Jane Curry
jane.curry@skills-1st.co.uk
Tel: 01628 782565
director and network & systems management consultant
Consultancy / IT /Training / Education /Pre-Sales / Business
Executive Summary:
A consultant with 29 years experience in operating systems, communications and systems management. Highly experienced in many business sectors with an IT skill-set ranging from microcomputers to mainframes. An IBM Certified Tivoli Consultant and Instructor dedicated to providing high quality systems and network management consultancy with a commitment to education and training. More recently, Jane has been working with Open Source systems management offerings such as Zenoss, OpenNMS and Nagios and was recently awarded the title of “Zenoss Master” by Zenoss Inc. A professional member of the British Computer Society well versed in educating others regarding technical roles in business computing.
Jane is also very interested in promoting IT as a career, especially for women. To this end, she is a Science Engineering Technology (SET) Ambassador and has acted as mentor to a female postgraduate student in the IT department at Oxford Brookes University.
Career History:
1997 – Present
Skills 1st Limited, Director & Consultant
· Formed the company in October 1997 to further an independent career as a network and systems management consultant.
· Engagements are predominantly a mixture of systems and network management design, hands-on customisation and scripting, technical project management, and skills transfer.
· Delivered Tivoli consultancy over a period of 4 months providing help with implementation design, skills transfer and hands-on assistance with the pilot rollout. Retained for a further 6 months to develop strategic plans for extending Tivoli beyond the initial Windows environment to encompass UNIX, VMS and the network. Second 6-month contract extension delivered the implementation of pro-active and re-active systems management of AIX and Solaris systems using Tivoli Distributed Monitoring and the Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC).
· Successful completion of many separate 10-20 day contracts to install and customise Tivoli NetView, often incorporating element manager software such as NetView Mid Level Managers (MLMs), IBM Nways Campus Manager or CiscoWorks. Most engagements also include integration with other applications in the Tivoli suite, predominantly TEC and IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM).
· Retained on a 2-year contract to act as Visiting Professor to an extensive, in-depth Tivoli training course to bring real-life experience to trainee Tivoli consultants. Contract was renewed twice.
· Developer of several advanced Tivoli classes for IBM to explore the integration between Tivoli Framework, Tivoli NetView, Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC) and IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM). These were redeveloped and updated as Skills 1st material in 2004.
· Teaches the Tivoli Framework, Tivoli NetView, IBM Tivoli Monitoring and Tivoli Enterprise Console courses for IBM in several countries and for other training clients.
· Leader of the global IBM NetView Tivoli User Group.
· Teaches “Total SNMP for Engineers” 3-day class for a specialist training provider.
· Delivered combined remote / on-site Zenoss consultancy to build a wireless ZenPack, including skills
transfer
· Author of the 3-day “Zenoss Event Management Workshop” class (Skills 1st material).
1986 - 1997
IBM United Kingdom Ltd. Open Systems Consultant
· Joined IBM shortly after they announced their first UNIX offerings.
· Delivered UNIX support to government customers.
· Subsequently focused on networking as an Account Systems Engineer supporting British Telecom and as an IBM branch-networking specialist supporting government and utilities customers.
· Moved to IBM’s Communications and Connectivity Centre in 1991 working with a wide range of hardware, both IBM and non-IBM related providing both pre-sales marketing and post-sales consultancy.
· Between 1993 and 1996 led the consultancy group delivering distributed network and systems management solutions to customers across all business sectors. Provided business development analysis and tracking of these offerings.
· Acted as mentor to new team members.
· Returned to pre-sales role in March 1996 with the Tivoli product set, building a customer demonstration centre. Drove proof-of-concept trials with finance and retail customers. Delivered Tivoli education, alongside a technical customer account management role.
1983 -1986
University of London, Senior Microcomputer Analyst
· Managed the microcomputer laboratory within the Computer Centre of Kings College, London.
· Designed and installed connectivity between a wide range of micro and mainframe computers.
