MKK Lion | IT | Project Management | Bishops Stortford, UK

Available: Now

MKK IT

IT project management.

Startup. Initiation. Execution. Monitoring. Closure.
20 years experience delivering technical projects.

2023-2024

2020-2023

2020

2019

2015-2018

2013-2015

2011-2013

2003-2011

Welcome to MKK IT project management

Download my CV

I started my career in IT in 1993 after University and spent 10 years in IT Support.

In 2003, I moved into IT Project Management for a financial trading company in the City of London. In 2011, I became an independent IT contractor and have been doing it ever since.

I have worked for large City of London financial and insurance companies, incl. the London Stock Exchange Group and Lloyd's of London. I just need the Bank of England to complete the set.

For the last few years, the focus has been deployments and migrations to the cloud.

20 years experience
PRINCE 2
Migrations to the cloud, build & deployment of apps, infrastructure changes

Contact information

Martin Harris

contact@mkklion.com

+44 (0)78 525 789 33

Freelance, contract, IT project management

Now that hybrid and remote working has become normal, I no longer need to commute to London and sit behind a desk for 40 hours a week.

I can work in the United Kingdom and in USA or Australia (so that timezones don't conflict).
This means I can work on multiple contracts.
I can work full-time, 5 days a week as a "normal contractor".
I can work part-time on a "time and materials basis", only charging for hours worked, if you want to keep costs down.
I can work on a fixed price "statement of work", delivering an agreed set of tasks.

Notes:

In the United Kingdom, I prefer projects outside IR35.
I only accept contract work, never permanent jobs.
I can only work in English.

Western USA / Canada & Mexico

Remote working from the UK

Working local business hours

Available

APAC

Remote working from the UK

Working local business hours

Available

United Kingdom / EMEA

Outside IR35 only

UK: Hybrid - working remotely & on-site

EMEA: Remote working from the UK

Available

Standard contracting

United Kingdom. USA or APAC

Fixed day rate, five days a week, six month contract.

Hybrid in the United Kingdom. Remote working in the USA/APAC.

Working local business hours.

UK - Available

USA/APAC - Available

Time & materials

Worldwide

Only pay for the hours I work.

Remote working from the United Kingdom.

Working local business hours.

Available

Statement of work

Worldwide

A fixed price to deliver an agreed set of tasks.

Remote working from the United Kingdom.

Working local business hours.

Available

Supplying other skills (UK only)

Whilst I am a just a Project Manager, I can also supply or help source people with other skills. I have been in the IT industry in London for a long time and know a lot of people.

Project Managers (Infrastructure & Application)
Programmer Managers & Head of Delivery Level
Business Analysts
Project Management Office
Cloud Financial Optimisation
Testers
Architect (Cloud, Infrastructure, Networking)
Network Engineers

Work history

August 2023 - January 2024

MS Amlin

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Windows 2012 upgrades

July 2020 - August 2023

London Stock Exchange

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Migrations and deployments into the cloud. Enhancement of cloud services.

January 2020 - June 2020

TP ICAP

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Server & app migration to a new OnPrem datacentre.

February 2019 - December 2019

Lloyds of London

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Migration of servers and databases to Azure.

June 2015 - December 2018

MS Amlin

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Application upgrades, migrations to Azure, DC relocations.

November 2013 - January 2015

CMC Markets

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Datacentre relocation and server estate refresh

September 2011 - September 2013

Ladbrokes

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Software development and upgrades.

Grand National planning.

June 2003 - September 2011

CMC Markets

IT Project Manager (Permanent)

Delivery of software, infrastructure and office fit-outs.

December 2001 - May 2003

CMC Markets

IT Support Manager (Permanent)

24x7 client support, internal staff and infrastructure.

October 2000 - September 2001

Merrill Lynch HSBC

IT Project Manager (Contractor)

Software deployment for their Wealth Mgt business.

January 1998 - September 2000

Merchants Group (Ireland)

IT Support Manager (Permanent)

24x7 support of 15 call centre staff and infrastructure.

July 1995 - January 1998

Merchants Group (UK)

IT Support Engineer (Permanent)

Internal desktop support in a call centre business.

June 1993 - July 1995

Webbs Country Foods

IT Project Manager (Permanent)

Internal desktop support for a food manufacturing business.

Application deployment

Application development and deployment is an area that I have become more involved in over the last few years.

