Tony Stephens

A brief word about me...

I specialise in making IT work for people. I'm a great believer in doing things efficiently and once!
As a result I've spent most of my career improving systems, processes & the way people get things done. Life's too short to be doing things the hard way.

I've had many years working in IT, the corporate world & for small to medium businesses. All of this has afforded me the opportunity to understand what most need from their IT & office environments - one word : efficiency.

Don't be a victim of "Time Poverty". At some point you will need to stop, evaluate & improve the way you do things.

I'd be happy to help.
Tony.

ON IT Systems are a small to medium enterprise managed services company consisting of 5 staff. They provide all levels of support from end-to-end including cloud, on premises & hybrid environments. I was hired as a backup to the General Manager for high level, more complex system issues & to assist with complex migrations.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level support to 30 managed services clients & 27 smaller ad-hoc clients.
• Troubleshoot daily issues that arise.
• Analyse & find solutions to prevent the issues recurring.
• Improve & streamline processes where possible.

From 2019-2022 I was providing support for my wife as she was caring for her elderly father in a rural area. So, during this time I worked in the local community doing freelance work, where I primarily complete two major projects.

Key Projects

• The first project was working with an SME to help them mitigate the security problems caused by a disgruntled ex-staff member. I helped the company move their infrastructure from a Microsoft 365® Tenant to a Google G-Suite® environment. I also worked with the lead web developer to integrate staff, client & external access to the company resources & consult on the client-facing aspects of the business.
• The second was working with a start-up ‘temporary fencing’ company to create an online interactive ordering system from scratch. The web application uses Google Maps® to allow the clients to plot the location of their required temporary fencing. It calculates distance, number of fence panels required, additional supports etc., and allows for the company who manages the procurement process to see exactly where to deliver & install the product.

This was my second time in Beijing for work. I was offered a role training 14 managers in the IT department of “FOTON Daimler” a heavy vehicle manufacturer. I was travelling to their manufacturing plant 2 days a week to provide intensive training on how to present their systems to their foreign counterparts.

Key Responsibilities

• Help each manager explain their specific system in detail using English.
• Teach them how to design PowerPoint presentations that appeal to a non-Chinese audience.
• Train the students in “how” to deliver effective presentations.
• Discuss business etiquette & help them with any other business-related issues they might have.

Achievements

• Created 90% of the course material
• Received outstanding feedback from the director of IT. He was so pleased with my training that he asked that LINKO only send me to their site for future training sessions.

This was my second time with Everlight. After implementing the first phase of the previous solution I designed, I was asked to return and help implement further changes and build more tools & systems to automate the distribution lists for the company.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build an SSOT (Single Source of Truth) for the company’s user base as they had no HR system.
• Design & build several Web Portals to allow users maintain their accounts.
• Created standards around the creation of user accounts & distribution lists/groups.

Achievements

• I was offered the Role of IT Manager in the London Office.
• Being invited back to implement further process refinements.
• Developed a single source of truth by utilising the Microsoft Active Directory.
• Created a self-serve web portal for the management of Distribution Lists / Groups.
• Wrote multiple PowerShell scripts to automate much of the system management.

Everlight Radiology are a tele-radiology company and process millions of digital medical imaging diagnoses a year. They had recently merged several companies to form Everlight, as a result their messaging systems were experiencing some issues. I was asked to look at their systems, find the problems & recommend a solution.

Key Responsibilities

• Diagnose the underlying issues that were being reported by the users & management
• Liaise with key stakeholders & executive team.
• Present findings & recommend a solution.

Achievements

• My recommendations were accepted by the CEO & Executive Team.
• I was asked to stay on for a further 2 months to implement the solution.
• Solved a major user/object duplication issue in the Active Directory.

At the start of my time working at Aceleader I was a fulltime English teacher. I was teaching adults at their Zhongguancun centre in Beijing. After 12 months working in the centre as a teacher I was asked to take over for the development of a new curriculum & design the material for the new curriculum.

After leaving AceLeader I worked for United English in their Corporate Training department. This involved training business professionals in various aspects of business etiquette, business English & helping them give effective presentations & hold meetings in English.

Key Responsibilities

• Business Etiquette
• Critical thinking
• Customer Service
• General English
• Negotiation Skills
• Giving Presentations

Achievements

• Held a 10 day “summer camp” for a group of 90 schoolteachers and helped them to use different methods to make their teaching material more engaging for their students.
• Taught at 4 of the top 5 Luxury Hotels in Beijing.

