My Job Today
Time for me to get back to building systems and high-energy antics of a software startup. I had wanted to start to focus my career deeper into an industry vertical. After over-analyzying the situation I came to choose Healthcare/LifeSciences as the industry I wanted to focus my efforts on. I had the good fortune to be introduced to Eric Sun, the CEO and Founder of QS Labs
The end-result is that I am now at QS Labs and building both products and the company. The offical line is that Quality Systems Laboratories (QS Labs) is a global compliance management and solutions provider for the life sciences and healthcare industries. With a mission to integrate people, process, and performance through intelligent compliance solutions for companies that are required to meet regulatory and quality standards. Or in other words, we are trying to bring together very sound processes and technology to help life science and healthcare firms meet FDA and JCAHO regulations via sound compliance and quality systems that actually improve quality.
eBuilt was the result of four frustrated engineers with a passion for building things and two proven business builders. We all share the results oriented no-frills approach to solving problems and building value.
The mission of eBuilt was to build systems that pleased both the engineers that did the work and the CFO/CEO types that approved the project in the first place. The four of us built a team at eBuilt with the experience, skills and scars needed to deliver business critical systems using the correct technology in a manner that was almost sober and sane. The four of us, and those that we brought on board, had come from IT backgrounds rather than the consulting world and understood what worked in the real world. We strived for sound architecture and a suitable infrastructure. We found that our technical staff knew technology had value AFTER it was successfully applied to a business problem. We built a team that had the software, system and network engineering skills to architect and build systems that for whatever the future and business demanded. At one point our staff swelled to nearly 300 great people.
My role morphed into driving the solution strategy and requisite technology, and helping the sales staff sell our eBuilt's services. I no longer got to wrangle directly with system and networking issues. Though occasionally I got to live vicariously through eBuilt customers with engagements where I found myself helping IT departments deal with things like Internet Operations, enterprise architecture, network engineering and datacenter development. So I am living vicariously through my customers. To keep contact with my peers and the great minds solving issues in local corporations I helped found and facilitate the Orange County IT Council, as well as the So.Cal. Websphere User Group where I get to surround myself with folks much smarter and wiser than I am.
I left in November of 2004, it was hard to leave a company I had founded, but it was overdue. Two months later the company was sold to an Indian OffShore Outsourcing firm...(what is the HTML tag for heavy sigh?) ...
Prior to eBuilt I was at Adforce, a company founded as IMGIS .
I was originally hired to engineer the production network and the management systems. After our first production launch and the fun that ensued, I was given ownership of the production systems and the title of Manager of Operations. As the company and the system grew, so did my responsibilities. My titles changed from Manager to Director then finally to Executive Director. Basically the same job, with more and more staff to help and systems to manage. In two years we went from nothing and zero ads delivered to over 200 Million ads delivered in a single day. During my last month as an AdForce employee we served over 330 Million ads in a day, the pace necessary for 10 Billion in a month.
Everything about the AdForce environment grew large, we went from 1 T1 and one datacenter to two datacenters and 12 T3's , my last storage purchase was over 10TB, growing total storage to nearly 20TB, we had well over 200 Sun servers in production, from Sun Ultra 5's to Sun E6500's. There is little that we have not run across and had to deal with, my staff had more accomplishments than I could ever enumerate on this web page, I went from two overworked system/network engineers (myself included) to nearly 20 with me playing the role enthusiastic cheerleader and architect:
At a high level, the achievements of my staff included:
Network Design and Large Scale Internet
ServingNetwork/Systems Management
Large scale server operations and
datawarehousingPrior to coming to IMGIS I worked at QDS, at QDS I was primarily responsible for Network/Systems Management, Network Design as well as the typical chores of Network and System Admin.
We were Integrating industry standard tools for a cost effective and scaleable management system. Integrating Network, System and application management via Web interfaces and event correlation. This system was being built for a large scale rollout of HomeAccess. We also designed the needed private network of point of presence access hubs and server farms.
But, of course, I spent most of my time handling the day to day requirements of Network and UNIX administration. Either helping users from one of the Quantitative Companies (Ultimate Energy, CBS and QDS), the QDS Engineers or maintaining our servers. My favorite Sun Server was pulling duty as the Internet email and list server, the primary DNS server, the ObjectStore OO Database Server, and the Openview Network Management Station. I'd really like to see Bill Gates do that on NT. Supporting disparate user groups means something is always popping up, often leaving me scratching my chin and cursing some software or system vendor. Fortunately I was far from alone, Brian Gregory (a.k.a.the Boss) and Hung Vo (the real worker), were part of Network Services and were always available to join me in chin scratching and vendor cursing.
I was employed by IBM prior to coming to QDS. I was a Large Systems Account C.E. assigned to Large Systems Customers, those that used IBM's big iron computers, yes they actually required plumbing... I had the opportunity to work on everything from card machines (yes it was the 90's!), to some of the IBM's latest creations.
My favorite being the 3495 Tape Library (Pictured Below. What is it? click on it!)
It took 3 to 6 of us 10 working days to put this together. I loved it, I was reminded of my childhood erector set. It was also nice to see a piece of data processing equipment that actually moved, even startling a few folks at first glance. But, as time had passed the big systems had become too reliable and too boring to support, so I spent most of my time assisting my customers in building, maintaining and supporting their LAN's and WAN's. This environment was perfect for me, and I was fortunate to have a set of customers that expected us support the entire span of systems from ES/390 Mainframes to Desktop PC's. This exposed me to a wide variety of operating Systems, protocols, transports, and MIS practices. I had some great customers, such as Paramount Pictures, that implemented the latest technologies available to enable them to meet the needs of their demanding user base. I also had traditional IBM customers, such as Farmer's Insurance Grp, that had more conservative needs and requirements. I spent my last year at IBM working with ATM Networking, Network Design, as well as Network and Systems Management, all of this between service calls, of course...
Prior to starting at IBM I had a few good jobs while I went to college. My favorites being those during my stint in the Audio Loudspeaker business, notably the year or so I spent as an Associate Marketing Representative for Bose Corp. I was responsible for meeting with local resellers and spending weekends demonstrating the Roommate Speakers with portable CD Players. You got it, I was paid to spend my weekends listening to music at some local Circuit City Store. Even better was that I only saw my boss once a month, and called in to the East Coast office once a week, one great job for a music loving college student. After a year of that, I took a job at one of the Circuit City Stores since the folks there were having even more fun. There I met a very sharp and fun friend, Paul Kelly. The two of us formed Aural Research and started our own high end loudspeaker company. We made custom audio and home theater loudspeakers. We used the finest components available, custom exotic hardwood finishes, elegant crossover designs and asymmetrical loaded cabinet designs, it was alot of fun. At that time car audio was very hot and we made a few bass systems for show cars and did very well in competition. But, we really wanted to do high-end home systems, so we poured our car audio proceeds into the home audio stuff. Then I took a job at IBM, started commuting 80 miles a day and working 60 hours a week needless to say, after a while I let it get away from us,,,bummer....
You can reach me via email at : Joe@Lindsay.Net