Peter Harrison
High Speed Internet
Infrastructure Expert

Experience

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SUMMARY OF EXPERTISE

  •  
  • * Extremely high volume web based Video on Demand systems
  • * The deployment of content delivery networks (CDN)
  • * Hosting high volume websites for Fortune 500 companies
  • * Large scale data center migrations
  • * MBA, BS electrical and computer engineering
    * Complete bilingual Spanish and English fluency
    * Fourteen years post university work experience in North America, Latin America and Europe
    * General management experience
  • * Strong project management, negotiation, inter-personal, communication and team building skills
    * Author of the Linux Quick Fix Notebook ISBN: 0131861506
    * Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) #8710
     

Eighteen years of extensive hands-on experience in network engineering, Windows / Linux systems administration, troubleshooting and repair. Designed, installed, configured and maintained complex routed LAN and WAN networks. Supervised permanent and contract personnel. Excellent communication skills with the ability to interface at all levels. A team player who also can work well independently.


PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS

(Last Position Held)

 

 

SHOPPING.COM (eBay)

USA
2008 – Present
Director of IT Operations
 

Ownership for the infrastructure to support shopping.com's B2B and B2C comparison ecommerce products. Responsible for a grid computing farm of over 3,000 servers, its data center facilities and supporting network interconnectivity.

 

 

NETFLIX INC.

USA

2005 - 2008
Network Manager


Responsible for the strategy, planning, acquisition, implementation, and maintenance of relationships with suppliers and partners to expand Netflix's operational presence. Negotiations and contract management required balancing the technological and commercial aspects of networking infrastructure whilst delivering against aggressive deadlines and cost reduction goals. The tasks included close vendor interaction to analyze, design, develop, and deliver innovative contracts for fiber, collocation data center capacity, and peering for the company's converged voice, video on demand and data network services.

 

Managed the acquisition and deployment of telephony infrastructure for the Netflix 250 seat VoIP call center. This included requirements definition, design, testing, installation, documentation, maintenance and support for the base infrastructure. Additionally involved in software evaluation and selection for contact center solutions such as IVR, CTI, ACD, workforce management, quality assurance, reporting systems and carrier services.

In charge of the wireless infrastructure for all corporate offices including roaming laptops, cell phones and handheld scanners.

 

Currently leading a number of initiatives related to improving centralized and automated network management systems to meet corporate goals with minimum capital expenditure. Managed re-architecture efforts that have reduced network deployment costs to over 50 DVD distribution centers by 30%.


Responsible for the design and implementation of the Netflix content delivery network (CDN) services for the distribution of streaming video content on demand. This resulted in the development of a scalable, rapidly deployable, and cost effective solution with easy maintenance and monitoring as the primary design goals.

 

Led the team that established peering relationships with external ISPs, transit providers and partner networks at national Internet exchanges. This included the analysis of network traffic and trends for both capacity planning and identifying areas for peering expansion. Member of a cross-functional team that negotiated the legal and technical contract requirements for the CDN services.

In summary responsibilities include:

  1. Budgeting for all telecommunications costs. This included tracking monthly spending on telecommunications services against budgeted amounts, reporting results and recommending measures needed to keep expenditures in line.
  2. Carrying out risk assessments, associated with capacity management, shifting traffic patterns and the impact of rolling out new applications or adding new geographic areas to the serving footprint.
  3. Choosing locations for additional exchange points based on forecasted customer demand, selecting collocation vendors, ensuring that sufficient space is available for expansion and controlling collocation cost.
  4. Building financial and business models to assess the viability of acquiring network technologies against return on investment (ROI) goals.
  5. Negotiating contracts with Internet backbone service providers for transit bandwidth, including contract terms, and service level agreements (SLA). Setting technical requirements for transit bandwidth and peering.
  6. Managing project plans to ensure schedules, dependencies, revisions and resources to achieve their organizational objectives.
  7. Working with Marketing/Sales to understand the impact of product promotions on customer growth by geographic area and determining the network impact.
  8. Reporting and making recommendations on the expansion of a national network infrastructure utilizing a wide variety of vendor and transport technologies.


