I am an IT consultant who has worked in the industry since 1997 (and so saw the dot com boom come and go). Prior to this I worked in commercial roles in large multi-national companies. I specialise in Identity Management projects for organisations with many thousands of identities to manage. I have worked with Cardiff University for more than five years on the sucessful design, implementation and support of an Identity Management project for its 23,000 students and 7,000 staff. I have also recently worked with Oxford University on the Core User Directory Pilot.

As well as core Identity Management, I get involved in many other projects, many of which are linked to Identity Management in some way. These have ranged from a project to provide a highly available, load balanced LDAP service, a single sign-on solution implemented using free open source software, to websites for local community playgroups (which I do for free).

I work with any technologies required to get the project completed, and typically use both free open source and proprietary software on a project. Any custom development done on a project is typically required to glue together different software components that do most of the work. I believe in reusing high quality code that is already available where it fits the purpose rather than seeking to re-invent the wheel.

Most of my projects involve Java, Linux, Novell and Microsoft technologies, in any combination. I also use PHP, Perl, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle and MS SQL server where they are either required or useful on projects.

When I'm not working I enjoy gardening and playing with my two young sons.

Technologies

Over the past 12 years I've worked with a large number of technologies and am regularly becoming expert in new ones. Those I've already used include:

Operating Systems

Linux (various flavours), Novell Netware, Windows Server

Web Server Software

Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, Microsoft IIS

Development

Java, Spring, Perl, Python, PHP, Microsoft ASP scripting

Databases

Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, MS SQL Server

Other

Novell DirXML, Novell Identity Manager, Zope, Plone, iChain