Professional Profile

Rex Ballard is an IT Architect in the Enterprise Application Integration Practice. The practice is responsible for providing project management, integration services, and e-business solutions including extensive technical expertise with multi-platform middleware solutions, enterprise application integration, application design and development, and project methodologies.

Rex’s qualifications include over 25 years of experience within the IT Industry. Consulting background includes experience in the following industries: insurance, banking and finance, telecommunications, and electronic media publishing and distribution. Rex also has been a leader commercialization of the Internet, development of the World Wide Web, and adoption of Intranet technologies. Rex has most recently involved in the commercialization of Open Source, including Linux, large scale distributed processing, and Enterprise System, Application Integration Technology and Web Services based Business to Business networks. Rex is an Enterprise Architect with hands-on experience in both breadth and depth across the industry and the ability to translate this experience into solutions for Corporate Enterprises, Government Agencies, and other large-scale projects. Rex also communicates well and effectively with the various cultures and experts to insure effective cooperation toward cost-effective, reliable, and workable solutions.

Employer History

2/1999 - Present IBM Global Services / BIS – National Practice

IT Architect

Consulted for Clients, established requirements, and planned solutions. Led engagements, including Project Management, coordinated of IBM, Client, and 3^rd party resources. Coordinated Windows, Unix, MQ, Security, Network, Websphere, and Mainframe teams. Implemented solutions, mentored, coached, and trained others within Client and IBM staff. Integrated systems using Middleware, including MQSeries, MQSI, CORBA, XML, and EJB. Provided for large multiple organization solutions. Part of the Websphere Business Integrator services offering development team. Part of the MQSFSE IGS Offering development team. Lead early deployments of Websphere Business Integrator for B2B environments. Rex has also pioneered technologies to support effective off-shore development and support teams. Rex has also implemented project accelerators based on Open Source technologies which improve the productivity of the implementation and testing teams. Rex has recently been integrating Tivoli Security solutions including IBM Tivoli Directory Services, IBM Tivoli Access Manager, IBM Tivoli Identity Manager, and IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator with IBM WebSphere, WebSphere Portal, and IBM WebSphere Business Integrator, including Message Broker, Interchange Server, and Process Orchestrator.

Technical Lead for Implementation – turning Design into Implemented reality. Often brought in as “Fire Fighter” – getting projects back on schedule or meeting aggressive deadlines. Provides mentoring and support for Open Source and Linux to Clients and fellow practitioners. Business to Business Integration between a manufacturer and many of it's customers. Engagements included Business to Business, geographic, and Inter-division integration solutions. Designed and led the implementation of remote operations and management subsystems. Engagements ranged from 2 weeks to 2 years to provide implementation strategy, support for follow-up provided by other members of the team, and full life-cycle support from initial solution design to production roll-out and post-production support.

9/1997 - 2/1999 Major Insurance & Financial – New Jersey and New York

Corporate Information Technology division in support of all other divisions including Banking, Securities, Real Estate, Life Insurance, Health Insurance, Mutual Funds, and Compliance Management. Introduced new technologies including CORBA, DCOM, Linux, ActiveX, Java Beans, and RMI. Was accountable for overall connectivity of 100,000 workstations, several thousand servers. Wrote proposals, reviews, participated in standards committees, and made presentations to committees and management. Identified and implemented emerging technologies, evaluation of vendor proposals, architectural analysis of proposals. Cost/Benefit analysis (ROI, ROE, TCO, Risk Analysis), including identification of competing technologies. Provide both tactical and strategic recommendations and guide their implementation.

1/1997 - 9/1997 Large Consulting Firm - National Practice

Senior Consultant

Member of the Center for Systems Architecture. Performance Engineering team on a series of benchmarking and performance enhancement assignments. Houston, San Francisco, Rochester New York, Boston, and New Jersey. Led team for performance tuning of Web Servers for E-Commerce, Switching Systems for PDA/data collection systems, and Financial Services functions. Assignments range from 2-8 weeks in duration. Developed tools and sales-kits to support promoting the practice.

5/1995-11/1996 Major Publisher, Financial publications

Director of Electronic Distribution

Led using hands-on project management and overall responsibility for distribution of all electronic products. Products included MarketScope, Stock Reports, feeds to numerous wire services and custom databases. Wrote specifications and utilities for these functions. Trained operations team in Internet technologies, including security, routing, and operations. Coordinated efforts with Clients and Vendors. Initiated Transition to Internet and World Wide Web. Coached other divisions in Internet adoption. Trained Network Administrators for transition from DECNet and BSC-3270 to TCP/IP and T1 Frame Relay.

