Welcome

I am a businessman & technologist. In the late 1970's I started my working life in broadcast engineering and analogue electronics, moving into digital electronics and computing at the beginning of the 1980's. As an early entrant to the world of microcomputing I found I was sought after for consultancy work, addressing both technical and business challenges: technology exploitation and the substantial organisational change that has impacted most businesses adopting this "new" technology. I have worked for many UK and multinational blue-chip clients. I find the changes to business and society enabled by new technologies to be both exciting and sometimes frightening, and have contributed to a few:

• • I was fortunate to be the junior member of the 3-man team at Modus Systems which developed the first Ethernet hardware in the UK (commissioned by the MoD who didn't want to buy foreign communications equipment).

  • I was a member of the STC / ITT team which created the TXEE digital switching enhancement for British Telecom's TXE4A telephone exchanges enabling the conversion of the UK from analogue to digital telephony. 

  • At ITT I personally engineered the first real-time machine translation system, taking a batch-based translation system build by Weidner Communications Corporation and re-engineering it to run on a custom platform to provide a dial-up real-time translation service. I also led the machine translation of Unix into French and German for AT&T using SGML.

  • I was fortunate to move on to Xerox Corporation's European engineering centre and contributed to the development of several early desktop laser printers and related computer printing technologies.

I progressively migrated from technology development to technology exploitation through a series of consultancy assignments to Océ, West Merchant Bank, Royal Society of Chemistry, Yorkshire Electricity, South Wales Electricity, Orange Personal Communications, Database Publishing Systems (and their clients) and others, each of which taught me more about business whilst I taught them more about technology and advised on or led the development of new / bespoke technology capabilities for their businesses.

In 1999 I joined the board of one of my clients, JLA Group, and served it for a decade as a director & CIO, leading it to become a world leader in its industry. I have leadership experience in most aspects of business including Technology, Finance, Operations, Sales, Product Development and Customer Service.  In 2009 I returned to consulting and established SBA, as a Chartered Information Technology Professional I provide business technology leadership and advisory services. As a Chartered Director my primary interests are performance improvement, corporate governance and the better exploitation of technology in business. I work as a board level advisor in these spheres.

Living in the Isle of Man I have a keen interest in the Manx economy and so founded the national ICT trade association MICTA. MICTA has succeeded in changing the Isle of Man Government's economic strategy to recognise and leverage the contribution of the ICT sector.

I am a past Chair of BCS ELITE, the Computing Leadership Forum. ELITE is the UK's lead organisation for knowledge sharing amongst IT leaders including CIOs, CTOs and IT Directors, and under my leadership became the UK National Representative in EuroCIO, its pan-European equivalent

I am a past Charity Trustee and Director of the Manx Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, where my primary focus was the recovery of the organisation from previous governance and financial challenges.

I am enthusiastic about both mentoring and entrepreneurship and for several years have combined these interests as a mentor for Junior Achievement.

I am a Fellow of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (FBCS), a Chartered Information Technology Professional (CITP),  a Fellow of the Institute of Directors (FIoD) and a Chartered Director (CDir). 

During 2017 I was honoured to be a judge for the UK Computing Awards "IT Manager of the Year", and to be a judge for the inaugural Isle of Man Responsible Business Awards (ReBA).

I have a part-time "project" ongoing in the Isle of Man ICT recruitment space. https://manxict.careers/ in conjunction with a long established IoM recruitment agency, Miracles, to better understand the island's IT recruitment challenges. 

I take on consultancy assignments through SBA. I sometimes speak about IT Leadership and on Customer Service. For four years I wrote the fortnightly "IT Matters" page in the Isle of Man Examiner.