NAVISITE INC.

USA

2000 - 2005
Director Network Engineering

Managed a team of up to 15 engineers, 200+ Cisco 6509 layer 3 switches / routers serving over 600 customers and 3,000 web servers. Hands on familiarity with products from Cisco, Nortel / Altheon, Juniper, Netscreen, Nokia, F5, Blue Coat, Foundry and Avaya.

  1. Member of the final technical escalation team for all for 16 web hosting data centers network events and post sales customer support
  2. Lead engineer for the management of Navisite’s HotRoute content delivery systems used by Computer Associates and Oracle for their software download sites.
  3. Member of the customer incident review team
  4. Team lead for the network equipment rationalization project for the West Coast data centers. Reduced equipment maintenance costs by over 50% through the phased removal of equipment from the San Jose data center. This was achieved through a series of over 30 planned change windows.
  5. Networking team lead in the migration and integration of all customers from the Scott's Valley, Avasta, Progress Software and Conxion data centers to Navisite's San Jose data center. This involved moving over 750 servers.
  6. Created the "Socrates" web portal to provide information to disparate network engineering groups, from multiple acquired companies, with centralized documentation on the various deployed architectures and subsequent integration projects.
  7. Lead for the "Architecture Desk" which has responsibility for the research, evaluation, approval and implementation of all equipment additions to our customer topologies with an eye to long term supportability.
  8. Team lead for architecting and implementing Navisite's New Delhi (India) offices established as part of the company's globalization efforts.
  9. Member of Navisite's team responsible for making the San Jose data center SAS70 compliant in accordance with the requirements of the Sarbanes Oxley Act.
  10. Team lead for a number of formal training exercises for the Engineering, NOC and Customer Care organizations. Developed a "Technical Lunch" program to provide technology briefings to "top 30" customers on the architectures used in their hosting topologies.
  11. Team lead for the annual code upgrading process for all network devices.
  12. Member of the systems compatibility test systems lab responsible for verifying the functionality of various vendors' equipment, supplied by customers or internally, with Navisite's existing infrastructure.
  13. Acting "Incident Manager" responsible for resolving issues that affect any customers' web site functionality in the absence of the Director of Networking.

 Projects have included:

  1. Lab testing to ensure that the Cisco CSS11000 (Arrowpoint) L5/7 switches used were compatible with all Navisite's supported web server applications. Responsible for identifying a number of bug fixes in versions 3 and 4 code.
  2. Development and introduction of a centralized VPN service to be resold to clients. Implementation of the infrastructure to create a single super NOC to monitor Navisite's 4 data centers.
  3. Creation of PERL scripts to check the QA of network device configurations via SNMP and configuration file checks.
     

 

EFINITY MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS

USA

1999 - 2000
Networking / IT Consultant

 

Main client, United Airlines SFO. Member of the team that managed the systems and associated network devices used to control the maintenance of all North American aircraft. LAN/WAN network of 1,100 TCP/IP based data collection devices controlled by over 20 high speed servers and 20 Cisco routers. Team member for replacing legacy Cabletron Layer 2 switching equipment with Cisco 6509 Layer 3 switches to act as a campus backbone. Pre-sales work to migrate from OpenVMS to UNIX / Solaris. Project manager for migrating all aircraft maintenance systems from legacy disk storage to RAID arrays. Resulting annual maintenance contract savings of $400,000. Experience with Cisco Routers, network security, Multinet TCP/IP, Compaq Alpha systems, Storageworks.
 

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO TRADING CO.

Panama

1998 – 1999

Chief Executive Officer

 

Led efforts in providing assistance to Trinidadian companies seeking start-up and expansion initiatives in Latin America. Developed and implemented marketing programs, identified key sponsorship activities, and attended association events and trade shows to build relationships. Guided companies in specific business development activities within region. Managed incoming trade missions, produced client deliverables, and researched/identified market opportunities. Contributed to development of Latin American sector strategy plans for Government of Trinidad and Tobago. Selected accomplishments:

  1. Played key role in increase of Trinidadian trade with Latin America to full distributor representation for the country’s top non-petroleum manufacturers (e.g. Peake Industries, S.M. Jaleel, Bermudez, others).
  2. Worked with Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers Association in devising strategy to enter Latin American market, leading to signing of 4 contracts between TTMA members and Colon Free Trade Zone (CFTZ) companies located alonside the Panama Canal.