1/1993-5/1995 Major Publisher, Financial publications

Alliance Developer Program Manager

Responsible for developing new distribution strategies including; Publish and Subscribe news feeds. Mainstream Satellite and FM distribution. CD-ROM distribution. X.25 multicast news feeds. Led the effort to put the first national brand publisher on the Internet. Introduced Web to management and staff. Provide support for new product development. Eventually managed 25 concurrent projects. Introduced Winsock, Trumpet (Winsock Implementation), Cello, Mosaic, and Netscape.

10/1991 - 12/1992 Independent Consulting - National

IT Architect/Consultant

Consulted for IBM and other client companies on projects focused on the commercialization of Open Systems and Open Source technology including the Internet. Projects included development of Remote Procedure Calls and multi-platform hierarchical storage management, adoption of Open Source Software and Software Reuse Strategies by IBM, and implementation of X11/R4 on IBM ESA Mainframes (groundwork for OS/390). Led development of "Internet For the Rest Of Us" package, including discussions, which led to Lynx, Opera, and Cello HTML browsers (predecessors of Mosaic and Netscape).

2/1990-10/1991 Large Insurance Company

Senior Technical Specialist

Responsible for technical infrastructure and architecture of 5 divisions, 100 Sun Workstations and 500 Windows Personal Computers, 50 UNIX servers and 5 mainframes. Lead Development of system integration facilities. Recommend, Promote, and Establish Enterprise IT Standards.

11/1987-12/1989 Large Shipping Company

Senior Programmer Analyst

Led the effort to make the "SuperTracker" (predecessor to PDAs) reliable and fault tolerant. Helped to design and implement strategic information systems that made it possible to predict and manage resource allocation in real-time (predecessor to Supply Chain Management). Contributions to my teams ultimately led to savings of $2 million/day. Led comprehensive evaluation of LAN/WAN strategies to integrate Mainframes, Minis, Workstations, and Personal Computers. Team efforts led to Malcolm Baldridge award.

07/1982-11/1987 Directory Assistance & Directory Services Provider – Rochester NY

Software Engineer (associate to senior).

Performed analysis, design, implementation, testing, support, and integration of directory assistance systems on proprietary systems based on IMS and on Open Systems based on UNIX and Intranet technology. Developed databases, operating systems, and applications for distributed processing systems of up to 1000 CPUs in fault tolerant (99.997% uptime) configurations. This work led to many of the standards now used on the Internet and Intranet. Part of a "special forces" unit dedicated to quickly resolving breakdowns resulting from capacities that doubled every 6 months.

Assignment History

 Enterprise Architect – State Government Agency

• Primary Responsible for implementation of Portal security based on IBM Tivoli Directory Server, Access Manager, Identity Manager, and Directory Integrator. Provided support for MQSeries, DBA, AIX and Windows administration, provided accelerator tools to facilitate highly effective coordination between teams and team members, and provided mentoring in MQ, WebSphere, Portal, and LDAP for various team members. Project included coordination between multiple agency departments, multiple vendors, and multiple subcontractors.

• Enterprise Architect – Financial Services Publisher

• .Primary responsibility was to train and support a team of developers creating a business oriented clustered solution for providing time-sensitive information to users and supporting reliable interactive support. This included support of the Portal Team, training and supporting teams to use MQSeries in multiplatform environment which included C, C++, Java, Solaris, Linux, Windows, and proprietary systems. Messaging systems were based on MQ including JMS and MQ-Base, along with XML parsers based on SAX2. This included distributed and coordinated updates of multiple distributed XA and direct (non-XA) systems.

 Architect and DBA - United States Government Agency

• Primary responsible for the generation of tools to generate the DDL, Extraction and Load, Integration, and other support tools as well as support, training. In addition, I often assumed responsibilities for AIX administration, MQ administration, Network Support, Security, and coordination of these teams.

 Enterprise Architect - United States Government Agency

• Assist and coordinate the configuration, integration, validation, and testing of over 40 Windows and AIX servers, including both secure and classified systems in both Colorado Springs Colorado and Annapolis Junction Maryland. Facilitate connectivity between the two sites to minimize the administration staffing requirements at both sites and to improve coordination between user teams at both sites.

