01010111 01100101 01101100 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01000101 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 01101111 01101110 01100101

Welcome To My Blog!

I’ve been working in IT for over 25 years since I graduated from university with degree in Computer Science in 2001.  I started work initially in the travel industry for a MSP based at London Heathrow, looking after some of the UK’s flagship airlines, working in a paced environment working to 30min ‘fix’ SLA’s for some customer – this was a fantastic experience as it introduced me to dealing with high pressure, intense scenarios and being able to resolve incidents under pressure.

A few years later, I took a BIG leap into London’s finance industry as a contractor.  Working 6-12 month gig’s over a few years. I worked on a few deployments of Citrix Metaframe farms across some the worlds biggest banking institutes, worked on some merger and divesture activities involving work related to Microsoft Active Directory and also got my first taste of virtualisation – VMware GSX server.

Due to my experience working on M&A activities I was approached to work on a recent acquisition for a major energy company, which involved AD integration, new virtualisation environment and Exchange messaging system integrations.  Whilst working on this contract I was offered a permanent job – which I accepted.

I’ve since then worked in the global energy industry across the UK and North America – working for and with some of the major operators.

Over the years I’ve had the privilege of working with many technologies but my ‘core’ areas of expertise have fallen into the infrastructure and security domains – below is a list of a few technologies where I consider myself an SME with certifications to support.

·        Microsoft Active Directory

o   DNS, DHCP, GPO, DFS-r, ADFS & PKI.

o   Quest Active Role Server & Recovery Manager for AD.

·        Microsoft EntraID

o   M365 Administration – SSO & Inc Teams

·        Microsoft Exchange On-Prem and Exchange Online

o   Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange

o   ProofPoint

·        VMware vSphere

·        IT Forensic - eDiscovery

·        Nutanix HCI Technologies, HPC & NDB.

·        Cohesity & Veritas Backup

·        SentinelOne EDR and Identity Protection

·        Datacenter Design and Management

·        SOX Compliance

·        SilverFort

·        CheckPoint Harmony SASE

·        Vendor Management

I’ve built relationship and networks with vendors and peers over the years who I collaborate with regularly and have had the opportunity to speak publicly at events to share my learns.

I’ve obtained many technical certifications over the years from many vendors and specialist IT bodies, some listed below.

·        Microsoft

·        VMware

·        Citrix

·        NetApp

·        ISC2 - CISSP

·        SANS – GIAC

·        Nutanix

·        ITIL

·        TOGAF

I’ve also had the opportunity to attend many conferences over the year, some major conferences listed below.

·        Microsoft MMS & Ignite

·        VMWorld

·        Nutanix .Next

·        Gartner Infrastructure and Operations Conference

Over the past few years, I’ve obtained an accolade from Nutanix to be a part of their Nutanix Technology Champion (NTC) program – this program has provided me the opportunity to speak at several Nutanix .Next conferences across the world - sharing my learnings with fellow Nutanix users from across the global.  I shall cover more of what I do as an NTC in future blogs.

Of recent, I’ve shifted my focus to transition into a more architectural role specialising in Infrastructure and IT Security – bringing together my vast knowledge and experience from over the years to help design, govern and provide technical strategic direction aligned to business goals to drive positive business outcome.