DR. IAN SANGSTER & COMPANY

Jamaica

1996 – 1997

Sales & Export Manager

 

Held full responsibility for all account and distributor management during market downturn caused by devaluation of local currency. Coached and managed sales team of 10 covering 8 international markets.

  1. Drove 26% increase in sales within Jamaican market within first year by launching improved marketing campaign.
  2. Boosted annual exports 67% by working closely with international distributors and expanding sales to gift shops and hotel chains.

ELI LILLY (PUERTO RICO) SA

1994 - 1996

Sales & Marketing Team Lead

 

Tasked with achieving monthly, quarterly, and annual sales goals for industry-leading pharmaceutical corporation. Identified opportunities, delivered presentations, and partnered with team members to achieve objectives in a 3 country territory.

Spearheaded 50% sales increase in 1st year following implementation of initiative, expanding number of physician conferences in which Lilly participated and creating Lilly-sponsored Continuing Education series chaired by opinion leaders within the company’s therapeutic fields.

 


ISLAND MICROSYSTEMS LTD

Jamaica

1990 - 1992
Deputy General Manager

 

Managed the professional services and management consulting groups that prepared contracts, terms of reference and provided software consultants/programmers for the National Insurance Scheme Computerization Project for the Ministry of Labor Welfare and Sports. Also contracted and managed the performance of the software development personnel assigned to the Ministry's Food Stamp project.
.


FISCAL SERVICES LTD.

Jamaica

1986 - 1990
Network Manager

 

Managed 400 user VAX/VMS computer network for the Government of Jamaica's (GOJ) revenue collection departments. Experience in network & systems management, client server distributed computing, facilities management, capacity planning, performance tuning, systems security, workload analysis and more. Experience with the preparation and administration of RFP/RFQ tenders for the Government of Jamaica. Staff, 12.

 


EDUCATION


Post Grad. Dip. International Trade
ICADE Spain, 1997 - 1998

 

Diploma Business Spanish
Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Mexico, 1994

 

MBA
Univ. of Western Ontario, Ontario Canada, 1992 - 1994

 

Post Grad. Dip. Management (Distinction)
Univ. of the West Indies, Jamaica, 1989 - 1992

 

BS Electrical Engineering (Honors)
Univ. of the West Indies, Trinidad, 1983 - 1986
 

 

TECHNOLOGIES

 

Network Routing Hardware
Cisco 7513s, Cisco 6500s, Cisco CSS L5/7 content switches, Juniper



Load Balancers
F5, Foundry, Cisco, Citrix, Netscaler

 

Routing Protocols
BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, RIP

 

LAN/WAN Technologies
Ethernet, Frame Relay, X.25, VLANs, T1/DS3/OC3, VoIP, QoS

 Operating Systems

Linux / UNIX / Solaris, Windows NT / 2000 / XP

 

Network Management / Other

HP OpenView, SNMP, Sniffer, DNS/BIND, PERL, Checkpoint & PIX firewalls, VPNs, DECnet

 

Firewalls

Netscreen, PIX, FWSM and Checkpoint Firewalls
 

 


AFFILIATIONS


NANOG - North American Network Operators' Group



PREFERRED LOCATIONS


Willing to accept short term international assignments.

 

Permanent positions in California: San Francisco Bay Area (South Bay & Peninsula) - Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Campbell, Fremont, Santa Clara, San Jose, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Menlo Park, Cupertino, San Mateo, Burlingame, Santa Clara, Redwood City, San Bruno, Foster City, San Bruno, Artherton, Saratoga, Silicon Valley.

 

Permanent positions in Latin America / South America / Caribbean / LATAM / CALA: Mexico City, Monterrey, Panama Canal, Panama City, Colon