· Made purchasing recommendations covering microcomputer hardware, software and communications.
· Developed and taught part of a 1-year MSc in Computer Science.
· Managed the Centre's UNIX development system.
1980 - 1983
University of Reading, Microcomputer Analyst
· Designed and built several microprocessor prototypes including Cambridge Ring Local Area Network (LAN) stations.
· Completed large software conversion projects to port language emulators from PRIME and DEC to Norsk Data minicomputers.
Education
BSc Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) (Upper Second grade), Reading University
MBCS Member of the British Computer Society
CEng Chartered Engineer
IBM/Tivoli IBM Certified Advanced Consultant (Framework 3.7, NetView 7.1.4, TEC 3.9, IBM Tivoli Monitoring V5.1.2 and V6.1, User Administration 3.6).
Tivoli Certified Instructor
Professional ITIL Foundation certification
Training
Cisco Networker conference, Vienna, October, 1999
SANS Security conference, London, November, 1999
SHARE conference, Anaheim, March 2000
Planet Tivoli, Madrid, June 2000
UKUUG Winter Conference, Newcastle, February 2001
Planet Tivoli, Vienna, June 2001
UKUUG Winter Conference & Perl Workshop, London, February 2002
Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.8, 2-week residency, IBM Hursley, May 2002
Planet Tivoli, New Orleans, April 2003
Tivoli Risk Manager Teach-The-Teachers, June 2004
UKUUG Winter Conference, February 2005
Tivoli Technical Conference, Dallas, May 2005
IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1 Teach-The-Teacher classes, Nov 2005, Feb 2006, Sept 2006
Tivoli Technical Conference, Montpellier, May 2006
Tivoli Technical Conference, Rome, May 2007
UKUUG LISA Conference, London, March 2009
RT 1-day tutorial, London, August 2009
Publications
"Experiences in Managing Networks using NetView/6000", Euro-Unite Proceedings, Sept. 1992
“Systems Management Frameworks - The Promise and the Practice”, UK LISA 98, April 1998
“Integrating Network and Systems Management” SHARE Conference Proceedings, March 2000
“Tivoli Integrated Network Management Masterclass”, IBM Learning Services 5-day class, May 2001
“SNMP Agents for Solaris and their Integration with NetView and Mid Level Managers”, Tivoli Field Guides, July 2002
“Integrating NetView with Tivoli Availability Products ”, IBM Learning Services 5-day class, May 2003
“Differences between TEC 3.8 & 3.9 with respect to NetView 7.1.4”, NetView Tivoli User Group, Jan '04
“Exploring servmon & itmquery functionality in NetView 7.1.4”, NetView Tivoli User Group, March '04
“NetView / TEC Integration Workshop”, Skills 1st Limited 2.5-day class, July 2004
“NetView / ITM Integration Workshop”, Skills 1st Limited, 1.5-day class, July 2004
“NetView / TEC / ITM Integration Workshop”, Skills 1st Limited, 1-day class, July 2004
“Integrating NetView with the Tivoli Enterprise Console”, Tivoli Technical Conference, Dallas, May '05
“Integrating NetView with the Tivoli Enterprise Console”, Tivoli Tech Conference, Montpellier, May '06
“Integrating ITM 6.1 with NetView 7.1.5”, Tivoli Technical Conference, Rome, June 2007
“Open Source Management Options”, 150-page discussion of Zenoss, OpenNMS and Nagios, Sept. '08
“Managing networks and systems with Zenoss”, UKUUG LISA conference, London, March 2009
Papers published on Zenoss website http://community.zenoss.org/people/jcurry?view=documents :
“Zenoss Discovery and Classification”, April 2009
“Crafting Zenoss Core users for events and zProperties”, April 2009
“Methods of monitoring processes with Zenoss”, June 2009
“Creating Zenoss ZenPacks”, September 2009
“Zenoss Event Management”, September 2009
“Zenoss Event Management Workshop”, 3-day class, September 2009