28/04/2006 by ramps.

Please add your comments of your best memories of being part of the Holdiay Autos Camberley experience.

A starter for 10 is who can remember Laurence Mottram shouting to Nick Glass "bend him over and buck **** the ****" to Clive Jacobs at a summer party.  Laurence you are a hero.

Posted in Holiday Autos Camberley Favourite Memories | Print | 2 Comments »

28/04/2006 by ramps.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-6948922.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy

Posted in BC's diary | Print | No Comments »

28/04/2006 by ramps.

Another era finally draws to a close as after 5 years in the Camberley office it will be finally closed.  Today will be an emotional day.  Don’t get me wrong I am looking forward to the new office but it will take a little time to adjust.

John asked if I would give a little insite in to what an architect does.  To set the scene I will give a very brief career history.  My first experience with computers was when I was 12 when my parents bought a ZX Spectrum for me and my sister to share.   Now for some reason rather than just playing games I got interested in programming the machine as well.  Since then I have never really be far away from trying to make machines make my life easier.  I think my natural laziness made computers an ideal fit for me.

After completing my A Levels I went to Swansea University to study Computer Science.  Whilst I was doing my A levels I also did a BTEC in computers whilst also teaching GCSE computer science.  At University not only did I do my degree but throughout the 3 years I also worked with various companies providing IT solutions.  So by the time I graduated I have pretty much been working with computers for 10 years.

My first full time job outside of university was with Open Accounts where I learnt Progress.  I was only here for about 8 months as the IT market hotted up and I was persuaded rather navievely to move to New Malden and work for Interval International.   I was lucky as this turned out to be a very good move for me.   This is where I met both Alan Herbage and Jag Ram who were to had a big influence in my life going forward.

I spent a very happy 2 and half years at Interval before I was approached by Alan to move to holiday autos where he have moved to about a year before.  At the time it was an extremely difficult decesion to make as Interval were in the process of sorting a VISA out for me to go and live in Miami.    I had been very successful in architecting a framework for selling their product on the internet and they wanted me to continue with this.  I decided that actually I need a fresh challenge at this point and took the role at holiday autos.   I started there in April 2000.  My role was initially the UK transactional Internet site.

The first year we were extremely successful winning independent awards.  At the time the backend systems were being designed in Germany and so I could focus just on the internet which was perfect for me as this was the most exciting arena to be in. 

Unfortunately Dignos the company developing the infamous "Voyager" cars system failed to deliver a product that was going to work.   Holiday Autos had spent a lot of money and had no system to show for it.  I was pushed into the hot seat to make the UK internet system do what "Voyager" was supposed to do.  Cutting a long story short that is exactly what I did and this system is now 5 years mature and powers majority of holiday autos revenue.

Systems born out crisis are very rarely perfect and "Voyager" is no different.  As time goes by more features are added and stability is increased.   As the architect I am the person responsible for making sure the foundations of the system are sound and that the different components of the system talk to each other.

The projects I am currently working on are as follows:-

1)Convergence of the 3 remaining holiday autos systems into 1 super system.

To do this I need to a very low level understanding of the technologies and how they have been utilised for each system.  This will allow me to determine interfaces points.  In addition I need to have a very good functional understanding of what each system does.   This will allow me to produce a gap analysis and therefore create a technology roadmap for the convergence of the systems.

2)Integration of the holiday autos product in the GDS systems namely Sabre and Amadeus.

3)Stabilisation and capacity planning for the voyager system.

In addition to this I act as DBA and UNIX administration.

Hopefully I have not bored you all to much as the days go by I will give a little bit more detail of what I do on a daily basis.

End of era.  Thanks CJ.

Posted in BC's diary | Print | 2 Comments »