I have been blessed to serve a wide variety of clients on a large number of fascinating engagements. I have summarized some of the engagements below, categorized by the nature of my role and responsibilities, and in reverse chronological order within each category.
Leadership and Project Management
When an infrastructure transformation project at a large entertainment company went off track, I was asked to join the project as a consulting project manager. I analyzed the situation, developed a plan for success, and mentored the on-site project manager, who was finally able to lead the project to successful completion.
Served as Engagement Manager for a skilled technical team performing a complex and risky storage infrastructure upgrade at a university hospital. (Engagement Management is an IBM PM method where the Engagement Manager has total final responsibility for the project and total ownership of stakeholder relationships, but is assisted by various technical staff who are responsible for the technical plan.)
Served as Project Manager for the implementation of a large backup and recovery solution, including migration of applications and handover to operational staff. This was a significant part of a much larger project with the State government of one of the largest east coast US States. The State government undertook a very large initiative to migrate all state agency applications and consolidate all state data centers into a single consolidated hosting environment.
Served as Project Manager for the implementation of a typical backup and recovery solution at a mid-sized US manufacturer and distributor. This project included the use of subcontractors for much of the technical work.
Served as Technical Project Manager for a mixed staff of technical and sales specialists supporting a high-pressure customer evaluation of large robotic tape libraries at IBM’s very largest tape storage customer (a very large telecommunications company.) This project included stress testing tape libraries in multiple data centers with multiple server and software environments. Success required deploying product experts to resolve technical problems immediately, meeting customer benchmark requirements, and coordinating with the IBM Development Lab in Tucson for product changes. The customer expected IBM to fail this complex test, but we were able to persevere to success, surpassing two other major competitors. As a result, the customer spent millions of dollars buying dozens of IBM libraries, and purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of accompanying support services.
Served as Project Manager for an IBM team at a large agency of the Canadian Federal government, performing a large data center migration and server consolidation. The project included developing an architecture for server consolidation, developing a plan for application migration and consolidation, assessing the agency’s systems management procedures, developing a business case providing financial justification for consolidation, and guiding the client through the implementation.
At a large regional hospital, I served as the client’s own team as Technical Project Manager during a complete migration of all medical and operational applications from S/370 mainframe to AIX environment. Also led a team of IBMers, Business Partners, and subcontractors in planning and implementing an AIX cluster server complex and migrating hospital management applications from mainframe to AIX platform. Project involved replacing legacy business and operational applications with new application suites, including specialty medical applications and ERP systems. This project also included implementation of a new backup and recovery, including complex integration of backups with medical ERP systems.
Assessment and Optimization Consulting
Served as a mentoring Consultant and Services Architect for a junior consultant working at one of the very largest supermarket chains. The client had two key challenges:
- Setting reasonable expectations about backup/recovery capabilities with their lines of business and end users.
- Explaining the different levels of investment needed to support different levels of end users’ expectations for backup and recovery.
I held two leadership roles in the successful proposal and delivery of this service. First, I served as Services Architect, providing guidance on the development of the services proposal. Second, I served as a mentoring Consultant, guiding our on-site Storage Services Specialist in the successful delivery of the service.
Served as Storage Technical Consultant on a 10-person team providing guidance on storage transformation for a very large telecommunications firm. Performed broad technical, architectural, and financial analysis of server, storage, and recovery infrastructure and operations in a complex storage and data protection environment. Developed recommendations on strategies and technical directions. Made many recommendations for improving storage governance, leading to more cost-effective storage services.
Served as central consultant and storage architect on a project to transform a mission-critical on-line application consuming increasing amounts of storage at a very large financial conglomerate. Developed a number of solution options, with cost analyses. Analyzed alternatives and presented a recommendation with cost case.
Served as Solution Architect for a 5-person IBM team developing a framework for managing data storage as an MIS service portfolio for a large financial firm. Developed an architecture for delivering data storage as a service. The architecture and services framework were embraced by client CIO as a successful new way to organize and manage infrastructure as customer solutions.
Served as Solution Architect for a 5-person IBM team developing an MIS business process model and solution architecture for information lifecycle management at a large telecommunications firm. The customer credited the new business process model with saving over $20 million in one year.
Served as Project Manager, Lead Consultant, and Solution Architect for a 3-person team advising a large US energy producer and distributor. I reviewed the existing infrastructure and operations, with focus on disaster recovery posture. I guided my team through the analysis of all technical and procedural aspects of the customer’s backup and recovery operations. I guided my team through the development of a recommended technical solution to meet the customer’s requirements and resolve current problems.
