Matthew Jones

Technical lead for Loyalty NZ infrastructure and cloud platforms.

Loyalty New Zealand is New Zealand's expert in loyalty, and runs the largest and most comprehensive coalition loyalty programme in New Zealand – Fly Buys. In addition to this Loyalty New Zealand undertakes a range of marketing services for clients including customer insights, analytics, modelling and reporting.

In this role I am responsible for the design, build, maintenance, support and documentation of Loyalty's Infrastructure and cloud services, from both a hands on and architectural and tech lead capacity. A large part of my role involves the relationship and technical management of Loyalty's vendors and suppliers.

Role duties include:

• Work with the Head of IT, Software Architects and and Consultants to formulate and carry out the strategic plan for the Loyalty NZ IT roadmap.
• Working with both internal teams and the managed service provider in scoping, designing, planning and deploying projects including major cloud migration projects eg hybrid cloud and full cloud migration to VMware on AWS.
• To scope and review project proposals and statements of work.
• Work closely with the Information and Security Risk Manager to ensure all proposal’s, implementation and maintenance of IT infrastructure meets Loyalty NZ security standards.
• Accountable for the Design, technical delivery, maintenance and monitoring of Loyalty NZ’s IT infrastructure including Azure and M365 content, Modern Workplace and MDM systems and services.
  
• Look to challenge and critique upgrades, implementations and maintenance to ensure it is being performed efficiently, cost effectively and minimising risk to the business.
• To be the conduit between technical delivery teams and Loyalty NZ business owners, ensuring clear, timely and accurate communications.
• To be the primary contact point for Loyalty NZ managed service provider technical teams.
• Review and approve changes as per the Loyalty NZ change control process.
• To continually drive improvement and efficiency from Loyalty NZ managed service providers.

Architect for the ESTI programme of work.

The ESTI (Education Sector Technology Infrastructure) programme was established to provide a shared hybrid infrastructure platform and create service support capabilities that will be able to provide ICT services for use by multiple sector organisations, and Ministry of Education business groups. This environment will be operated as a managed service with costs recovered across both the sector agencies consuming the services and Ministry of Education itself.

In this role, I have been responsible for providing the ESTI programme with architectural direction, design and documentation. 

Role duties include:

• Produce Solution Architecture Description (SAD) and associated documentation for the on-boarding of Education Sector agencies to the ESTI Platform. 
• Analysis and requirements gathering for sector agency datacenter migration and on-boarding.
• Develop conceptual methods for sector agency datacenter migration and translate those logical designs into technical processes. 
• Produce Detailed Designs and associated documentation for the on-boarding of Education Sector agencies to the ESTI Platform.
• Analysis of current Ministry of Education technical services for requirements gathering of future ESTI service offerings.
• Producing ESTI Platform service offering setup and licensing cost estimate and business case documentation.
• Creating Install and Run-Procedure documentation for various Cloud and on-premise tools and technical services.
• Produce Designs and associated documentation for on-premise and Azure toolsets including Identity, privileged access (PIM), ATA, SEIM and OMS. 
• Solution integration, configuration and security. 
• Develop testing plans and scripts for ESTI tools acceptance into production.

Architect and Technical Lead role for the Zinios re-platform Project. 

Zinios is an IIS framework for applications provided by Assura. The Zinios project is responsible for re-platforming, four critical, currently externally hosted applications onto the Ministry’s Infrastructure.

In this role I was responsible for the Architecture and Detailed Design of the re-platforming solution, as well as leading the technical implementation as it relates to the Ministry’s complex infrastructure and processes.

 Role duties include:

• Produce Solution Architecture Description (SAD) and associated documentation.
• Produce Detailed Design and associated documentation.
• Technical experience with all aspects of the Zinios platform including front end (UI) IIS and SQL back end, as well as various information flows, to and from other Ministry student applications and systems.
• Leading the technical team during the process of implementation.
• Provide technical direction and make decisions on matters of security as it relates to the solution.
• Managing and providing technical direction to external Vendors that manage certain parts of the Ministry’s Infrastructure EG Datacom and F5 design as it relates to the Zinios.
• Provide assistance to internal and external security experts for solution penetration testing.
• Guiding project through Certification and Accreditation (C and A). Working with external security vendor to identify risks and controls and implementing mitigation's where appropriate or necessary.
• Input and review of Security and Privacy Risk Management.  
• Interim Project Manager. During this time I guided one of the four applications into production.

Senior Technical and Consultancy role deployed on site for the Ministry of Education.

The Ministry’s environment consists of two main Datacom run Datacenters. Kapua is the Ministry's main Production Datacenter located in Hamilton and consists of over 100 physical Servers and Appliances. Included in that physical kit are multiple ESX host clusters running over 2000 virtual servers, appliances and Desktops. Orbit is the Ministry's DR and Pre-Production Datacenter. Located in Auckland, it is also used in an active-active configuration with Kapua for some Ministry systems.

In this role, I was responsible for the design, build, maintenance, support and documentation of the Ministry's IT Infrastructure.

Role duties include: 

• Technical resource for award winning migration project from Wellington server rooms to large Datacom managed  datacenter in Kapua and Orbit. 
• Technical resource for the first New Zealand Government Agency to develop and implement a complete two way Disaster Recovery Capability between Kapua and Orbit (VMware SRM).
• Architect and Technical lead on Airwatch MDM project for Special Education mobile users out in the ministry's regional offices. On Premise Airwatch solution design, build, maintenance, support and documentation.
• VMware ESX Host and Cluster design, build, maintenance, support and documentation.
• vSAN scoping, sizing, purchasing, configuration and maintenance.
• VM sizing and capacity planning using VMware vRealize.
• Architect and Technical lead for VMware Horizon View Desktop Services infrastructure (including AppVolumes and User Environment Manager) Design, Build, Maintenance, Support and Documentation.
• Windows Desktop VM SOE design, maintenance and support. 
• Technical and Technical Lead resource for a variety of projects including Datacenter Relocation Project, STRO, Building Relocation and DR Failover/Fail-back.
• F5 Design Solution Design with Datacom for load balancing GTM ASM (WAF) ICAP and LTM.

Senior technical and consultancy role for the NZTA..

The JTOC combines Auckland Transport (AT) and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to provide for the smooth running of Auckland’s Motorway, inner city and main arterial road traffic and services. The infrastructure involved is complex and includes devices and systems on Auckland’s motorway, the Auckland Harbour Bridge and the inner city road network, as well as the Johnstone’s Hill, Victoria Park and Waterview tunnels. 

In this role I was responsible for the design, build, maintenance, support and documentation of the NZTA's JTOC IT Infrastructure.

Role duties include:

• Technical resource for the design and implementation of infrastructure into the Johnston’s Hill, Victoria Park and Waterview Tunnels.
• VMware ESX host and guest Server and cluster design build and administration.
• Technical resource to build large video wall in the new traffic management centre.
• New Change Management and Process design.
• Zenworks Configuration Management (ZCM) SOE Imaging Packaging and Application delivery for JTOC traffic management operators desktops.
• Network infrastructure and Server security including patching and firewall.
• Backup and restore with Commvault.
• Hitachi San Administration, configuration and support for VMware and SQL Server.
• Brocade fiber switching, zoning and redundancy
• IBM, Blade and XSeries server and server hardware support.
• Active Directory administration and support.
• Citrix support and administration, including cross network Edir to AD Citrix access setup and configuration.
• DVTel and Camera hardware and systems support.
• Pixelnet Videowall management and Camera integration.
• VMware Desktop infrastructure (VDI) for end users.