Software development life-cycles, CI/CD, upgrading and deploying applications, integrating with existing infrastructure.

I have experience defining scope and requirements, managing internal and offshore development and test teams, user acceptance testing with internal staff, working with change control and managing stakeholders.

Application upgrades

January - December 2017, MS Amlin

Microsoft Dynamics 2016 to 365, 400+ users in 8 offices across the world (customer relationship management system)
Active Batch from v8.4 to v10 (workload automation and job scheduling)
Acturis v6 to v7 (end-to-end insurance platform)
Cognos v8 to v10 (forecasting and budgeting system)
Iken (document management system)

Creating DR environments for twenty-three applications

March - November 2016, MS Amlin

Manage the creation and testing of missing disaster recovery plans for 23 applications. Analysing production environments and identifying the missing DR pieces, then putting them in place, e.g.mirrored databases, new application servers, upgrading software, fixing bugs, docs, updating design documents, producing a DR Test Runbook. All new DR plans were successfully tested..

SQL upgrades

January - April 2011, CMC Markets

I project managed the migration of six Microsoft SQL 2005 databases to Microsoft SQL 2012, so they could standardise their SQL platform.

The SQL 2005 infrastructure was then decommissioned.

Reducing the time to refresh non-production databases

January - December 2011, Ladbrokes

Ladbrokes wanted to reduce the time it took to refresh non-prod databases. I reorganised Ladbrokes database infrastructure and deployed a new app for replicating production and test databases, to eradicate the loss of 5-10 days of testing each month, when Stage databases were refreshed using traditional backup and restore methods. The end-result was non-prod database refreshes took just 5 minutes.

Application installations

2011, Ladbrokes

Installation of new encryption software from Geneity.
Integration of a new price feed from BetGenius.

Application upgrades / installations

2009 & 2010, CMC Markets

New reconciliation software for the Treasury department
Deployment of a new Microsoft Project Server.
Deployment of a new Microsoft Team Foundation Server.
Complinet's TransWatch for the Risk department.
Algorithmic's OpVar for the Risk department.
Lumension device control software to stop staff from using removable media like USB drives and CDs.
ScanSafe web filtering to direct all outbound traffic through resilient connections, whilst simultaneously restricting access to unauthorised content on the Internet.

Application development

Replacement call centre application to process bets taken over the telephone

January - December 2012, Ladbrokes

I managed the replacement of a ten-year-old application, used in Ladbrokes Contact Centres in London, Gibraltar and Kuala Lumpar, to process bets from telephone customers.

Starting life as a vanilla, off-the-shelf package, there were over one hundred and fifty change requests to get the application to the level of customisation required. I managed Stakeholders and Business Analysts to define requirements, the development team, the functional testing team in India, UAT teams in London, Gibraltar and KL and the Change Control and Release Mgt teams to deploy updates into Production.

Real-time chat for Pega CRM

2011, CMC Markets

I managed the customisation of PegaChat and OpenFire modules, to provide real-time chat functionality, between Customers and the Helpdesk, for the client's new Pega CRM solution.

Regulatory changes

2011, CMC Markets

I managed the software development life cycle for implementing changes to CMC's Japanese mobile trading app, to meet new regulatory requirements. I managed internal and 3rd party developers and liaised with end-users in Japan for testing and sign-off.

Cloud

Since 2018, I have worked consistently on Cloud-based projects.

Migrating servers and databases from OnPrem to AWS and Azure.
Deploying IaaS and PaaS services.
Decommissioning legacy OnPrem infrastructure.
Deploying leading edge software; Google Anthos, Snowflake
and CloudHealth integration.
Working on the joint venture between the London Stock Exchange and Microsoft to migrate to Azure.

LSEG Microsoft Partnership Programme

January - December 2023, London Stock Exchange Group

I was part of a large team, working on the joint partnership with LSEG and Microsoft, to build new environments in Azure, migrate existing applications to Azure and refresh and redefine the way of working and operating models employed by LSEG.

Enhancing cloud services

January - December 2022, London Stock Exchange Group

I project managed multiple work streams to enhance and improve the company's cloud service

risk and compliance controls
automation and pipelines
financial optimisation
cloud migration procedures
legacy account migrations
service effectiveness
automation of engineering tasks

I project managed one of the 'pillars' in a partnership between LSEG and Microsoft, to build new landing zones in Azure and migrate apps. My pillar was responsible for implementing a new DevOps 'target operating model', to be deployed across the entire company, liaising with Microsoft and internal lines of business.

