About me

I’m a certified IT technical specialist on the IBM POWER System i platform (aka AS/400, i5 or iSeries), with many years of experience in managing enterprise-class machines in manufacturing, insurance, banking and education industry sectors.

After some FORTRAN learnt at university I started my career in IT as a COBOL developer working on an IBM S/370 mainframe. My geeky side gradually got the better of me and I moved on to become an MVS/CICS system programmer, teaching myself Assembler along the way. I had my first exposure to the AS/400 as it was then known way back in 1989 and I have pretty well worked on nothing else since.

My skills are centred around IBM i (OS/400) system administration and logical partition management, configuring virtualised I/O on POWER hardware using HMC and VIOS appliances, implementing and testing high-availability solutions using MIMIX and Maxava HA data replication software, security administration, performance monitoring, BRMS tape management and programming in CL, COBOL, RPG and machine interface (MI) languages – all things System i in fact.

A particular speciality of mine is in developing ‘dark site’ automated operations environments using software products such as the ROBOT and Halcyon suites. With my extensive programming experience exploiting advanced features such as ILE service programs I can do far more than just knock out a few lines of CL. I can create sophisticated yet reliable solutions that are easy to use and will cater for most operational situations. I’ve frequently been amazed at the manual processes I’ve seen in some shops and the lack of awareness of what can be done to improve things without spending a lot of effort.

As well as my technical abilities I have good communication skills and an excellent standard of spoken and written English. I also have a healthy dose of common sense and can think with a clear head in times of crisis.

In my spare time I enjoy taking photographs and tinkering with various electronic contraptions. I also own a classic car which has recently been restored.