Technical Leader with Business Acumen
Ottawa, Canada Area
- Past
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- Product Line Manager IPTV Next Generation Networks at Nortel Networks
- Advisor and Tech Lead Access Network Evolution at Nortel Networks
- Senior Architect Wireless Tech Lab at Nortel
- Advisor CDMA OAM Group at Nortel
- Senior Protocol Advisor ; CVX SS7 Gateway Project at Nortel
- Senior Analyst ; Preside Policy Services at Nortel
- Senior Protocol Advisor ; CVX SS7 Gateway Project at Nortel
- Senior Multimedia Server Prime; Interactive Broadband at Bell Northern Research
- Team Leader ; Distributed Computing Architecture at Bell Northern Research
- I.T. Workstation Prime and Support at Bell Northern Research
- Lead Programmer at Grouptheory systems
- Co-Op Student at Philips Information Systems
- Education
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- University of Waterloo
- De Vanier C.E.G.E.P.
- Recommended
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- Industry
- Telecommunications
- Websites
Alan Whitton’s Summary
A technical innovator with business acumen and over 20 years of telecommunications and Knowledge Worker experience, and extensive technical skills, has worked in many diverse areas from Telecom System Architect to Product Management bringing innovative ideas and maturity to whichever team worked with.
A published author in the area of network control protocols, and still technically relevant in both Wireless and Wired networking, specializing in the area of TCP/IP, Voice, and VoIP, and learning about the business aspects of High Tech.
Working towards ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and PMP (Project Management Professional ) / CAPM (Certified Assistant Project Management) PMI (Project Management Institute ) certification.
Alan Whitton’s Specialties:
SIP, IMS, TCP and networking, 802.11 radio networking, UNIX, LINUX, Windows, Network Protocols, Telecommunication Protocols (ISUP, SS7), CDMA, UMTS, GSM, FMC, Voice over IP (VoIP), Video over IP (IPTV), Video Services, Video Payload delivery technologies, Mobile Video, Transcoding (audio and video), Audio encoding technologies, OAM, Vendor Liason, Problem Solving, Vendor Liason, Technological Empathy, Team Leader, Consensus Builder, Design technologies
Alan Whitton’s Experience
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Product Line Manager IPTV Next Generation Networks
Nortel Networks
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
July 2007 — September 2007 (3 months)
Product Manager for the Next Generation Video Services and the Nortel Video Services Platform 9500
• Delivered a complete Plan of Record and Intent, along with a working product overview in three months for the Next Generation Video Services.
• Collected customer requirements and presented to customers for the VSP project and for Next Generation Video Services.
• Authored and presented Functional Requirement Specification to the Internal Product Team in cooperation with R&D, Marketing and Customers groups.
• Managed through to business acceptance all required documentation within 3 month timeframe, including Functional Requirement Specification, a full list of requirements (written, published and approved).
• Managed and led relationships and all support contracts with 3rd party software and hardware suppliers, including New Product Introduction tasks. Realized $200,000 savings over a 5 month period. -
Advisor and Tech Lead Access Network Evolution
Nortel Networks
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 2005 — June 2007 (2 years 6 months)
• Developed and implemented a prototype 4th generation non-broadcast oriented Wireless Video Delivery system.
• Authored disruptive technology White Paper and presented to Nortel Wireless groups pushing forward the concept of the Media Less society.
• Wrote and presented White Paper for Access Network evolution for multi-mode handsets (Wi-Fi and Cellular), using Voice Over IP (VoIP) and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol).
• Authored White Paper on Wireless and Wired Home Networking business opportunities for Nortel, and proposed a network based home network administering product . -
Senior Architect Wireless Tech Lab
Nortel
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 2004 — January 2005 (1 year 1 month)
Investigated Wireless and Wired Home Networking opportunities for Nortel, and proposed a home network administering product (network based). The home networking market is growing with the breakthroughs in data throughput to the home and technologies for home entertainment, and my job was to investigate the following areas:
• Universal Plug N’ Play architecture and how Nortel customers (namely ISP’s but also content providers) can leverage this architecture for money making opportunities
• Digital Living Network Association’s model which builds on the uPnP model to expand and investigate the areas of delivery of entertainment content (music, movies, services, etc.,) to the home for a premium as well as protection of this “intellectual property” for the content provider.
