Jane Curry

Tel: 01628 782565

director and network & systems management consultant

Consultancy / IT / Training / Education / Open Source / Zenoss / Tivoli / Business

Executive Summary:

A consultant with 30 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 awarded the title of “Zenoss Master” in February 2009, 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 Technology Engineering Maths (STEM) 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 combined remote / on-site Zenoss consultancy to build a wireless ZenPack, including skills transfer, for a Portuguese client

• Delivered design, installation and configuration support on Zenoss to a large UK charity

• Delivered ongoing remote Zenoss support to a New York educational institution, including ZenPack build and configuration

• Author of the 3-day “Zenoss Event Management” and 1-day “Zenoss Introduction and FastStart” workshops (Skills 1st material), delivered several times.

• Author of 7 in-depth Zenoss documents published on the Zenoss website ,and 2 Zenoss articles published in “Linux User & Developer” magazine

• Author of 9 Zenoss ZenPacks published on the Zenoss website

• 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).

• 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.

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, CITP Member of the British Computer Society, Chartered IT Professional

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

Zenoss Master

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

• UKUUG Winter Conference, February 2005

• Tivoli Technical Conference, Dallas, May 2005

• 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

• DevOpsDays conference, Ghent, December 2009

• LOADays open source conference, Antwerp, April 2011

Publications, Courses and Presentations

“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

“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

“Integrating NetView with the Tivoli Enterprise Console”, Tivoli Technical Conference, Dallas, May '05

“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 Event Management Workshop”, 3-day class, September 2009

“Zenoss Introduction and FastStart Workshop“, 1-day class, October 2009

“Getting started with Zenoss network and systems management”, Linux User & Developer, March 2010

“Introduction to Zenoss” presentation to British Computer Society Open Source Group, May 2010

“Zenoss Event Management”, Linux User & Developer, August 2010

“Zenoss FastStart in 2 hours Workshop”, LOADays conference, Antwerp, April 2011