Deployment for a new 'landing zone' in AWS for Snowflake

January - December 2021, London Stock Exchange Group

Working with a 3rd party consultant, Hexaware, I managed...

The build and deployment of automated pipelines to create a new landing zone for Snowflake.
Non-Prod and Prod environments to allow other parts of the business to migrate their data requirements into Snowflake.
Discovery and design to document what will be delivered to ensure internal standards and requirements are met.

In January 2021, implementation and deployment of the new landing zone in AWS.

Build & Deployment of 'Google Anthos on AWS' in the United Kingdom

July - November 2021, London Stock Exchange Group

I project managed the build and deployment of a new Google Anthos on AWS platform. Working with the in-house Cloud Engineering Team, an external consultancy and Google themselves, the new platform was designed, built and deployed.

This was one of the first deployments of Google Anthos on AWS in the United Kingdom. The product was still official in 'beta' when we started. New Dev, Test and Production environments were built, automated pipelines using Jenkins created and incorporating Information Security requirements like sign-on protocols and role-based access control (RBAC), container scanning using BlackDuck, monitoring and alerting using DataDog, financial operations information into CloudHealth, etc.

In October 2020, the first application was migrated to containers, passed all necessary testing and went into production - 4 months after the project started.

Migration of servers and databases from Windows / SQL 2008 onto supported versions, putting as much as possible into Azure

February - December 2019, Lloyds of London

I project managed the migration of approx 400 Windows 2008 servers and 600 SQL 2008 databases to supported versions of Windows and SQL, moving as much as possible into Azure and decommission around 1,200 servers and databases. We adopted an Agile methodology with two-week sprints, to manage work and resources and track progress.

The kind of tasks that I had to manage included…

Produce design documentation and runbooks.
Build servers and databases in Azure and OnPrem.
Communication with stakeholders and users..
Produce test scripts.
Complete UAT and dual running.
Migrate users to the new deployments.
Service transition to Support.
Decommission unrequired servers and databases, c. 1,200.

After an initial period to setup and improve operating processes, output had become much faster and more efficient, getting into a ‘factory-like’ process, migrating servers and databases every week from OnPrem into Azure. The project completed on schedule and on budget.

Improving control of VMs in Azure

December 2018, MS Amlin

Once MS Amlin had been running servers in Azure for a few months, it became apparent they were missing some tools to allow them to better control and manage their cloud estate. Having managed the server migration to Azure, they asked me to revisit this project and get these tools installed.

CloudHealth was installed to improve financial reporting.
Log Collector by SecureWorks, to capture log files from domain controllers and firewalls.
Symantec Group Update Provider (GUP) to distribute content updates to client machines in Azure.
SCCM expanded so the global SCCM infrastructure could update servers in Azure.
Access control was reviewed to any unwarranted access rights.
Serial Console was enabled across the estate to allow low level access to each server, independent of the VM's network or OS state.

Cloud migration from OnPrem to Azure (IaaS)

January - July 2018, MS Amlin

I managed the migration of 91 DEV/TEST/UAT servers from a data centre in London to the Microsoft Azure cloud.

A repeatable process was created to migrate servers to Azure.

Analysis of the OnPrem servers considering connectivity to other servers/networking that would be required in Azure.
Producing migration runbooks.
Test scripts were created.
Servers were replicated to Azure using the ASR tool.
Production service transferred to the new deployments in Azure.
Service transition documentation was produced for BAU Support.
Decommission the original servers OnPrem.

Datacentres

I am very experienced at managing datacentre builds and migrations. I have completed a number of datacentre projects,

building new facilities, migrations and decommissioning.

All of these involved planning, budgeting and resourcing the project

before moving onto implementation; managing resources, project plans and delivery, cost management, progress, etc.

Migrate disaster recovery services from Canada to the UK, then decommission the original datacentre

July - December 2018, MS Amlin

MS Amlin wanted to close a data centre in Toronto that hosted a DR environment. I managed the migration of servers from Toronto to the UK, using a combination of vSphere replication to copy the servers across the network and new physical builds. The new DR environment was tested and signed off, app by app, followed by the physical decommission of hardware in Toronto.

