Hamish Whittal, 41 PRESENT POSITION: IT Manager, SAAO, Cape Town. BACKGROUND I have been involved in the IT industry for over 16 years and over this time have worked in a number of diverse environments, from programming to networking, network management, systems administration, training, designing and developing solutions to address clients IT business challenges. I am a generalist who understands a wide range of environments. The most recent position I filled, was the role of Senior Systems Administrator for the South African Astronomical Society in Cape Town. I understand the technical aspects or my work very thoroughly while being able to translate the technology into business process and delivery. I have excellent oral skills having delivered training and business presentations for much of my IT career. STRENGTHS Wide range of skills i.e. a generalist. Excellent oral skills Ability to communicate to all levels of the organisation technical people and business people alike. Good problem solving skills Driven by delivery of service to the business i.e. not IT for the sake of IT Technically very competent Passion for my work Continuous self-improvement PERSONAL DETAILS Surname: Whittal First Names: Hamish Bertram Nationality: South African Date of Birth: 5 March 1968 Marital Status: Married Health: Excellent Telephone Number(s) Telephone (home): 021 671 7710 Telephone (cell): 082 803 5533 Email Address: zinkeldonk@gmail.com QUALIFICATIONS BSc. Computer Science (Hons), Rhodes University, 1999 RedHat Certified Engineer (RHCE), RedHat, Europe Accredited SCO Engineer, SCO, USA Linux Professional Institute (Level 1) certified, LPI, USA
TECHNICAL SKILLS SUMMARY O p e r a t i S y s t e m s En d- use r co mp utin g Skill Recentness Proficiency Comment SUN Solaris Current Moderate I have been administering Solaris since SunOS 4.1. Currently working on Solaris 8. RedHat Linux Current work on it daily Excellent I have been administering RedHat Linux since March 1999. SuSE Linux Current work on it daily Excellent Debian Linux Current work on it daily Excellent I have been working on and off on Debian for approximately 2 years. It is now my Linux distribution of choice. HP/UX Last worked on 1 year ago Good Worked on HP/UX extensively while holding network management positions. Versions 8,9 and 10. FreeBSD Daily Good I currently am in the process of switching my working environment to FreeBSD AIX 1 year ago Moderate Have trained generic UNIX courses using AIX as the base platform, however not run it in production SCO 5 years ago Poor Accredited SCO engineer (ASE). Windows Current Moderate Basic skills. Also able to interconnect UNIX and Windows in domains environments, centralised logins, etc. MS Word Daily Excellent MS Excel Daily Excellent MS Powerpoint Daily Excellent OpenOffice Writer Daily Excellent O p e n s o u c e e q u i v a l e n t s o f t h e OpenOffice Calc Daily Excellent OpenOffice Impress Daily Excellent M i c r o s o f t o f f i c e s u i t e P r o g r a m m i N e t w o r k i Shell Scripting Current Excellent Developed systems monitoring tools using shell scripts. Developed the only shell scripting course available freely Perl Current work on it daily Excellent Developed / developing commercial systems for Vodacom amongst others. Java 2 months Moderate Learning to program Java to tackle some otherwise difficult to solve problems. Python 1 month Poor Started teaching myself ruby in the last month Ruby 1 month Poor Started teaching myself ruby in the last month HTML, DHTML, XML and Monthly Moderate Use it primarily to produce quick simple views of data and systems. CSS PHP 6 months ago Moderate Use it primarily to produce quick simple dynamic HTML. C / C++ 5+ years ago Poor Know enough to produce basic, simple applications. TCP/IP Daily Excellent Understand IP, name services, networking, 7 layer model. Working practical knowledge of TCP/IP and associated protocols. Network Infrastructure Daily Excellent Routers, switches, hubs, VLAN's, network topologies, firewalls, etc. Network Management Daily Excellent Network management, network management applications, SNMP v 1,2 & 3. WiFi Networking Daily Good Currently work on implementation of WiFi networks regularly. Security, Firewalls, VPN's Daily Excellent/Good This is an area that I find interesting and thus spend a large chunk of time working here. Web, proxy, ftp, Samba Daily Good Apache, SQUID, and a variety of ftp servers. servers Mail servers 3 months Good Sendmail, Exim, Qmail, POP and IMAP servers. N e HP Openview 16 months Good Have worked on HP Openview for a variety of clients including Old t Mutual, Vodacom, Naspers and others Nethealth 16 months Good Worked on Nethealth at Old Mutual for CSC M g SNMP Protocols 6 months Excellent Use SNMP regularly m t D a t a b a s e s Custom Network Management Applications 12 months Excellent Developed custom configuration management application for Vodacom using Perl, SNMP and Oracle Oracle Daily Moderate Stored procedures, triggers, packages, table-spaces. Currently gaining wide experience in this field. PostgreSQL 8 months Moderate Developed a network management application to work on top of PostgreSQL. MySQL Daily Moderate Basic knowledge of MySQL. Sybase 2 years Moderate Least well known of all the database architectures. SQL Server 2000 6 months Moderate Administration of this database
