CURRICULUM VITAE
PETER GROOM
B.Eng. (Hons), C.Eng, MIEE, MIEEE, CISSP
PROFILE
A commercially focused, senior manager with significant interpersonal, project, and operational experience gained with a number of major high technology internationals. A forward thinker and troubleshooter with strong mentoring skills, offering extensive expertise in building and leading cross-discipline, global teams, coupled with a highly consultative, client facing outlook. An experienced project manager with good knowledge of the project life-cycle and a reputation for service delivery.
KEY SKILLS
1. Considerable management experience in high-pressure environments, across multiple countries, cultures and time zones, using outsourcing as part of the mix when viable.
2. Defines and delivers IT strategy whilst prioritising tactical solutions as necessary, to provide maximum business benefit and competitive advantage.
3. Considerable troubleshooting experience gained whilst turning around problem services, previously viewed as ‘basket’ cases. In almost all cases, the ‘get-well plans’ included people, process and technology aspects in order to return the services to good health and financial stability.
4. Familiar with all aspects of both project and development life cycles, with very strong emphasis on service delivery.
5. Can manage change across the entire organization, using influencing and communications skills.
6. Able to prioritise demand for IT services while promoting a climate of continuous improvement.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Chartered Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (C.Eng, MIEE)
Member of the British Computer Society (BCS)
Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (MIEEE)
Member of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA)
PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS
Certified Internet Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
Netscreen Certified System Administrator (NCSA)
Checkpoint Certified System Engineer (CCSE) & Administrator (CCSA)
Certified Cisco Network Associate (CCNA) & Professional (CCNP) & Security Professional (CCSP)
Enterasys Accredited Systems Engineer (Routing, Switching & Wireless) (ESE)
HP OpenView accredited consultant (NNM) & integration consultant (VantagePoint Operations)
Tivoli certified consultant (NetView)
Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris
PROFESSIONAL COMMITTEES
Industrial Liason Officer with the UK Chapter of the IEEE
Member of the ISSA Standards committee
Member of the IEEE Computer Committee
Technical Advisory Panel member for the IEE Communication Networks Services Committee
ARTICLES & RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
‘The IT Security Model’, published in the IEEE Potentials magazine, October/November 2003
Authored an Internet-Draft describing a standard for measuring the performance of VPNs
‘To Patch or Not to Patch; When is the Question’, currently with the editor of the ISSA News magazine
CAREER REVIEW - HIGHLIGHTS
IT Director (EMEA) promoted to CTO (Europe & Emerging Markets) Jul 2005 – TO DATE
Sportingbet Plc
• This role was to take an existing IT function and turn it into a world leader, with a background of explosive growth. In the last 12 months, the revenue for EMEA increased 3.5 times.
• The ineffective structure was changed so that there were 5 distinct areas – Projects, Operations, Infrastructure, Internal Development and Outsourced Development. Each area had a Head, who set up their own teams and produced ‘get-well plans’ under my overall guidance.
• Cultural change was initiated and is ongoing for both the business and IT. This involves influencing and mentoring across all areas of the business and at all levels.
• Production capacity has been increased from 4,500 bets per hour to over 21,000 on Grand National, and from 12,000 bets per day to 190,000, using an architecture called N-Silo. Ongoing, there is a Tuning Group made up of all parties that optimizes and tunes the systems.
• At Board level, members have sought guidance on all IT matters, including acquisition targets
• An IT strategy was created for both 2005 & 2006, including all areas of the business and future proofing IT investment. These strategies were communicated to all of the business and IT, as well as at Board level.
• Project prioritisation was introduced whereby every department head attended a bi-weekly meeting to jointly assess all new projects. As a result, the top 80 out of 750 projects are actively worked on by IT with full business support, considerably enhancing the bottom line.
• A full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) for both internal and external development was introduced. A further, more agile, SDLC is used for small projects.
• A virtual support team was created, made of sysadmin, DBA, desktop, tester and developer-of-the-week. This team ensures that all staff can do some support and some project work.
• Release Management was overhauled and the Test team brought in-house to boost quality
• Compliance with PCI regulations are currently underway as is full DR/BCP
• The entire IT environment is monitored and automatic actions taken to resolve faults. Automation is a key driver within the Infrastructure team and coupled with standardization, has produced significant cost benefits as well as rapid deployment.
Head of Systems Oct 2004 – Jun 2005
Lastminute Plc
• This was the second assignment at Lastminute and had the same objective as the first (see below) – fix the service, make it run automatically and within budget.
• Responsible for 4 departments – Server Support, Systems Engineering, Data Centre and Network & Security.
• Responsibility covered Lastminute.com and all 8 of its subsidiaries (AllHotels, HolidayAutos, TravelSelect, TravelStore, HolidaysandMore, First Options, MedHotels and OTC)
• This assignment was more technology focused, so while the Java/J2EE, Jboss and Dynamo exposure in the previous assignment was useful, on this assignment the focus was on operating systems (Windows, Linux and Solaris mostly) and databases (Informix, Oracle, Microsoft SQL server, MySQL and PostGres). Part of the reason was that to gain the system efficiencies and productivity gains, significant system integration, server and data centre consolidation was necessary. This consolidation also made Disaster Recovery much easier to plan.
• Used my remit as a troubleshooter to move freely across the whole of IT and the business, resolving problems, instituting pragmatic processes where necessary and using my influencing & communication skills to bring about change in areas where I had no direct authority.