Datacentre fit-out & server expansion

January - May 2016, MS Amlin

Installation of additional cabinets and structured cabling into two data centres, to accommodate new HP 3PAR storage, Cisco Nexus 9000s, 2000s, fibre channel switches and eight HP DL servers.

2x simultaneous data centre relocations

July - December 2015, MS Amlin

MS Amlin wanted live services moving between two data centres to enable the £5m sale of a building it owned - all within six months. I managed a team of twenty-five server, storage, networking, data centre and application engineers and architects, to design, deliver and move around one hundred physical servers and another five hundred VMs. The project was completed on time and the building sale proceeded on plan.

Datacentre relocation

October 2013 - January 2015, CMC Markets

15-month project to

relocate the datacentre from Docklands to Welwyn Garden.
upgrade networking hardware with the latest Cisco switches
increase storage capacity adding new Hitachi VSP storage devices

Work carried out included...

The new data centre was fitted out with 68 cabinets, cabling, new internet / MPLS / leased lines and telephone lines, new links to Bloomberg, Reuters, Market Prizm and to CMC's other data centres.
By early December 2014 (on schedule), all services had been migrated, 75 cabinets and 30 pallets of hardware were disposed of and the original data centre was handed back.

Server estate refresh

October 2013 - January 2015, CMC Markets

15-month project toreplace the entire server estate with new HP hardwareupgrade databases and OS versions to standardise on Windows 2012, RedHat Linux 6.0 and SQL 2012.Work carried out included...Analysis of the server estate leading to 637 servers being decommissioned.£5.9m worth of new servers, storage and networking being purchased.New servers (26 enclosures and 437 blades) were delivered and installed and 963 servers (305 physical and 658 VMs) were either built new or migrated from the original data centre.

Decommissioning in Vienna

2014, CMC Markets

CMC no longer wanted a data centre in Vienna, so new servers were built in London and services migrated. New phone lines were installed into the staff office and the phone system moved and numbers diverted. New data circuits were installed in the sales office to increase bandwidth and provide additional resilience. All the infrastructure and unwanted hardware was decommissioned.

Decommissioning in Singapore

2015, CMC Markets

CMC no longer wanted a data centre in Singapore as services had slowly been moved to London and Sydney. Only a few services remained, so it was a simple project to migrate the outstanding services, decommission the hardware and work with a local supplier for the physical disposal of hardware the dilapidation work, to return the data centre back to its original state for hand-back to the landlord.

Datacentre build, then expansion

2003 & 2005, CMC Markets

In 2003, CMC Markets moved to a new office in The City of London. I managed the construction and fit-out of it's new data centre in the building basement, managing 3rd party contractors and suppliers, budgets and schedules for the physical construction and the installation of the aircon, fire suppression, electrics, UPS and batteries, generator, copper and fibre network cabling and working with Telco's for the installation of new WAN and Phone lines. In 2005, the floorspace of CMC's data centre was doubled, so electrics, aircon, UPS, fire suppression, networking were all upgraded.

Networking

have delivered many types of networking projects over the years...

Data centre migrations
Connectivity to market data providers
Upgrading / expanding / decommissioning networking hardware
Rolling out global connectivity
Re-organising VPN connections
Installing local WiFi.

New 10Gbps circuits & Cisco Nexus hardware

2016, CMC Markets

As part of CMC's data centre relocation project, I managed the installation of 4x 10Gb/s links between the new data centre and their existing two other sites. New Cisco Nexus hardware worth £1m was purchased and installed, to create a brand new LAN in the new data centre. New Internet and MPLS connections with Verizon and Colt were added. Months later when the servers had been installed and services migrated, the final part of the project was to manage the relocation and integration of the original Cisco Nexus hardware into the new data centre, to increase capacity and resilience.

Replacing market data providers

2014, CMC Markets

CMC replaced BT Radianz and TNS as their primary price providers, with a new supplier, Market Prizm. Four new data circuits were installed between CMC's two data centres and Market Prizm (two per site for resilience). Price data from Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Smart Trade and Real Tick was then supplied by Market Prizm (whilst still retaining the original feeds), integrated into CMC's pricing infrastructure and tested. The original BT Radianz and TNS services were decommissioned when CMC's Pricing team signed off the new data supply.