I started working at UBS in 2003 as the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Americas) Shift Lead managing a team of 5 staff. Within 12 months I was promoted to Associate Director and Operations Manager and asked to consolidate (and manage) the 3 independent teams consisting of 28 staff, into a single group to care for the Asia Pacific, EMEA and the United States.

After successfully completing this role I moved into the role of Process Analyst, Automation Analyst and Application\Solution Designer. During this time, I reduced the team’s global response times to users’ requests and service outages significantly and provided several “self-service” portals to give the end users a better “end user experience” and provide faster response times allowing the technical support team to focus on more important infrastructure work.

Key Responsibilities

• Enable the Office Communication and Collaboration (OCCS) Teamwork smarter.
• Technical contact for “Remedy” to “Service-Now” migration.
• Make recommendations to improve - Exchange, Blackberry, Topcall Faxing, and Lync (now Skype).
• Design, build and rollout various solutions, applications and processes.
• Evaluate requests from the Business and develop better processes.
• Liaise with business groups, help them leverage various technologies allowing them to work more efficiently.
• Ensure the Operations Team and the Business are working effectively together.
• Manage the Global Operations Team in Sydney (28 staff, 3 Shift Leads, 24 hour roster).
• Ensure the day-to-day operation of the Banks Messaging Infrastructure
• Managed 230 Exchange, 76 Blackberry, 92 Topcall, 135 Compliance \ Archiving, and 54 Unix Servers worldwide.
• Complete monthly, quarterly, and yearly performance management reviews for all staff.
• Design new processes, open communication channels and form alliances with other functional Support Teams.

Achievements

• Designed, built, and implemented automation for “on boarding” staff saving of over 1,600 man-hours p/a.
• Completed ITIL Foundation Certificate.
• Successfully built a solid 2nd level Global Support team.
• Implemented new shift patterns to help make work-life balance better for the staff.
• Was instrumental in repairing damaged relationships with the regional support teams.
• Designed and built a tool to allow the Team to work more efficiently – combining multiple utilities.
• Assisted with the design of a Web interface to allow helpdesk operators troubleshoot Blackberry devices.
• Built various web tools for the Team enabling them to respond faster when working on incidents.
• Built, and implemented an Exchange 2003 backup monitoring web site which prevented several system outages.
• Worked to differentiate “Investment Bankers” from all other users.

As a messaging specialist at Hewlett Packard (HP) I was responsible for managing the messaging infrastructure for 8 different international clients. This involved a large amount of customer relations, process analysis, problem solving and technical support.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the email infrastructure for large enterprise customers such as Vodafone, Optus, Telstra NDC.
• Identify and fix any problems that may occur with the messaging environment.
• Suggest solutions to rectify architectural problems that may be found.
• Support and maintain the Microsoft Exchange messaging infrastructure 24 x 7.
• Provide technical expertise and recommend solutions where required.
• Consult on projects involving new and existing messaging products and technologies.
• Document the existing environments.
• Train existing HP administration staff on the Vodafone environment.

Achievements

• Assisted with the redesign of the messaging infrastructure for Vodafone Australia.
• Designed and implemented a migration plan moving from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000 for Vodafone.

I was asked to join Vodafone in 2001 because of “word of mouth” from a colleague. The National Infrastructure Manager was having multiple problems with the existing Microsoft Exchange 5.5 environment, with many service outages during business hours, some resulting in loss of revenue. As a result, I was asked to come in and provide expertise on how to resolve the problems and redesign the Exchange environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify and fix existing problems with the messaging environment.
• Support and maintain the National Microsoft Exchange messaging infrastructure (3,500+ users / 33 Servers / 19 Exchange Sites).
• Provide technical expertise and recommend solutions.
• Consult on projects involving messaging products and technologies.
• Document the existing environment.
• Train existing administration staff on correct and efficient ways of managing an enterprise Microsoft Exchange environment.

Achievements

• Built an Enterprise Backup solution to allow “instant” snapshots of the Exchange Databases - first of it's kind.
• Technical Lead for a SAN Migration Project for implementing a new national messaging infrastructure.
• Re-architected the existing Exchange 5.5 infrastructure and solved many of the issues previously experienced.
• Implemented wireless email connectivity application for a GPRS trial during the 2002 Melbourne Grand Prix.
• Setup connectivity between Vodafone AU and Vodafone NZ - Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes
• Implemented a message archiving solution called “KVS Enterprise Vault”. The first in Australia in production.

After completing several Microsoft Exchange designs for Network Design and Construction (NDC) a division of Telstra. I was asked to come to Telstra as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for messaging technologies. I had completed the “Exchange 2000 Academy” run by the Microsoft SMEs in Melbourne and therefore had an advanced knowledge of this product before its release to manufacture (RTM). Telstra saw Exchange 2000 as an opportunity to develop a new product and requested I help design the prototype solution. This was an early attempt at “cloud computing” or Application Service Providing as it was then called.

