Head of IT at Symbian Foundation
Twickenham, United Kingdom
- Current
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- Head of IT at Symbian Foundation
- Past
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- General Manager, Waikato/BOP at Datacom
- IT Manager at SITEL
- National Software Support Manager at ECONZ
- Software Manager at ECONZ
- IT Manager New Zealand and Pacific Islands at DHL
- MIS Manager at Ecolab
- Process Computer Engineer at BHP NZ Steel
- Education
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- University of Waikato
- University of Waikato
- Recommended
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3 people have recommended Ian - Connections
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395
connections
- Industry
- Information Technology and Services
- Websites
Ian McDonald’s Summary
An experienced Head of IT/IT Director. Key business decision making abilities and excellent written and verbal communication skills. Proven people management track record. Astute business acumen, key financial strategist and facilitator. A proven programme manager with solid applications background underpinned by a wider understanding of complex IT infrastructures.
Ian McDonald’s Specialties:
leadership, technology, strategy
Ian McDonald’s Experience
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Head of IT
Symbian Foundation
(Non-Profit; Telecommunications industry)
June 2009 — Present (8 months)
* Responsible for global IT operations (UK, USA, China, Japan, Finland, Korea)
* Putting in place strategy to move servers to the public cloud
* Infrastructure running on SaaS or PaaS e.g. Google Apps, Amazon
* Responsible for web presence -
General Manager, Waikato/BOP
Datacom
(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)
October 2007 — May 2009 (1 year 8 months)
* Responsible for Waikato/Bay of Plenty region, reporting to COO
* Programme management over multiple complex projects up to NZ$5 million
* P&L Management with growth of 45% in sales since started. Multiple NZ$1 million sales.
* Contract negotiation with customers and Tier 1 vendors (e.g. HP, Cisco, Sun, RedHat)
* Launched Systems Management practice and built existing software development and field engineering businesses -
IT Manager
SITEL
(Privately Held; Outsourcing/Offshoring industry)
June 2001 — February 2005 (3 years 9 months)
* Started as Technical Analyst and promoted to IT Manager
* Responsible for Unix and Windows environment running NZ$1 billion of sales
* Directed support & development for Unix/Windows applications via 3rd party vendors
* Managed performance improvement, high system availability to ensure excellent customer service provision growing customer base from 180,000 to 650,000.
* Supplier management – contract negotiation, SLA setup with 3rd party vendors
* Project managed major implementations, IVR, DR/BCP
* Managed development team, service desk and infrastructure team -
National Software Support Manager
ECONZ
(Computer Networking industry)
2000 — 2001 (1 year )
Providing 7 x 24 support and enhancements for large systems for multiple corporate customers.
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Software Manager
ECONZ
(Computer Networking industry)
1999 — 2000 (1 year )
* Developing large project for Downer Engineering – 500 user system using mobile technology on large distributed system. This involved pre-sales and sales work, staff management, project management and systems integration.
* Technology was comprised of Solaris, Linux, QNX (embedded systems), Windows written in C, C++, Java running over TCP/IP on a variety of IP transports – cellular, CDPD, local network using custom protocols, standard protocols (SMTP, HTTP, RPC) and Corba for calling interfaces.
* Project management for the project consisting of multiple suppliers and a $10 million budget -
IT Manager New Zealand and Pacific Islands
DHL
(Public Company; DHL; Logistics and Supply Chain industry)
January 1998 — December 1998 (1 year )
* Key senior management responsibilites - reported to board
* Major service improvements to key infrastructure ensuring 99.9% availability
* Architected complex WAN/LAN infrastructure to provide IP network across the Pacific
* Initiaited Y2K project for core infrastructure
* Achieved cost rationalisation of NZ$2.5 million pa (33% of IT budget) through effective supplier management -
MIS Manager
Ecolab
(Public Company; ECL; Chemicals industry)
June 1995 — December 1997 (2 years 7 months)
* Budgetary control, project management, supplier management and strategic planning.
* Responsibility and management of data entry & programming staff.
* Key player in Asia Pacific project and planning team
* Programme manager for server migration to Windows platform including redesign of network. -
Process Computer Engineer
BHP NZ Steel
(Public Company; BHP; Mining & Metals industry)
December 1991 — June 1995 (3 years 7 months)
* System administrator, developer, process improvement and after hours support for a medium size real-time Unix process control system using the Informix database.
* Programming and system work on minicomputers (C, HDLC, Ladder logic)
* Chairperson of BHP New Zealand Steel PC Co-ordination group for two years.
* PC network system administrator and PC support for a medium size network of 200 PCs.
* Network installation and troubleshooting on LAN/WAN involving designing networks, configuring and problem resolution.
Ian McDonald’s Education
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University of Waikato
PhD , Computer Science , 2005 — 2010 (expected)
I am doing a PhD at the University of Waikato and as part of this have been working on open source networking code to improve the performance of video conferencing. I have contributed many lines of code to the Linux kernel, which has been merged by Linus Torvalds.
My principal area of work has been with a new protocol called DCCP which aims to replace TCP/IP and UDP in the future on the Internet - especially for multimedia.
As part of this work I have also contributed code to multiple other projects such as Iperf (network performance measurement) and tcpdump (network monitoring).
I have been working in with the IETF (the technical standards body for the Internet) and am helping to define the future standards of the Internet. I have had papers accepted and presented at IEEE conference and also published in Inderscience journal.
I was also on the committee of the Waikato Linux Users Group including being the President of this incorporated society. -
University of Waikato
BCMS(1st class Honours) , Computer Science , 1988 — 1991
Additional Information
Ian McDonald’s Websites:
Ian McDonald’s Interests:
open source, technology, motorsports
Ian McDonald’s Groups:
Waikato Linux Users Group, NZNOG
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NZNOG -
Waikato Linux Users Group -
linux.conf.au -
University of Waikato Alumni -
BCS Membership Group -
The Symbian Exchange & Exposition -
Symbian Foundation Networking - 2000+ members & growing -
London IT Directors Forum
Ian McDonald’s Honors:
Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (First Class Honours)
* 1991 - Awarded the Digital Computer Science award at Waikato University for best student.
* 1991 - Ramanujan Centenary Prize for academic effort.
Tokoroa High School (1983-1987):
* Gained a Scholarship in the University Bursary exams
* Dux of the school
* Awarded a Lowndes Ryan Scholarship
* Given a NZFP award for all round ability
* Given a NZFP study grant
Ian McDonald’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