53x VPN migrations

2013, Ladbrokes

I managed the migration of fifty-three VPN connections to Vodafone's data centre, saving Ladbrokes £600K because they could decommission an Internet circuit, saving the renewal budget. Working with Vodafone and 3rd parties, I managed technical resources for the network design work, scheduled change windows and managed the change control processes. All fifty-three VPNs were migrated on schedule.

SkyBet's datacentre relocation

2013, Ladbrokes

Sky supplied data services to Ladbrokes and had their own programme to relocate one of their data centres. I ensured the continuity of services provided by Sky to Ladbrokes customers, by managing the analysis, change and testing of the network between Sky and Ladbrokes. When Sky moved their data centre there was no loss of service to Ladbrokes.

BGP deployment

2013, Ladbrokes

Deployment of new BGP technology across four internet circuits between two data centres in Gibraltar, managing Ladbrokes' internal networking team and the technical resources of the ISPs.

WiFi installation

2012, Ladbrokes

I managed the installation of two WI-FI networks, at Ladbrokes' Crayford Greyhound Track, in their hospitality centre and their restaurant.

Decommissioning old XML price feeds

2011, Ladbrokes

I decommissioned uncontrolled outbound XML price feeds and migration of 3rd parties to a single, managed production feed, allowing Ladbrokes to control who they were giving access to their data feed.

Worldwide MPLS deployment

2011, CMC Markets

I managed the deployment of a new worldwide MPLS network to eighteen offices in Europe, APAC and North America, supplied by Verizon. I had to liaise with many telco's around the world as well as Verizon, managing the delivery of local tail circuits between our offices and Verizon's connection point. All the offices went online on schedule, network traffic was faster, more resilient and CMC saved money by having one integrated network, instead of multiple separate deals.

Live TV Broadcasting

2009, CMC Markets

I managed the installation of data links and hardware between CMC's office and a broadcast intermediary company, to enable live TV broadcasting from the dealing room to broadcasters like BBC News, Sky News and Bloomberg.

Office builds & relocations

Since 2005, I have managed the delivery of ten new office fit-outs and nine office relocations, in the UK, Europe, the USA and Asia Pacific.

As well as filling the role of IT project manager, I was often involved in the office design and physical construction, as well as the normal IT fit-out. I have managed the delivery of new office space for almost 1,000 employees.

2015

Zurich

Network fit-out and staff relocation

30 people

I was asked to help with an office relocation in Zurich, amalgamating staff from two floors the client wanted to return to the landlord, to a new floor in the same building, the client had rented. The move required installing new LAN hardware on the new floor and connecting it to the existing LAN on remaining floors, inter-floor copper and fibres, patching about 80 positions and relocating approximately 30 members of staff. The IT fit-out and staff move was completed on schedule.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: None
New installation: LAN hardware, telephony
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, desktop PCs, staff

_________________________________________________

2014

Stockholm

Office relocation

15 people

The client wanted to relocate their office in Stockholm to new premises. There was no fit-out work involved, just the installation of the new telephone, MPLS and internet circuits, followed by the relocation of the staff and their equipment.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: None
New installation: WAN
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, desktop PCs, staff

Frankfurt

Office relocation

25 people

I project managed the relocation of staff and equipment to new premises in Frankfurt. I looked after the elements of the project, not under control of the main contracting company in Germany - the installation of new telephone, MPLS and internet circuits and a new Wi-Fi network. I liaised with the internal End User Support department to organise the relocation of the staff and their equipment and the internal Networking department for the delivery and connectivity of the new circuits.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: None
New installation: WAN
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, desktop PCs, staff

_________________________________________________

2010

Paris

New office fit-out

4,000 sq. ft / 372 sq. m

I was tasked with designing and planning the IT installation for a new sales office, for 12 staff, seminar room and meeting rooms. I project managed the design, supply and installation of the IT infrastructure; electrics, LAN cabling, WAN links, LAN hardware, telephone lines and PABX system, desktop computers / peripherals and audio visual hardware.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: electrical
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, desktop PCs, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: None

London (133 Houndsditch)

Telephony migration

400+ people

The client wanted to relocate their existing telephone system to their new HQ and at the same time, improve the resiliency by hosting it across two data centres. I managed the installation of new phone lines into the new office and second data centre, followed by splitting and balancing the phone system hardware and configuration between the two sites. The final stage was the relocation and testing of over 400 handsets, as staff were moved to the new HQ office.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: None
New installation: telephony
Relocation: telephony

