I worked with this German company to enhance their Discovery and CMDB with various storage metadata and data from unsupported storage systems. I wrote extensive TPL code which integrated with APIs for NetApp, Dell Isilon, IBM Spetrum, and Nasuni.

For Nasuni I had to develop the whole model using data extracted from the APIs to model the Management Console, Volumes and Shares.

The outcome of this project was to allow the client to accurately track storage usage and billing.

During this time I also assisted the client in troubleshooting Azure discovery and retrieving additional matadata from VMware.

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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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I was contracted to help win a bid for providing a managed service worth $200k to a large US-based vehicle manufacturer. They were intially discussing a multi-year deal for plant inventory discovery, however it was quickly realised by the client that it would make sense to turn this into a managed service.

The service included upgrade of current Discovery solution with right-sizing the architecture, installation of Remedy with CMDB and support services. The scope of Discovery was to scan the plant networks – the challenge being that these were on profinet and were not only sensitive equipment but scanning was only permitted under very strict windows.

We managed to complete the implementation of the solution upgrade and installation, with the implementation of the full managed service coming later due to delays on the client end. As part of value add of the service, the customer was also provided with a custom solution I developed in python that worked with the Discovery API to be able to load IP ranges with updated location information and automatically update the scan data and schedules.

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I was approached by the account management team for a US coffee brand to implement SSL Certificate Discovery for their network, as they were having issues with expiring certificates causing application failures.

During deployment one challenge was the need to expand the tool to query the Windows stores and resolve an issue where Azure agents would automatically issue and manage short-term 24 hour expiries – which significantly skewed the analytics. These certificates were identified and excluded from reporting.

The solution was deployed quickly and there was time to develop additional analytics and dashboards to allow the account team to quickly export a list of all certificate expiry dates.

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I worked for a partner consultantancy with the Software and Configuration Management team to extend and customise BMC Discovery to provide support for their licensing and auditing function. With the software license discovery and modelling that I workend on both indendently and sometimes as part of a team, the bank was able to make substantial savings in the 100’s of thousands of US Dollars on licensing to vendors such as Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.

I worked under and Agile framework to develop TPL code, performed monthly regression analysis on software install data and created and maintained all documentation for customisations.

I was also part of the team to code and develop an extension that modelled their various SAN storage solutions deployed. After the solution was implemented, the bank was able to identify 10,000 US Dollars in monthly savings by being able to turn off a decommission storage arrays that were no longer being used.

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I was contracted to a this British Transport Company to provide consultancy services in the area of modelling approximately 60 business applications. Some of them had been modelled before but had fallen behind on maintenance and the model had drifted. Others needed to be modelled from scratch.

The method chosen by the client was to do the modelling through questionnaires to SMEs who would provide the initial seed data. This then allowed me to model the architecture for each application.

Whilst working onsite, I was asked if it was possible scan and report details of SSL certificates, as the company was having issues with certificates expiring. I quoted them work on developing a solution from scratch that would work with BMC Discovery. This was designed and implemented within 3 days, which allowed the client to save £20,000 on an anual subscription to a 3rd part piece of software.

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I was brought in to architect and deliver an data pipeline for updating their CMDBs from multiple data sources. The CMDB itself was hosted on Salesforce and the data sources were Discovery, Active Directory, Spreadsheets and SCCM.

A particular challenge was being restricted to operating remotely using TeamViewer – which does not perform well over data instensive remote connections – and requires an active user on the end to keep the connection going. This did cause development work to go much slower than planned, but thankfully did not cause overall delay to project.

The integrations were developed, tested and deployed successfully to the satisfaction of the client.

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Over the years I built a relationship with this global fashion brand in facilitating their ongoing digital transformation. The first engagement was in architecting and implementing a number of critical integrations with their CMDB from various data sources, allowing them to gain full central visiblity of their enterprise infrastructure. Later, I was again called upon to re-architect and extend the earlier integrations in preparation for a move of CMDB cloud platforms.

As a Principle Solutions Architect I also oversaw the technical delivery of their managed services – consulting on roadmaps and strategy with the client. I built a trusting working relationship and also proposed and worked on implementing a new feature of exception reporting, which helped them to identify, understand and narrow down the discrepencies between source data and CMDB data. The result was clear visibility and improved data quality of their CMDB.

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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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I developed this with a mixture of Bash and Python, exporting the results to JSON and then converting to CSV. All code was handed to the client.

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