CompuServe Service Management/ITIL

Mark spearheaded the identification, implementation and metrics for CompuServe Systems Operations Service Management processes at a time when none existed. From a starting point of chaos, within 18 months, CompuServe had integrated, repeatable processes and associated toolset that improved Availability from 99.9% to 99.97% by implementing:

AOL Service Management/ITIL

Identifying Mark’s ability to understand and analyze the end-to-end processes of IT, AOL’s Chief Technical Officer hand-picked Mark to create and lead an internal IT Process Consulting organization within the 1500 employee AOL Technical Operations. Within one-year of identification, Mark and his team impacted a large, loosely-coupled organization by facilitating documented, repeatable processes in the areas of:

Enterprise Monitoring and Event Management

Mark has led initiatives and teams responsible for the end-to-end monitoring and incident detection needs for CompuServe and AOL. Mark specializes in asking the question “How do you know your application is not working?” and putting in place appropriate monitors to raise alarms. Mark has led teams that implemented and integrated large-scale systems to meet the breadth of monitoring AOL’s application suite, specializing in Web and Database Monitoring. In addition to creating and utilizing home-grown monitoring applications, some of the vendor-supplied tools Mark has reviewed and integrated:

Metrics Analysis/Data Management

Mark has developed an excellent reputation as a data analyst, leveraging his analytical engineering background and end-to-end vision for utilizing metrics to identify priorities for reliability and performance improvements in applications and processes. Mark created and facilitated CompuServe’s Service Quality and System Performance Metrics, and utilized that experience to create AOL Systems Operations consolidated Key Performance Indicators. In this role, Mark led the team that identified, validated, collected, processed, automated and interpreted the availability, performance, usage and cost metrics for hosting environments of thousands of servers.

Capacity and Fault Tolerance Management and Planning

Merging his diverse IT experiences in the areas of application development, metrics analysis and Service Management principles, Mark was the go-to person at CompuServe for facilitating and managing the Capacity and Fault Tolerance of applications as deployed in the Data Center. Mark assisted in creating the consistent Capacity Planning view of applications, and persistently challenged application owners on the validity of their view of capacity, including creating a Natural Load Test Methodology. Utilizing his broad understanding of CompuServe’s applications, capacity, scaling and fault tolerance, Mark architected the complete to-be Data Center LAN Plan for CompuServe’s large Data Center consolidation project involving dozens of applications and hundreds of hosts.

Root Cause Analysis/Intensive Care Unit Facilitation

At CompuServe, Mark became known as the go-to person to lead the activities revolving around Root Cause Analysis of applications that were in “Service Quality ICU”. Mark excelled at this role given his broad engineering, analytical and interpersonal skill set and end-to-end view of systems and the data available. Working closely with the application and support experts, Mark routinely facilitated successful root cause identification, process improvement and get-well planning activities for many customer facing applications.