London (Leadenhall Street)

Office relocation

50 people

I was called back to reactivate an office I had decommissioned six months previously and given one month to do it. I produced seating layouts, a relocation plan and got a new WAN link installed. Once all the IT infrastructure had been installed, furniture, staff and their equipment were relocated.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: None
New installation: WAN
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, servers, desktop PCs, staff

Auckland

Office relocation

15 people

Relocation of a sales office to new premises in Auckland. I was asked to design the IT infrastructure for the new office, organise the installation of new data cabling, phone and data lines, and produce a relocation plan that a local company would follow to move the staff and equipment.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: None
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony
Relocation: None

_________________________________________________

2009

Hamburg

Office relocation

30 people

The client wanted to relocate their office from Frankfurt to Hamburg, then decommission the original office. There was no fit-out work involved, just the installation of the IT infrastructure (data cabling, electrics, WAN links, LAN hardware, telephones lines), followed by the relocation of the staff and their equipment.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, electrical
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony
Relocation: telephony, desktop PCs, staff

Vienna

Office relocation

5 people

I project managed the relocation of staff and equipment to new premises in Vienna. There was no fit-out work involved, just the installation of the IT infrastructure (data cabling, electrics, WAN links, LAN hardware, telephones lines), followed by the relocation of the staff and their equipment.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, electrical
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony
Relocation: telephony, desktop PCs, staff

Munich

Office relocation

10 people

I project managed the relocation of staff and equipment to new premises in Munich. There was no fit-out work involved, just the installation of the IT infrastructure (data cabling, electrics, WAN links, LAN hardware, telephones lines), followed by the relocation of the staff and their equipment.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: electrical
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, desktop PCs, staff

London (Leadenhall Street)

Office relocation

70 people

An office with 70 staff was relocated to other premises belonging to the client, as the lease on the Leadenhall Street address was ending. Plans were made to relocate the staff over three weekends and then decommission the original office's IT infrastructure and dispose of any unwanted furniture.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: None
New installation: LAN hardware, telephony
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, servers, desktop PCs, staff

2008

Oslo

New office fit-out

1,990 sq. ft | 185 sq. m

Refurbishment of an office in the centre of Oslo. The challenge here was to fit staff desking, a manager's office, a seminar room and a meeting room, into a small area. I managed all the aspects of the project, from the architectural design and the interior construction, to the installation of the office components; IT infrastructure and hardware, security and furniture.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, desktop PCs, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: None

Milan

New office fit-out

3,219 sq. ft | 300 sq. m

Refurbishment of an office in a redeveloped office block in central Milan. Office space was required for 11 staff, meeting rooms and a seminar room. I managed the entire project, from the architectural design and the interior construction, to the installation of the office components; IT infrastructure and hardware, audio visual, security, furniture and signage.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, desktop PCs, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: None

Madrid

New office fit-out

3,390 sq. ft | 315 sq. m

Refurbishment of a very dated office interior in Madrid, in a building that had a listed status. Floorplans & related documentation had to be created to ensure the project complied with legislative restrictions on the building. I managed the entire project, from the design and the interior construction, to the installation of the office furniture and IT infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, desktop PCs, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: None

_________________________________________________

2007

Dublin

New office fit-out

3,000 sq. ft | 278 sq. m

Fit-out of an empty office in the city centre of Dublin. Office space for 19 staff, meeting rooms and a seminar room. I managed the entire project, from the architectural design and the interior construction, to the installation of the office components; IT infrastructure and hardware, audio visual, security, furniture and signage.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, desktop PCs, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: None

Edinburgh

New office fit-out

3,200 sq. ft | 297 sq/ m

Complete fit-out of an empty office in Edinburgh. Office space was created for 7 staff, four meeting rooms and a seminar room. I managed the entire project, from the architectural design and the interior construction, to the installation of the office components; IT infrastructure and hardware, audio visual, security, furniture and signage.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, desktop PCs, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: None

_________________________________________________

2006

Stockholm

New office fit-out

3,200 sq. ft | 297 sq m.