• How these opportunities might fit into the new wireless protocols being sold to the home such as 802.11{a,b,g,i,n} and 802.16 , and how these technologies fit in the home of the future. -
Advisor CDMA OAM Group
Nortel
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 2002 — January 2004 (2 years 1 month)
Part of CDMA Wireless OAM group in the specific areas of Install/Upgrade/Patching and Platform (System Management and UNIX admin), and also Release Prime for the OAM tool.
Duties included:
• Tracked product defects in the OAM system, and worked with release management team to ensure timely release of software. Learned a great deal about how software is released in Nortel, and the mechanisms needed to ensure quality during software release phases. Worked with Customer Support teams as well to ensure no “surprises” in the release.
• Headed element upgrade task force to streamline and improve the quality of software downloads to the different elements in the CDMA Access Network (BTS, BSC, eBSC)
• Introduced new UNIX platform for the Element Management system, as well as architected disk layout for software, and transition plan for upgrading from existing Management System (BSSM ) to the new Element management system (C-EMS), on the new hardware. -
Senior Protocol Advisor ; CVX SS7 Gateway Project
Nortel
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 2000 — January 2002 (2 years 1 month)
• Delivered and published specification for SS7 Gateway protocol support.
• Implemented Voice Over IP and Universal Port prototypes, on a system that was previously solely a Remote Access Server (RAS) model.
• Developed strategies for the product evolution of the SS7 Gateway.
• Investigated and implemented SIP (Session Invitation Protocol) on the CVX and CSG product lines.
• Analyzed three potential high-availability platforms for the CSG and recommended one model for final implementation.
• Wrote internal specifications for the product’s internal interactions .
• Responsible for final architectural decisions about how the product would work. Led technical discussions to ensure support from other key players.
• Marketed the product: first version was available in 6 months, Led to products success of a $100 Million business in 3 years. -
Senior Analyst ; Preside Policy Services
Nortel
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 1998 — January 2000 (2 years 1 month)
Senior Analyst in the Preside System development group. Worked to develop a workable LDAP API (schema) to function with :
• Radius Servers that would connect to the Preside directory via LDAP calls
• Policy management servers (e.g. RSVP or MPLS) which would download rules from directory
• DNS & DHCP servers which would pull information on addressing from the directory and update the directory with information.
Learned about centralized directory architectures and their possible uses in the “new” internet. Worked with external billing system (e.g. Portal) to find out their API needs and will work with Customers of the preside product on how to implement and use the API. Helped with current release of Preside Policy system, designing two features, and helping implement one of them. -
Senior Protocol Advisor ; CVX SS7 Gateway Project
Nortel
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 1996 — January 1998 (2 years 1 month)
One of the Senior designers in a group implementing an interface between the PSTN SS7 Signaling network to Aptis, Bay and Shiva modem pools (Remote Access Servers). Joined the project at it’s inception, helped choose which SS7 signaling server package to use and wrote the signaling interface specification for communication between the Signaling Server and the RAS (using a subset of DSM-CC). A steep learning curve was incurred on this project, as I had no “telephony” experience before this project, and am now the “expert” when it comes to SS7 signaling in the group. Skills honed in this project:
• SS7 signaling comprehension Bellcore and ANSI variants (ISUP, BTUP, etc.,)
• Signaling from the Server to the RAS (DSM-CC for now, with studies done on the possible implementations using either Diameter or Q.931).
• Customer presentation skills (have done many as a technical resource to our sales team).
