged to undertake billable assignments; my last two projects were, the project management of a DataStage to Cloud project for Sydney Trains, and a Cloud Transformation Consultancy for a KPMG (NZ) client.

Nz

An entrepreneur who led the design, build and commercialisation of Aviarc; the first fully cloud-based development platform that enabled the development of loosely coupled, micro-service-based web applications. This included creating all of the conceptual designs, architecture and high-level artifacts used by developers to implement the details of the system (we filed seven international patents that covered this work).The innovations behind the technology were extremely challenging at first, however once software development leaders took up the challenge, everyone got behind the vision and the team exceeded my expectations. In turn, this provided me space to then focus on strategic partnerships, marketing, sales, reference customers, and investors.For 3-4 years, I was constantly on planes to the USA, where I worked with tech focused marking organisations, and built a long lasting and valued partnership with IBM executives. The NZ Governments innovation and market access programs were extremely helpful; we often traveled with other companies as a part of the NZ start-up community, and it provided an incredible amount of insight, with the sharing of lessons learnt.

Wellington & Wairarapa, New Zealand

Shane has an extensive entrepreneurial and consulting background in technology and IT, co-founding Core Technology in 1993. From 2000, he became the CEO and went about growing the company from 4 staff to 70, averaging 25% year on year organic growth and setting up offices in three different A/NZ locations. In late 2015, Shane sold Core Technology to Certus Solutions (the largest IBM partner in the region) as part of a strategic move to accelerate market uptake of their Cloud and Aviarc offerings.Shane has a consultative leadership style and a passion for excellence. Driven to realise a dream of making business problem solving and software development intuitive, practical and simple for all, he led the company into building a world-class research and development capability in 2004. His uncompromising desire to use technology to serve people, meant approaching R&D from a totally fresh perspective; this incorporated an extremely high degree of innovation and a completely new approach to the way business software was designed and built (so business users have certainty they will get exactly what they expect).Shane is regularly invited to speak to IBM business partners, customers and ISVs at various events; in North America, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. In mid 2010, Shane was appointed as advisor on cloud computing strategy to the New Zealand Government and has served as an advisor to a global IT corporation on cloud computing strategy and futures.

Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

Established the architecture team within Core Technology in 2000; and personally led our first major project in NZ Police, which was working as part of a broader project team to sort out a major failed project (INCIS). Our responsibilities included rearchitecting parts of their environment, and applications platform, sorting migration, security, performance and integration issues, and databases – this was a very hands-on role for me, including project management, writing a lot of code and system utilities, and even updating a mission critical Cobol program. We were delighted to be involved in this challenging but rewarding project, and our work received a special Police Commissioners award. This was a nearly four-year endeavour that I worked on full time, following this engagement, and the growth we were achieving, my focus switched to running and growing Core Technology, and launching a major product development called Aviarc.