 Architect - Large Insurance Company

 Manage and coordinate the establishment of large-scale real-time offshore connectivity solutions. This includes providing teams in Bangalore India with the ability to interactively develop and test on Client development and target systems. This included development tools for WMQ, WMQI, DB2, and interactive shell access as well as interactive access to mainframe development systems. Due to the demands of both environments, the solution required detailed attention to security, network connectivity, availability, automated recovery, and minimal operator intervention. Costs also had to be kept to a minimum to maximize the benefits of offshore development and testing.

 Architect - Large manufacturer

 Provided complete architectural review of a Business to Business solution, focusing primarily on the gateway technologies between the manufacturer and various client companies, provided recommendations for implementation, platforms, security, performance, and availability as well as enhanced remote administration and diagnostic capabilities to minimize travel requirements. Led implementation efforts and trained developers, client operators and administrators in technologies. Solution included MQSeries, SecureWay, LDAP, MQSI, Websphere, Partner Agreement Manager, Tivoli, DB2, and administration servers. Platforms included Windows NT, Windows 2000, AIX, and OS/390. Coordinated the efforts of up to 100 people in various locations including UK, NC, CT, CA, CO, Canada, and India.

• Architect - Large Insurance Company

• Implement prototype architecture and proof of concept based on MQSI for implementation of HIPPA requirements. Proof of concept and prototype was successful and led to full implementation by IGS team.

• Architect & Project Manager - Large Insurance Company

• Provided complete architectural review of several divisions and formulate an architecture to integrate the various divisions using combinations of MQSeries, MSQI, with some DCOM or CORBA to enable superior transactional integrity. Developed integration solutions and led performance enhancement efforts.

• Architect & Project Manager - Large Insurance Company

• Provided architectural design for implementation of integration between Client Company and financial information provider. Solution involved a combination of CICS, CORBA, XML and MQSeries using Java RMI/IIOP, SAX, and DOM. Led the implementation of the solution and integration into the client enterprise environments.

• Architect - Large Telephone company.

• Provided architectural review and proposal for integration of Telephone company systems including IMS and UNIX systems to an external web or MQSeries based interface for Pressler Act Compliance allowing other carriers to offer combined services.

• Architect & Project Manager - Cable company & Telephone company.

• Provide complete architectural review of the customer service infrastructure and design architecture for providing secure integration of the two companies to comply with the Pressler Act. This allowed the both companies to sell both cable and phone service, and to request service from the other company without giving away marketing information. Used primarily MQSeries, C, Visual Basic, COBOL, and C++ including templates and tools from IBM including support packs and Intellectual Capital structured for reuse. Led the Implementation team including both IBM and Client resources. Trained client staff in operations, diagnostics, technical support, and security procedures.

• Architect - Large Insurance Company

• Provide complete architectural review of health insurance, provide recommendations for integration and HIPPA compliance based on preliminary specifications based on MQSI. Implemented proof of concept and framework for implementation by IGS team.

• Architect - Wireless Phone Company

• Provide complete architectural review of supply chain including network, infrastructure, platforms, security, and middleware as well as applications. Formulate a recommendation for architectural enhancements, and a budget and schedule for implementation. Recommendation was accepted and successfully implemented by an IGS team. Tools used included MS-Office, Structured Interviewing, GS-Method tools, MQSeries, Windows NT, UNIX, PICK.

Education and Background

• SAIR Certified Linux Professional

• SAIR Certified Linux Administrator.

• Strathmore’s Who’s Who

• International Executive Guild

• American Registry of Outstanding Professionals

• Who’s Who.

• BA Loretto Heights College (now Regis University)

• Arapaho Community College

• Landmark Education Corporation

• Leadership Training Programs (SELP, IFLP, TMLP, Wisdom, P&C). 160 CEUs

• Rex has also enhanced and trained himself by regularly taking on “Stretch” assignments and taking on subprojects which require self-training, additional skills, or pioneering of new technologies. The average is about 1000 hours/year for the last 25 years. This keeps Rex pushing the envelope of technology and bringing new technologies to the corporate enterprise.

Summary

Areas of Expertise

Middleware: WMQ, MQSeries, WMQI, XML, SOAP, WSDL, WAS, WBI

Security: LDAP, SSL, SSH, PKI, IDS, ITAM, ITIM, IDI, SecureWay

Databases: DB2, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL

Languages: ESQL, SQL, C, C++, Java, PERL, shells, and Unix Tools, Eclipse, WSAD

Platforms: UNIX, AIX, Solaris, HP_UX, Linux, Windows NT/2K, Cygwin