Head of Production May 2004 – Oct 2004
Lastminute Plc
• Head hunted by the Lastminute CTO, ex Managing Director at CSFB, who needed an experienced troubleshooter to ‘make the pain go away’.
• 2 predecessors to this first assignment rather spectularly failed and the expected duration of the task was 2 years. After 5 months, the work was complete.
• Responsible for the Technical Operations and Database Administration teams. This numbered 30 staff with a further 45 outsourced offshore when I first arrived. These were reorganized and restructured to make them far more efficient and effective.
• Year end came in at 1% under budget, as opposed to 12% over budget when I first arrived.
• Defined and drove the IT strategy, providing processes so that tactical solutions could be prioritized to provide maximum business benefit.
• Project managed, and mentored selected others to also project manage, a multitude of projects (both business and technical) that provided improved cost efficiency & competitive advantage.
• Set up regular service reviews and SLAs with both internal and external customers and built very strong links with them.
VP EMEA Operations CaST (Connectivity & Security) 2001 – 2004
Credit Suisse First Boston
• Locally responsible for 24 people on a follow-the-sun basis with dotted line responsibility to nearly 50 globally.
• Operationally responsible for all aspects of both centralized and distributed networked Internet facing environments, across 14 sites globally. This includes Ecommerce, VPN and Browsing infrastructures which currently pass over 88Gb of data daily.
• Also responsible for all EMEA Third Party connections utilizing over 150 firewall pairs, including links some nearly 500 exchanges, third party vendors and remote applications. During the core hours of the day, the team is responsible for the global infrastructure which is nearly 400 firewall pairs.
• Installed and configured Dragon IDS system on a global basis across 14 sites, replacing a number of Snort and Cisco systems. This project was in excess of 1.5 million dollars and took 15 months.
CONSULTANT (IT Consultant) 1999 - 2001
LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS
• Designed and was chief architect for a global data fault management implementation, including disaster recovery.
• Configured and troubleshooted Ethernet, Fast & Gigabit Ethernet, Token Ring, ISDN, ATM, Frame Relay, Channelised E1/T1, DDR, Trunking, Spanning Tree optimisation, RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, route redistribution, BGP, IPX NLSP, tunnelling, NAT, HSRP, SRB, DLSW+, VoIP, queuing and traffic shaping.
CONSULTANT (Technical Consultant) 1997 - 1999
COMPUTER SCIENCES CORPORATION (BhS)
• Installed and administered a 15000+ node LAN and WAN HP OpenView system, running on an HP 9000 node using HP-UX v.10.20 and Solaris 2.6, running on an Oracle 7.3.4 database. Also responsible for the installation and administration of UNIX implementations of CiscoWorks, Optivity and Transcend. Upgraded HP OpenView, Ciscoworks, Optivity and Transcend to the latest versions.
• Responsible for planning several major sections of a new BhS Head OfficeWAN, involving the detailed technical planning for both Wellfleet & Cisco router cutovers.
DATACOMMUNICATIONS ANALYST 1996 - 1997
COMPUTER SCIENCES CORPORATION (Autoglass)
• Responsible for the management of a 2000+ node WAN (using DEC VAXs, VMS and Ingres) and a 1000+ node LAN for a client, using Sun Sparcs, Solaris and Informix.
• Responsible for Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Token Ring and FDDI LANs, as well as SNA (in an MVS, CICS, VTAM environment), PPP, and Frame Relay WANs.
• Managed several new items of equipment including Centillion Ethernet switches,Wellfleet/Bay ASN, AN and BLNs; Cisco 2500/4700s; Bay Distributed 5000 hubs; Racal INX5000,NTS and Emulex terminal servers; Sun Sparc routing; Racal Brouters and Racal Omnimux multiplexers.
COMMUNICATIONS TECHNICIAN 1994 - 1996
THAMES WATER UTILITIES
• Responsible for 5 communications networks, totalling nearly 100 nodes, including FDDI & X.25 bridge and router networks, including the addressing for both the TCP/IP and DECnet aspects.
• Responsible for the 80km Thames Water Ring Main fibre optic cable. This required the use of OTDRs and optical loss meters to diagnose breaks.
• Responsible for 700+ BT leased lines and PSTNs used in the networks.
GRADUATE TRAINEE 1992 - 1994
THAMES WATER UTILITIES
• Achieved the IEE’s structured training requirements in half the usual time.
• Wrote Invitations to Tender, specifications, feasibility studies and criticality assessments.
• Trained in management skills such as assertiveness, budgeting and negotiating.
STUDENT ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS ENGINEER 1988 - 1992
AEI CABLES (GEC)
• I was the only electronic engineer on site, so I was project manager, design engineer and maintenance engineer all rolled into one. This allowed me to gain a very good understanding of the life cycle and roles within a project. The projects I completed ranged from creating new instrumentation panels to writing an 8000 line C++ program to monitor batch processing.
EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX 1989 - 1992
• Gained an Upper Second class in B.Eng. (Hons) Electronic Systems Engineering.
TUNBRIDGE WELLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL FOR BOYS 1981 - 1988
• Gained 5 A levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Technical Drawing.
• Gained 11 O levels including Maths, Additional Maths, English Language, French and Spanish
INTERESTS
Research into the Earth’s magnetic field, Goshin-Jujitsu, Badminton and Football.
PERSONAL DETAILS
Date of birth: 15th November 1969.
Married, no children.
Driving license: Full UK.
WEB SITES
Personal web site:
http://www.petergroom.com
Company web site:
http://www.network-knowledge.co.uk