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY COMPANY: South African Astronomical Observatory, Cape Town POSITION: Senior Systems Administrator, January 2008 - Current SAAO encompasses a diverse range of challenges, from desktop support and administration, to systems involved in process control of the telescopes Manage and maintain systems used in-house Be proactive with desktop support using ticketing system Develop and implement new systems and processes Implemented network management system to pro-actively monitor our systems. Implementation of in-house instant messaging system. In-house training initiative to assist staff in understanding technology to assist them in their day-to-day work experience. Migration of systems off diverse nonstandard platforms to Debian based platforms. Not leaving. COMPANY: Hetzner (Pty) Ltd POSITION: Senior System Administrator and Team Leader, Systems Administration Team, April 2006- November 2007 Hetzner is an email and web hosting provider. They have 3 data centres spread over 2 continents with a team of system administrators keeping the servers in production. Manage a team of system administrators Manage clients technical problems Keep all server (>800) in production and patched/updated at all times Implement new solutions for the more efficient running of such systems Managed a serverbase that doubled in size since the day I started. Management of a team of sysadmins who were very much more junior in my team. Implementation of systems within Hetzner to improve efficiencies, specifically regarding backups, methods of updating all servers simultaneously and mail/spam filtering. Opportunities for improvement are limited. COMPANY: QED Technologies cc POSITION: Manager, April 2003 to March 2006
QED Technologies is an Open Source solution provider. They consult, design and implement Open Source based solutions for business and non-profit organisations. In addition, they provide support services to client and are involved in the training technical staff working for corporate business. Manage clients technical problems Consult to clients wishing to roll-out open source solutions to business Implement new solutions based upon Linux and Open Source Migrate businesses from other platforms to Linux and Open Source Sales, marketing and administration of the business Contracting to companies such as CSC doing Network Management Managed some significant project including those for the Shuttleworth Foundation relating to Open Source and Linux. Built and installed the first commercial point-of-internet-presence based upon Open Source technology in South Africa. Trained a signifcant number of people in Open Source technology. I was needing to make a change in the type of work I am currently involved in. Doing too much desktop support COMPANY: Trade Law Centre of Southern Africa (TRALAC) POSITION: IT Manager, July 2002 to March 2003 TRALAC is a not-for-profit (section 21) company whose responsibility is to assist in the fostering of trade between the various SADC countries. It has offices based in not less that three SADC countries and has roaming country managers who deal with all levels of business and government in assisting them in their understanding of trade not only within the region, but with foreign countries. Manage clients technical problems within the company Deal with a wide area network working over the Internet Manage suppliers and service level agreements Design and set up policies and procedures on the running of the IT department Implementation of new systems to assist in the deployment of critical business related functions Linux, Microsoft Windows XP, WANs, VPN's, Mail servers, web servers My team of professionals enjoyed working for me since they got to learn a great deal. They liked my management style in that they were free to implement ideas that were of benefit to the client. My job of establishing the IT department was done and since I wanted to work for myself, I decided not to pursue the renewal of my contract. POSITIONS PRIOR TO THIS ROLE Also all positions prior to this role were in the area of Network Management. Beginning at the City of Cape Town, managing their infrastructure using Solstice (Sun Microsystem's proprietary network
Management Application), moving to the IGMS department at Computer Alliance and then onto a variety of contract positions where I used a combination of Network Management Applications to manage large mission critical networks. COMPANY: Vulingqondo - Formerly Opening Minds (subsequently bought out by SmartSource), April 2002 to June 2002 POSITION: Contract trainer REASONS FOR LEAVING: Offered a Job with the Trade Law Centre of Southern Africa COMPANY: Contractor to Dimension Data, based on site at Vodacom, November 1998 to March 2002 POSITION: Technical Network Management Specialist REASON FOR LEAVING: Contract came to an end when Vodacom changed the systems they were using COMPANY: Student at UCT while still doing training for 3Com South Africa, January 1998 to November 1998 POSITION: Trainer of their Network Management Products REASON FOR LEAVING: Completed my studies COMPANY: Contractor to Digitial Networking System, Cape, September 1996 to December 1998 POSITION: Technical consultant and implementation specialist Network Management Systems, September 1996 to December 1998 REASON FOR LEAVING: Wanted to go back to University to study COMPANY: Computer Alliance, Cape, February 1995 to August 1996 POSITION: Technical Network Management Consultant REASON FOR LEAVING: Computer Alliance closed their Network Management Division COMPANY: City of Cape Town, IT Department POSITION: Network management engineer, September 1993 to January 1995 REASON FOR LEAVING: Offered a job with Computer Alliance, Network Management Division GENERAL I am very technically competent and have the ability to guide and assist people who work with me in a positive and productive way. In addition, I have a very strong focus on the business and the role that IT can play in assisting the business to run effectively. A strong work ethic, linked to constant self-development ensure that I am abreast of current trends all the time, and can assist the business in making the correct choices to take them into the future. CONTACTABLE REFERENCES: 1) Mr. Roy Emmerich, IT Manager, SAAO. 071 176 8725 emmerich@saao.ac.za 2) Ms. Wendi Wise. Adult Educator, Triple L Academy, Tannery Park, Rondebosch. 084 511 3534 wendi@choiceprojects.co.za 3) Gareth Allen, Systems Administrator, UpFront Systems. 084 302 2366 gallen@openworld.co.za