Simons Old Work page |
| Bookmarks: | Education | Pink Elephant | Working in Australia |
Work and hobby have always interspersed with me; from when I first got my hands on a computer (1980-ies) I have been fascinated by them. Fortunately I have managed to make my hobby my work (I just don't have any hobbies left :-) and been able to grow to new levels and interests.
That first time I did get in touch with computers was in the second grade of secondary school. Our physics-teacher had managed to loan 8 programmable calculators. Being kids we saw the possibilities of this and within a day or so I had programmed an infallible version of tic-tac-toe.
But the fascination was there and my brother-in-law managed to 'loan' a real computer from the laboratory he was working for at the time. It was a Commodore PET, one of those big all-in-one cases with only BASIC and no games (so I had to make my own). This was followed by a Commodore64, but that readily became a games-computer.
After secondary school I went to the Delft University of Technology to study Informatics. For my Master Thesis in 1990 I went to the Loughborough University of Technology in England and wrote a study into user-friendly database retrieval interfaces. I graduated in 1990 as M.Sc.Eng.(Delft).
In my work I evolved from programming to support and then management. I have done various courses on available systems (Novell 3.11, Windows 3.11, Windows NT 3.5, Windows95) and several training courses on consultancy capabilities. But most of my training was done 'on the job'.
Already during my study I had decided that actually programming computers wasn't the kind of work I wanted and I had shifted towards interface design. After my study I went one step further by becoming a support professional with Pink Elephant.
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Pink Elephant is a ƒ 125m turnover company (±AUS$ 85m; 1996 figures) and is as part of the Roccade Informatica Group & Getronics, one of Europe's largest Computer Services Organisations with its head office in the Netherlands. |
It specialises in the management of computers, ranging from operations, helpdesk, network/system management to interim management, consultancy, implementation/transition projects and facilities management. The aim for Pink Elephant is to be the quality market-leader in this field. For this Pink Elephant has adopted and contributed to ITIL (the Information Technology Infrastructure Library) from the CCTA.
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I started working on the helpdesk of ICI/Zeneca pharmaceuticals, or more to the point: I was the helpdesk (and network administrator and ..) for this 80-user office. After 1½-years I moved on a became PC Support specialist with AKZO NOBEL Coatings. I was mainly focussed on Windows but helped as a consultant with their ITIL implementation.
Again after 1½-years I was placed on the Microsoft Authorized Support Center (ASC) of Pink Elephant, part of their own Information Centre. This technical specialty was not exactly what I wanted but through the ASC I became a consultant for many clients. As the -now called- Pink Support Centre slowly grew in both employees and services, I became a Service Manager.
A Service Manager is a combination of a consultant (advising the client), sales person (selling the services), account manager (maintaining the customer-relation), project manager (implementing the sold services) and functional manager (of employees involved in delivering or supporting the services). This multifunctionality made it a very challenging job.
As a separate business unit Pink Elephant Intranet Management Services (PIMS) provides the other business units of Pink Elephant, Roccade & outside clients with 3 services:
| My biggest client as a Service Manager was the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). They asked Pink Elephant to be their global support partner in the Global Telecommunication Services (GTS). |
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The GTS was only started and basically consisted of a number of Novell LAN's, connected in one GroupWise maildomain. Our goal was to connect as many of the -independent- WWF sites as possible and in the ¾-year I was involved we travelled to exotic places like Moscow, Cameroon, Norway, Pakistan, Jakarta, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Switzerland and Madagascar. In the mean time the standard-services were defined and written down in Service Level Agreements, making it clear what services would be delivered (and their requirements).
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