I worked 3 short projects with a US-based energy company over a period of three years to develop customisations to the data pipeline to their CMDB. This was to enable a front-end form for application ownership selection. For this they needed specifically to be able to extract metadata from their IBM DB2, MSSQL, Oracle, MongoDB and MariaDB databases for promotion to the front-end display.

The solution involved custom TPL code applied to BMC Discovery, which used a combination of SQL connections of JDBC and API connectivity with MongoDB. Both Discovery and the CMDB sync connections needed to be modified to make it work.

MongoDB presented the most challenging connection as Discovery was not built for a direct integration, so the solution called for running the API retrieval queries directly on the server as it scanned, with a local encrypted text file which contained the API credentials. The output was then retrieved the normal way.

The solution allowed for the client to be able to correctly identify and assign ownership for their database dependent applications.

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As part of my time as a Delivery Manager I worked with an account to deploy an IT Asset Management solution as part of a Global Programme, and to fill in as Test Manager for the new Workday HR system.

The account management team for this company had been selected interally, and did not have a choice about taking the solution so there was a lot of resistance, particularly using security as a blocker. This was overcome by a global CISO sign off, however I listened to the concerns of the account that the licensing would take them over their budget and knew there was a better way to create a Win-Win scenario for them and for us.

I advised the Programme Manager that we needed to not only deploy the ITAM solution but create a package of benefits for them – which required setting up some reporting an analytics. I asked the account director to provide a breakdown of their charges for services and an export of their current asset data.

With this information, using Discovery, I was able to identify that they were underbilling by £50k annually, primarily on database services to their client. Another highlight was to replace their manual spreadsheet tracking of software with the product’s up to date OOTB software lifecycle reporting, allowing them to save time on querying manually and implement accurate, up to date record keeping.

HR Solution

I was asked to fill in as a Test Manager for a HR system rollout already in progress after the current test manager had left. The issues over resourcing meant that the delivery team had fallen behind and the deadline for implementation was at risk.

The key was to commit to being fully onsite, and obtaining buy in from the team to work extra hours to get catch up. I was in charge of ensuring that all the test scripts were completed, bugs were handled by the onsite developer, or exeptions were signed off.

With the combined effort of the team, we managed to pull the project back on track and able to deliver the implementation of the HR system to client satisfaction. Not all of the test scripts had been completed, but it was agreed with the client all significant bugs had been resolved and so the outstanding backlog were not critical to functionality and could be handed post go-live.

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I was assigned as a consultant to a large Middle Eastern Oil Company for six weeks onsite. BMC Discovery was their chosen IT Asset Management solution and their objectives were to deploy, scan their networks and model various services comprised of Oracle RAC Clusters, IBM LPARs and HMCs, Databases and add 2-way CMDB synchronisataion with custom asset locations.

The deployment and solution was delivered within the six week timeframe to satisfaction of the client. In addition they were supplied with various reports as value add. In one case they were able to identify a number of database servers which had been marked as decommissioned but not physically turned off. This improved their visibility and avoided ongoing costs and risk of exploited vulnerabilities in unmonitored infrastructure.

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