Infrastructure Design
Served as Technical Architect on a large IBM team developing a server and storage transformation plan for a State Government. Led a 5-person IBM team in designing and implementing a successful new backup and recovery infrastructure.
Served as Technical Architect on a 20-person IBM team developing a server and storage transformation plan for a very large telecommunications firm.
Designed and guided implementation and optimization of a new complex disaster recovery infrastructure for a large insurance customer.
Served as Solution Architect to develop a large-scale distributed backup and recovery solution for a large telecommunications firm. The project included developing high-level and detailed designs, developing a custom sizing model, and assisting the client in using the design and model to deploy a standardized backup and recovery infrastructure across many data centers.
Served as Solution Architect to develop a large-scale disaster recovery solution for a global insurance firm as part of a global data center consolidation project. The project included developing high-level and detailed designs that integrated with new server, storage, and network designs. I was intimately involved in assisting the client in using the design to deploy the infrastructure in the new data centers, and to successful complete multiple disaster recovery test exercises.
Served as Technical Project Manager and Architect for a 10-15 person IBM team at a large retail distribution company performing a large Sun to AIX server consolidation and replacement. The project included developing a detailed technical design, developing a detailed migration plan, and actual migration on a very compressed time schedule. The migration included SAP, Lawson, and numerous Oracle and Sybase applications, and included consolidation of 50 Sun and HP servers to 10 IBM AIX servers, as well as replacement of EMC with a large SAN-attached IBM ESS system. The project also included conversion of an existing backup and recovery infrastructure to support application consolidation. This project resulted in significant cost savings to the customer, and was heavily publicized in the business press. (Forbes, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, Computerworld, etc.)
Served as Project Manager for a 5-10 person IBM team at a large agency of the Canadian Federal government, performing a large HP to AIX server replacement project in North America in a two-phase project. The project included developing an architecture for server consolidation, developing a plan for application migration and consolidation, assessing the agency’s systems management procedures, developing a business case providing financial justification for consolidation, and guiding the customer through the implementation.
Have provided TSM design services to three different Petroleum Multinationals, leading to significant increases in the amount of systems and data capable of being retained.
Business Analysis and Solution Design
Developed a high-level complex technical and services solution for one of the largest global financial firms. The bank wanted proposals for deploying pre-packaged and pre-tested private cloud base and expansion “pods” to global data centers on short notice. The bank had elaborate requirements for building, shipping, and maintaining complete pods, pod sub-components, and parts to their various global data centers. The bank also had requirements for building, shipping, and global on-site storage of non-POD systems and parts.
Developed a high-level complex technical and services solution to enable a US financial services corporation to achieve $20M in real estate savings. The client terminated a building lease, and the firm’s primary data center had to be migrated on a tight timeline in synchronicity with a disaster recovery test exercise and a regulatory compliance audit. The solution included infrastructure, managed services, business recovery, and application migration services.
Developed a custom solution for managed application performance monitoring services in an outsourced operations environment for a global commodities production firm.
Developed a high-level solution design for object storage at a multi-national insurance firm.
Business Analysis and Quality Assurance
During a four year period, I led the IBM team responsible for requirements analysis and solution design for client storage transformations (and eventually server and middleware transformations.) For each opportunity, I selected the specialists from my team to perform the requirements analysis and solution design under my supervision. For major opportunities, I guided the solution team to find solutions to issues. I led the entire proposal team through the formal review of the technical feasibility of the project. I performed a detailed risk assessment and a detailed contract language review. I was responsible for the final “go / no go” decision on the project’s technical feasibility. Some of the successful proposals I shepherded included:
- A large global automotive manufacturer operating multiple US data centers that embarked on a project to replace and upgrade all systems storage, requiring extensive data migration.
- A large US industrial firm operating multiple global data centers that embarked on a similar project to upgrade and expand systems storage, requiring extensive data migration.
- A large US bank that had extensive quantities of data and storage, and wanted to reduce the amount of space and power used by storage arrays. Most importantly, they wished to move all data off of a number of older storage arrays in preparation for end of device product life and lease expiration.
- A large US manufacturer made a business decision to prepare one business area for possible divestiture as a subsidiary or separate corporation. As the subsidiary would need its own independent MIS organization and operations, the client needed to build a new MIS infrastructure and copy selected data and applications to that new infrastructure. The proposed solution was complex, requiring integration of server, storage, network, security, disaster recovery, and migration services.