Complete fit-out of a shell and core office space in central Stockholm. Office space for 22 staff, reception, meeting rooms and a seminar room. I managed the entire project, from the architectural design and the interior construction, to the installation of the office components; IT infrastructure and hardware, audio visual, security, furniture and signage.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, desktop PCs, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: None

New York

New office fit-out and staff relocation

2,500 sq. ft | 232 sq. m

I designed the floorplans for the new office for 24 staff and managed the fit-out process with local sub-contractors in New York. I selected and managed the installation of the furniture, network cabling, IT hardware, audio visual and security. Upon completion of the fit-out, the computers, telephony and network hardware were relocated from the original office in mid-town NYC.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, WAN, telephony, audio visual, security, furniture
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, servers, desktop PCs, staff

_________________________________________________

2005

Frankfurt

new office fit-out and staff relocation

11,990 sq. ft | 1,113 sq. m

Thirty staff were relocated to a new office in central Frankfurt. I managed the whole project, including the architectural design (done with a UK-based architect), the interior refurbishment and installation of data and phone lines, phone system, networking, security, furniture and signage. I managed a mixture of German and UK suppliers and local German trades and sub-contractors.

Responsibilities:

Fit-out: floor plan designs, construction, mechanical, electrical, lighting
New installation: LAN cabling, LAN hardware, WAN, telephony, security, furniture
Relocation: LAN hardware, telephony, desktop PCs, staff

Servers & storage

I have delivered many projects that involved changing servers and storage.

Migrating servers between data centres, installing new hardware,

decommissioning old hardware, upgrading operating systems.

There's not much I haven't done with servers.

Windows Server 2012 Upgrades

August 2023 - February 2024, MS Amlin

I worked on a project team to migrate 35 infrastructure and business services from Windows Server 2012 to 2019, and wherever possible, to host the service in Azure. The work required liaising with service owners, application SMEs and the technical IT partner.

Avaya telephone system migration

January - June 2020, TP ICAP

Part of a larger data centre migration programme to vacate three data centres, bring a new one online and migrate applications to the AWS Cloud. I was responsible for

Lift and Shift of 20 applications from old OnPrem data centres to the new OnPrem. Mixture of physical migrations and vMotioning.
Working with the DBA team to upgrade Oracle databases from versions 11 and 12 to 19c and migrating the databases to a new infrastructure.
Migration of 80 SQL server databases to a new SQL farm.
Decommissioning 43 applications.

Migration of IT Services from one IT support provider to another

July - December 2018, MS Amlin

MS Amlin wanted to migrate all supported services and users from one outsource partner to another, to save £3m a year. I worked on four streams of this programme:

Network Changes;
- New circuits, VLAN stretching, gateway migrations, DMZ, firewall & F5 changes.
Migration of the Citrix environment used by 150 staff
- Customising the build image into MS Amlin’s Citrix estate
- System and UAT
- Cut-over to the new Citrix.
Upgrading user's hardware
- Upgrading desktops & laptops, remote worker's hardware, replacing WYSE terminals
- Communicating with users.
Migration of infrastructure servers
- MS Exchange, Enterprise Vault, domain controllers and file servers.

Removing performance bottlenecks

July - December 2016, MS Amlin

Users were complaining about poor performance of their SAS environment. The root cause was their physical server was no longer fit for purpose. I managed the installation of the new hardware into a datacenter then the VMs were migrated to the new hosts. A cut-over point was agreed and the new server moved from UAT to PROD and the old server was decommissioned.

Data Warehousing

January - July 2016, MS Amlin

Installation and new HP 3PAR storage and a collection of the latest generation HP DL360, DL380 and DL580 servers were installed, for a storage transition and data warehousing project.

Resizing IT infrastructure for the Grand National

2012 & 2013, Ladbrokes

Ladbrokes wanted their online and mobile platforms to stay operational on Grand National Day - the busiest day of the year for every bookmaker with triple the volume of bets compared to a normal Saturday's racing and football. Historically, every bookmaker’s IT systems crashed on Grand National day due to volume.

I managed the analysis of every aspect of technology to identify weaknesses and resolve them. We created new customer journeys, made better use of existing F5 load balancers, introduced the use of AWS' Content Delivery Network to reduce the volume of data our web servers had to provide, right-sized database resources, all to try and keep the system operational.

In 2012, Ladbrokes online presence survived until one hour before the race started, but in 2013, the IT systems stayed up all day for the first time ever.

I heard from ex-colleagues they still use the principles we developed in 2012. Based on those experiences, I wrote a book about planning IT Infrastructure for large events (which you can buy on Amazon. Search for “IT Planning for the Grand National”).

