EXPERIENCE

Focus Areas

• Insurance Industry Life, Property and Casualty, Retail and Group Insurance.
• Enterprise Integration spanning Legacy and Distributed Environments
• Master Data Management
• Enterprise Shared / Reusable Services
• Java/J2EE Application Architecture

Platforms and Tools Frequently Used

• IBM WebSphere Application Server Java/J2EE
• IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management Server MDM
• IBM WebSphere Message Broker and MQ Server Middleware, ESB
• IBM DataPower SOA Security, Integration Gateway Appliance
• IBM DB2 Database Server
• Linux Red Hat, Ubuntu , AIX, Windows App Dev, Integration , z/OS Integration
• IBM Rational Software Architect, Rational Application Developer, Eclipse, Altova XMLSpy Dev Tools
• ACORD XMLife, TXLife, PCS XML specifications

Current Work

• Lead Architect - A large scale data integration project is in jeopardy due to a failure to meet functional and nonfunctional requirements. I was asked to join the project team in January 2013 to help resolve the problems. I am responsible for conducting an assessment of the current system architecture and design to identify existing problems, and collaborating with our external vendor and consulting partners to propose revisions to meet the business' requirements. This work is being done on a tight deadline with high visibility at the CIO level.
• Solution Architect - Voice of the Customer initiative. The project's goal is to capture customer feedback from multiple channels call center, email, chat, Facebook, Twitter , perform analytics including Net Promoter Scoring, and identify customers in need of service recovery. The solution will be externally hosted SaaS , integrated with the existing call center and customer service platforms. The team is currently completing an RFI process with multiple vendors, to be followed by solution architecture development, multiple vendor POC, vendor selection, design, development, and production rollout.

Current Responsibilities

• Facilitate meetings with business representatives, subject matter experts, and management to clarify and articulate functional and nonfunctional requirements for projects
• Analyze existing technology landscape and develop current state architecture documentation. Perform gap analysis on current state architecture versus future business requirements, enterprise technology standards and industry best practices, and produce future state architecture documentation, plus roadmaps and technology transition plans to migrate from current to future state.
• Prepare and present technical information to senior management up to and including CIO level.
• Produce solution architectures, conceptual and high level designs meeting the enterprise's strategic business and technical requirements. Communicate architecture and design information to project management and technical team leads. Assist technical team leads as they prepare lower level design artifacts and code.
• Review project proposals, architecture, design, and code artifacts to insure compliance with enterprise architecture standards and reference architectures
• In addition to hands-on architecture and design work as noted above, perform occasional coding and troubleshooting tasks as necessary.
• Collaborate with project management to lead Vendor RFI, Proof of Concept, and Pilot initiatives to evaluate and select new service providers and products.
• Work with Infrastructure and Production Support teams for capacity planning and software deployment planning.
• Create estimates of costs, resources, and time for architecture and design work.
• Collaborate with senior management to identify, cost out, prioritize, and advocate IT-driven technology initiatives as part of the annual budgeting process.

Recent Accomplishments

• Technology lead on a vendor selection process for the Group Business Correspondence project, replacing the existing near end-of-support Oracle Publisher document generation system with a new document generation platform.. This included an RFI process with 5 vendors, a POC with 3 vendors, and a successful Pilot of EMC xPression for Group contract generation. I collaborated with technical leads and vendor SMEs to prepare an architecture and high level design for integrating the EMC xPression product into the Group Business IT ecosystem. I also served as project liaison to the Enterprise Architecture Technology Review Board, ensuring that the proper steps were followed so that the product would be approved for purchase.
• Created an enterprise logging architecture and design to enable end to end transaction traceability, exception logging and monitoring across mainframe and distributed platforms. As part of the design, created a universal message header for XML and fixed length record formats capable of representing critical transaction information in a standardized format. This header was adopted as a standard by MetLife U.S. Business.
• Developed the solution architecture and conceptual design for Enterprise Recordkeeping, a system to provide SEC 17a-4 compliant document retention facilities. Current state in production provides time based retention rules and has limited deployment at MetLife. Future state will include event driven retention rules and enterprise wide availability. As the project progressed, I provided architectural oversight for the detailed design and development activities.
• Validated and matured the Enterprise Integration Architecture for the Group Business New Policy Administrative System, a multi-year project intended to replace numerous legacy mainframe administrative systems and proprietary point-to-point interfaces with a new Oracle Insurance Policy Administration system on distributed hardware, leveraging an Enterprise Service Bus to expose strategic business services via Web Service and IBM MQ interfaces. Due to vendor issues the Oracle administration system was removed from the project, but the enterprise integration architecture remains a key part of the design, front-ending multiple legacy administrative systems and replacing point to point interfaces. This project is run according to Agile methodology Scrum framework. As a partner provider to the Group Business IT team, I was fully integrated into the project team and participated in weekly sprints to produce deliverables.

Management Responsibilities

• Manage teams of 2-5 Solution Architects with collective responsibility for Single Sign-on, Authorization and Entitlements, Enterprise Integration, Customer Correspondence, Document Imaging and Workflow, Claims Processing, Master Data Management for Customer Information, and Testing Services.
• Forecast architect utilization and allocate architects across projects to maximize utilization, share knowledge and cross-train individuals.
• Prepare and present twice-yearly performance reviews for architects in collaboration with senior management

Architect on the Customer Information File CIF project, a CEO-sponsored Master Data Management initiative to build a customer data gold copy repository Transactional/Hybrid style MDM and administrative UI integrated with all policy administrative systems across MetLife. In this role I provided architectural guidance for the overall system, with a special focus on systems integration. As of 2013, CIF holds the gold copy record of customer data across nearly all Retail Life systems. Technologies used include IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management Server a.k.a. WebSphere Customer Center, DWL tCRM , WebSphere Application Server, IBM DB2 UDB, WebSphere Message Broker, webMethods Integration Server, and ACORD XML.

• An Internet consulting firm, started in by Malcolm Frank, later acquired by Wipro Inc. At NerveWire I helped to establish the New York office, where I led teams of 2-5 technical consultants through design, specification, development, testing, and deployment of Internet applications. I collaborated with NerveWire architects, project managers, strategy and business analysts to create project schedules, business strategy documents and technical architectures. Engagements included:
• Collaborated with NerveWire business analysts and C-level company executives to create the IT architecture for a B2B spin-off company. Performed a preliminary requirements analysis, package selection, and costing for hardware, software, and infrastructure necessary to implement an e-commerce enabled web site. The architecture provided for commerce, security, personalization, collaboration features, and integration with back-end fulfillment systems..