Financial Analysis and Quality Assurance
A global industrial company determined that the storage support operations for their global data centers were failing. The client sought a special kind of targeted managed services to take responsibility for key storage support operations, but integrate into their larger existing managed services organization and processes. Our team collaborated with a Business Partner to put together a customized managed service. I led the entire proposal team through the formal review of the technical feasibility of the project. I performed a detailed risk assessment and provided a final “go / no go” decision on the project’s technical feasibility. Finally, I performed a special financial review of the entire final proposal package aimed at ensuring financial confidence in enhanced risk projects. Our multi-million dollar long-term support proposal was successful. A year later, the client approached our team for help in re-engineering parts of their storage infrastructure.
Disaster Recovery
Led a small IBM systems recovery team as part of a large IBM emergency task force that successfully rebuilt operations for a financial firm whose data center was destroyed in the New York World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Received direct thanks from IBM CEO.
As a technical specialist, participated in eight “full dress” disaster recovery test exercises. Clients included:
- Major US insurance firm
- Major global insurance and financial firm
- Nuclear power utility
- Regional US financial firm
Technology and Infrastructure Deployment
Served as Technical Architect on a large IBM team developing a server and storage transformation plan for a State Government. Led a 5-person IBM team in designing and implementing a successful new backup and recovery infrastructure.
Led many dozens of client teams in successfully designing, planning, implementing, and optimizing Tivoli Storage Manager backup/recovery and storage management infrastructures in business, hospitals, local government, and public education. These include some of the very largest TSM installations in North America, as well as some of the very smallest.
At a large regional hospital, served on the customer’s own team as Technical Project Manager during a complete migration of all medical and operational applications from S/370 mainframe to AIX environment. Also led a team of 5-10 IBMers, Business Partners, and subcontractors in planning and implementing RS/6000 SP server complex and migrating hospital management applications on S/370 mainframe to AIX platform. Project involved replacing legacy business and operational applications with new application suite, including Lawson, Oracle, IDX, and Eclipsys applications. This project also included implementation of a TSM infrastructure, including complex integration of TSM with IDX and Eclipsys middleware.
Led a small IBM team in assisting a Texas state agency in migrating a large WebSphere-based public service application from mainframe to Unix cluster.
Migration
Developed a storage infrastructure design and data migration plan for a large global automotive manufacturing firm consolidating data centers.
Training
I developed, delivered, maintained custom courseware for training clients to manage their own data backup and recovery infrastructure and operations. This courseware provided 3 days of lectures combined with hands-on lab exercises. Incorporated lessons learned from training delivery and feedback from clients to improve and extend courseware and delivery methods. Continuously adapted training to new hardware and software features. I delivered this custom courseware to successfully train the MIS staffs of:
- Two regional hospitals in Texas
- One county government in New Mexico
- One large public school district in Texas
As a certified instructor for IBM on-site training for Tivoli Storage software administration, I delivered many on-site hand-on training sessions at client locations across North America.
I developed and delivered technical training presentations on data protection for large groups at several sessions of the annual IBM International Storage Symposium, for which I received strong measured attendee feedback. I improved and extended training materials between sessions based on product changes, delivery experience, and attendee feedback.
For a few years, I was a certified instructor for IBM formal training offerings for basic, intermediate, and advanced AIX systems administration. With peers, I co-led many 5-day classes combining stand-up lectures with hand-on lab exercises for clients from Texas.
I performed over 20 one-on-one training demonstrations to IT operations staff on new robotic tape libraries.
I performed over 30 small group interactive sessions with IT operations managers and their staffs on new storage media handling procedures.
For three years, I was responsible for ongoing team training on sales offerings, business tools and processes. Frequently developed and delivered short-term training for geographically dispersed team. Developed materials not requiring trainer presence. Developed training using a mix of remote presentations, prepared written materials, video and audio recordings, web conferences, etc. Worked closely with clients and management to develop training presentations for in-person team meetings. Maintained on-line catalogs and repositories of training materials using content management tools.
Authoring and Editing
I was asked to provide editorial review of an article on business resiliency and disaster recovery architectures for the IBM Journal of Research and Development.
For a very large wireless telephone service provider, I produced a detailed technical operational support manual. This publication documented the overall architecture and detailed technical configuration for a large backup and recovery infrastructure, including server, storage, networking configuration, and scheduled operations.
Carl Gusler 