Reducing the time taken to refresh non-Production databases

2012, Ladbrokes

I reorganised Ladbrokes database infrastructure and deployed a new app for replicating production and test databases, to eradicate the loss of 5-10 days of testing each month, when Stage databases were refreshed using traditional backup and restore methods. The end-result was non-prod database refreshes took just 5 minutes.

Performance improvement programme

2012, Ladbrokes

I managed a programme of twenty-two projects to improve the performance and resilience of Ladbrokes production web servers, application servers, load balancers, firewalls and backups. The programme was delivered to plan & budget.

Eradicating system bottlenecks in the BI system

2012, Ladbrokes

The BI system was running slowly and failing to produce reports to management on time. I managed analysis of the bottlenecks, deployment of more powerful hardware, OS and software upgrades and memory upgrades. The impact was production of BI reports became problem free and production time reduced by 2 hours.

Anchor 1

Telecoms

I have delivered quite a few telecoms based projects in my career.

Installation and decommissioning of circuits,

upgrades and migration of phone systems.

Avaya telephone system migration

2014, CMC Markets

As part of CMC's data centre relocation, I managed the installation of new ISDN circuits from COLT Telecom into the new data centre in Welwyn Garden City, followed by the relocation of their Avaya system, working with CMC's telecoms partner, G3.

Telephony integration

2011, CMC Markets

Telephony and data integration with an outsourced debit/credit card processing company, to enable CMC's compliance with PCI requirements when dealing with customer's card information over the telephone.

Avaya telephone system migration

2010, CMC Markets

When CMC moved to new headquarters in the City of London, I managed the separation and migration of the company’s Avaya phone system, from one to two data centres to improve business continuity. Staff were moved to the new office and every single extension and inbound number worked perfectly. Attention to detail, planning and thorough testing meant zero downtime.

Office fit-outs

2005-2014, CMC Markets

I managed the installation and configuration of new phone lines and telephony hardware for new offices fit-outs (click here to see Office Moves)

Available: Now

MKK IT

IT project management.

Startup. Initiation. Execution. Monitoring. Closure. 20 years experience delivering technical projects.

Welcome to MKK IT project management

Contact information

Martin Harris

Freelance, contract, IT project management

Western USA / Canada & Mexico

APAC

United Kingdom / EMEA

Standard contracting

United Kingdom. USA or APAC

Time & materials

Worldwide

Statement of work

Worldwide

Supplying other skills (UK only)

Work history

August 2023 - January 2024

July 2020 - August 2023

January 2020 - June 2020

February 2019 - December 2019

June 2015 - December 2018

November 2013 - January 2015

September 2011 - September 2013

June 2003 - September 2011

December 2001 - May 2003

October 2000 - September 2001​

January 1998 - September 2000

July 1995 - January 1998

June 1993 - July 1995

Application deployment

Application upgrades

Creating DR environments for twenty-three applications

SQL upgrades

Reducing the time to refresh non-production databases

Application installations

Application upgrades / installations

Application development

Replacement call centre application to process bets taken over the telephone

Real-time chat for Pega CRM

​​

Regulatory changes

Cloud

LSEG Microsoft Partnership Programme

January - December 2023, London Stock Exchange Group

Enhancing cloud services

Deployment for a new 'landing zone' in AWS for Snowflake

Build & Deployment of 'Google Anthos on AWS' in the United Kingdom

Migration of servers and databases from Windows / SQL 2008 onto supported versions, putting as much as possible into Azure

Improving control of VMs in Azure

Cloud migration from OnPrem to Azure (IaaS)

Datacentres

Migrate disaster recovery services from Canada to the UK, then decommission the original datacentre

Datacentre fit-out & server expansion

2x simultaneous data centre relocations

Datacentre relocation

Server estate refresh

Decommissioning in Vienna

Decommissioning in Singapore

Datacentre build, then expansion

Networking

New 10Gbps circuits & Cisco Nexus hardware

Replacing market data providers

53x VPN migrations

SkyBet's datacentre relocation

BGP deployment

WiFi installation

Decommissioning old XML price feeds

Worldwide MPLS deployment

Live TV Broadcasting

Office builds & relocations

2015

Zurich

2014

Stockholm

Frankfurt

2010

Paris

Startup. Initiation. Execution. Monitoring. Closure.
20 years experience delivering technical projects.

October 2000 - September 2001