• Group management -
Senior Multimedia Server Prime; Interactive Broadband
Bell Northern Research
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 1994 — January 1996 (2 years 1 month)
Title was integration prime for DEC Mediaplex software. This package played MPEG-2 movies or run interactive services on a group of Alpha 2100 servers. This package integrated with the Nortel Concorde ATM (backbone) Switch as well as the Nortel Service. Worked directly with DEC Level 2 (i.e. Video Pump) team as well as liaison with outside customer (New Brunswick Telephone) on how system would work “end to end”. Gained experience in the following areas:
• ATM network management, configuration, signaling (UNI 3.2 and 4.0), and the AAL5 protocol.
• MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video standards and how they work with the ATM standard.
• System Integration, working directly with development groups to ensure the “product” was delivered, while simultaneously working with customers to ensure their needs are met.
• DEC UNIX experience adding to an already large background of administering and using UNIX systems. -
Team Leader ; Distributed Computing Architecture
Bell Northern Research
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; NT; Telecommunications industry)
January 1992 — January 1994 (2 years 1 month)
• Team leader for Compute Server Pool project: Assembled the team, ensured test sites were set up, dealt with user concerns, documented set up and administration of project, published the plan for the project, and published a paper on the project.
• Replaced mainframe computers as the main computing engine in BNR, and was successful in the Board and Silicon design teams in less than a year
• Worked with Hewlett Packard transitioning from an Apollo based platform to HP based systems.
• Worked as second level UNIX operating system support. -
I.T. Workstation Prime and Support
Bell Northern Research
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; nt; Telecommunications industry)
July 1988 — January 1992 (3 years 7 months)
Part of the team to replace mainframe computers as the main computing engine in BNR, with workstations in a wide area network model. Worked in Information Technology including:
• Transitioning users from Mainframe “mind space” to UNIX workstation.
• Disaster recovery plans of data given a diverse network of servers and workstations
• Backup and recovery strategies
• Worked to transition from a “diverse” tool set for administration to future standards in the area of Network Address tables (DNS), Address acquisition (Bootp and DHCP) and User ID (passwords, X.400 and Radius).
• Initial roll out of workstations to user’s desktops and then upgrades and patching of workstation Operating Systems.
• Worked with Workstation vendors
• Provided second level support for internal customers and did “fire fighting” to resolve issues (liaison between internal customers and software/hardware vendors). -
Lead Programmer
Grouptheory systems
(Computer Networking industry)
April 1986 — June 1988 (2 years 3 months)
Was lead programmer in a group that designed and implemented production control systems for various clients. These systems were written in Progress (a fourth generation language). Also supervised programming enhancements and changes to the system and tested these changes.
Modified an existing print spooling system written in Cobol and added enhancements for use in the printing of security material. This program was developed on a UNIX system and then transferred to the target system, an IBM 4331 computer, where it was debugged.
Supervised the typesetting operations at GSI. During this time the typesetting was being done with the TeX system on one of the Plexus UNIX systems. Drafts were being produced on an Apple Laserwriter and final documents were done on a Linotype L300 photo-typesetter. The TeX program was ported to one of the Plexus in the summer of 1986 and has since been maintained and enhanced. -
Co-Op Student
Philips Information Systems
(Computer Networking industry)
1982 — 1984 (2 years)
Learned about Z80 Assembler and cross-compiling using a UNIX BSD 4.1 based development environment working on Digital VAX hardware. Many interesting programs worked on including:
* Communications package to turn MICOM word processor into a VT100 RS-232 connected terminal.
* Generic UNIX workstation prototype hardware
* Graphics systems using BBN terminal for prototyping of graphic desktop interface
Alan Whitton’s Education
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University of Waterloo
BMath , Computer Science and C&O , 1980 — 1986
Work terms with Imperial Tobacco, Philips Information Systems and Northern Software.
Minor in Combinatorics and Optimization- Activities and Societies:
- Treasurer of Computer Science Club
Organizers of Montreal based WatPubs
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De Vanier C.E.G.E.P.
Post Secondary , Pure and Applied Sciences , 1978 — 1980
