i-UG Conference South 2025

IBM Power Technical Sales Manager for EMEA.

I lead a team of around 100 or so talented Power presales technical experts and their managers across EMEA on the best all round server platform in the world.....Power of course!

Talk to me about any projects you are considering for Power, especially containerising and modernising your applications or AI, and if they involve Red Hat Software even better, as this is where we see a growing market.

I started work as a programmer in S3 (an Algol68 based language) and C. I was a designer and programmer for the S3L mainframes specifically working on the VME Operating system kernel. My subsystems were Error management and Multi-node management - producing the detailed design for managing nodes joining and leaving a cluster and then leading a team of programmers to implement the design. I went on to work on porting the Ingres Relational Database from x86 Unix onto a unix on VME derivative Called VNS and moved across to the testing team, creating automated test suites. Following this I went to work for an end user as a development DBA for Ingres on VMS and Unix and moved on as Technical Services manager managing the whole of the operations team and DBA development teams before joining Sequent as a Professional Services consultant specialising in Relational databases, working in competitive situations on benchmarks and also large implementations. I was also a trouble shooter - going in to find and correct issues with relational databases on Sequent systems which was always fun!

In 1999, Sequent was bought by IBM and I started my first presales technical role with the AIX technical sales team and within a year became a cross brand architect covering Power, mainframe and storage covering some of the largest banks in the UK and globally . I stayed in this role for about 9 years and then was asked to become a client Architect which covered the whole IBM portfolio within the financial services sector. After a few years more, I decided that I would like to be a technical manager and was given the chance to manage the UK cross brand architects, many of whom I had worked with as peers previously. As we restructured I was asked if I would like to manage the Power technical team in the UK which included our newly formed team of bright young AI experts. This was a very exciting time for me and for Power. After doing this for two years I moved to a European role as the technical lead for AI which I took on just as Covid hit. This brought a new way of working in as well as opportunities to look at how we could apply our Power AI technology to covid and other threats to health.

Things change as they often do within IBM and I took on an additional role which covered OpenShift and Red Hat SW on Power and within a year I was asked to take on the whole of the PowerTechnical team for EMEA after the retirement of my predecessor. This job is challenging and very rewarding and it is a privilege to lead and serve such a wonderful team.

My interests include Golf (World Handicap Index of 16.9) although I don't get to play often enough to maintain any consistency so like most golfers one day can be great and the next a real struggle. Having said that I have a hole-in-one against my name (on the golf club wall) which is probably my best moment in golf.

I also like to watch films and have a cinema space in my house where I enjoy High and ultra High definition films with full surround with Dolby Atmos.