Key Responsibilities

• Assist with the Exchange 2000 component of an existing project.
• Design an entirely new infrastructure based on Exchange 2000 for Telstra to build a new messaging product.
• Consult on existing disaster recovery scenarios and propose changes / additions.

Achievements

• I was the key designer of a new Telstra messaging product utilising an Exchange 2000 backend.
• Worked as the Technical Lead for a team of 7 throughout Australia and liaised with customers and vendors in order to come up the best possible design.
• Designed the Exchange 2000 environment as a clustered solution on a Compaq RA8000 SAN.

As a Microsoft Exchange Architect (SME) for Compaq Professional Services I was sent to various client sites to design, build and implement enterprise messaging infrastructures. This role required a high degree of professionalism, courteousness and problem solving.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a technical team of 5 contractors in the design of a National Microsoft Exchange messaging infrastructure.
• Provide technical expertise, recommend, and design solutions.
• Consult on projects involving various messaging products and technologies.
• Design, build and implement technical solutions.
• Document all aspects of the solutions and designs.

Achievements

• Assumed role of Senior Architect role for design of the Exchange messaging environment.
• Designed the messaging infrastructure for “NDC Ltd”. A total of 31 Servers and 5,200 users in Australia.
• Attended and graduated from the Compaq “Exchange 2000 Academy”.

Key Responsibilities

• Assist in the design of the Microsoft Exchange Infrastructure for Australia.
• Technical Lead for the rollout of Microsoft Outlook supervising a team of 4 desktop support staff.
• Migration of 2700 users (and data) from Microsoft Mail to Microsoft Exchange.
• Building and Installation of Exchange Servers.
• Develop the Standard Outlook Client for Rollout to Desktops / Laptops.
• Provide 3rd Level Support to the Desktop Specialists.
• Day to day running and maintenance of MS Mail and MS Exchange network.
• Day to day running and monitoring of MS Exchange Core Site for Australia, APAC and South Africa.
• Monitoring of the Global Messaging network on a follow the sun basis (72,000 users 133 Exchange Sites).

Achievements

• Successfully migrated 2,700 users in Australia from “MS Mail” to Microsoft Exchange.

Macquarie Bank was in the process of migrating from “MS Mail” to “Microsoft Exchange 5.5”. As a result, they needed to free-up their full-time staff to focus on the migration and required someone to manage the day-to-day administration of the existing environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Creation and deletion of users on MS Mail, Microsoft Exchange, UNIX aliases, SMTP.
• Provide 2nd Level Support for approximately 2,500 users.
• Day-to-day running and maintenance of entire MS Mail network (30 post offices throughout Australia and Overseas).
• Creation of new post offices as required.
• Setting up of new laptops for remote mail (modems, communications, training of users)
• Administering message transfer agents (MTA) locally and via remote using NT4 Server.
• Assisting with Microsoft Exchange roll-out.
• Day-to-day running and maintenance of Exchange Servers.

Achievements

• Created tools for administering the Microsoft MS Mail network using Visual Basic 3.5.
• Created an Access databases to analyse MS Mail network traffic.
• Passed “Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5” component of MCSE exam.

I have worked in many varied roles since I left school.

I started my working life at MYER (Grace Bros. at the time) as a stock clerk, sales assistant, department supervisor, stock manager & assisted with the rollout and testing of the bardcode scanning systems.

After MYER I moved into a more back-end role with the Caterpillar Dealer for NSW (Gough & Gilmour) as their transport & inventory coordinator. This is where I really got my teeth into IT. I created & used a DOS based flat record database system (File Express) to record and track heavy equipment & equipment repair manual orders. I was then asked to work with the service department & there I started using Microsoft Access 1.0 to created databases for managing warranty information & streamlined the processes involved with generating new machine warranty documentation.

From Gough & Gilmour I was hired by Macquarie Bank as a PC Support technician. During this time I was able to work with many technologies, such as WIN NT, Windows 95, MS Mail & Exchange & Unix. Whilst at Macquarie I helped create the SOE's for the Dell Laptops and used my automation skills to create various menu driven tools to allow the Support team to be faster & more efficient.

After leaving Macquarie Bank I started contracting and worked at American Express (again as a PC Support technician). After about 6 months at American Express I was asked back to Macquarie. I spent 2 years contracting between Macquarie Bank & Nestlé Australia. Every time I was free one of these 2 would call me & ask me if i was available.