Craig Ellis's Email Addresses & Phone Numbers

📖 Summary

Senior Telecom/Technology executive experienced in global telecommunication networks across strategy, architecture, engineering and operational management. Proven track record of developing technical and innovative departments globally delivering to challenging objectives. Extensive experience of next-generation networks from pre-sales to post-incident with extensive vendor and network assurance experience. Chartered Manager (Fellow) Strong emotional intelligence with a natural leadership style to develop employees, deliver new technology, innovation and process into organisations including Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) environments. Ability to analyse, communicate and deliver new technology, innovation and change into networks and organisations. Daily working with senior executives and key stakeholders, business units & partners with extensive customer support experience of major global blue-chip clients. Speciality: - MBA Graduate with extensive telecom/technology experience across a number of countries. - Chartered Manager (Fellow) with international management experience and a strong coaching style. - Management Technologist with strong insight into next-generation trends including IoT, 5G, Virtualisation. - In-depth global network experience (Architecture, Engineering, Operations) with TOGAF 9 qualification - High-pressure capability to lead and manage in stressful & pressurised business environments.Head of Technology and Engineering - Network Rail Telecom @ Managerial responsibility at Network Rail Telecom of the network strategy, R&D, network architecture, engineering design, capacity planning and the system architecture groups. Our network is the 3rd largest in the UK covering over 7000 locations with 18,000km of fibre nationally running technologies including DWDM, IP, SDH/PDH, Voice and GSM-R providing railway CNI operational and corporate services. • Built a green-field national next-generation IP/DWDM network across the UK rail infrastructure with the ability to deliver unified communications across the UK railway. • Established & embedded technology network strategy for telecoms to enable a world-class "Digital Railway" across the UK. • Responsibility for strategy and innovation, network architecture, engineering and planning groups in the third largest telecoms network in the UK, implementing technology migration from legacy rail PDH, SDH services to a Next-Generation network running all operational and corporate services. • Responsibility for the system architecture group building a leading edge OSS/BSS/IT strategy & system platform to deliver business and system automation within an AGILE methodology. • Technical ownership of the network rail GSM-R radio network delivering national connectivity in-line with European TSI standards and governance on a European communication platform. • Strategic responsible for network Capex related to asset expansion, enhancement and renewals (£xxxm). • Opex accountability for cross-departmental functionality with circa 170+ employees employed across the UK (£xxm) • Chair responsibility for telecom strategy & design authority boards. • Telecoms representative on the Network Rail Technology & Innovation board responsible for R&D including seed-corn development of IoT, 5G mobile evolution and Cyber security/data-behaviours development. From July 2012 to Present (3 years 6 months) Milton Keynes, United KingdomDirector Network Operations @ Director responsibility for developing a green-field network management centre in Sofia, Bulgaria providing operational management of the Interoute platforms. Established network engineering, operational and customer support departments. Accountable for the senior decision-making around financial management, people & process integration and KPI reporting measurements. Developed a transition plan to facilitate the migration from the Prague network management centre to Sofia establishing a comprehensive three-year strategic roadmap to deliver a Tier-1 NMC in Sofia, Bulgaria. • Director responsibility for establishing operational centre in Sofia, Bulgaria (Multiple departments, 50+ personnel) with operational ownership 24x7x365. • Established a strategic roadmap for the operational transition from the established Prague NMC to Sofia NMC delivering cost-efficiencies and staff-migration within a three-year strategy. • Responsibility for network architecture & engineering of national Bulgarian network running NGN technology. • Peer relationship with senior VP’s (HR, Legal, Finance) to ensure internal and external regulatory compliance during development and transition, whilst acting as the senior operational figurehead for CEE region for customers, sales, partners and governmental representation. • Technical operational & customer contact responsibility across Interoute global platforms incorporating DWDM, IP, voice and hosting technologies hosting 10,000+ services • Delivered operational savings and increased productivity through staff integration and ITIL process integration. Established graduate induction program delivering high-calibre technical personnel into NMC business-units over an 18-month program. From September 2011 to June 2012 (10 months) Director Network Provisioning @ Responsibility for the E2E provisioning of Interoute customers across the telecom platforms. Established new provisioning department in Sofia, Bulgaria incorporating recruitment, integration and functionality whilst maintaining existing organisational responsibility. Ownership of provisioning SLA and KPI compliance whilst delivering a system automation strategy to deliver lead-time and resource efficiency. • Direct responsibility for customer provisioning with ownership to deliver around 3500> tasks per month (1000+ services) managing group across 12-hour coverage. • Technical provisioning across multiple platforms (TX, IP, VO) of non-standard solution deployment. • Project-management of large-scale customer deployments (300> services) for blue-chip clients such as Sony, PWC & UEFA. • Delivered ITIL process methodology across department enabling coordinating working practices and business continuity, resulting in a provisioning automation program delivery opex savings. • Technical provisioning management representative into service delivery, sales and engineering organisation ensure compliance to process and procedure and correct release-to-provisioning methodology. From April 2011 to September 2011 (6 months) Senior Network Operations Manager @ Operational & build integration responsibility for the Interoute network platforms (TX, IP, and Voice) related to incident, problem and integration/configuration management. Management of 3rd line engineers responsible for incident and provisioning escalation, network fault resolution, change implementation, training and vendor escalation/support. Senior management representative into architecture, engineering and service-delivery groups acting as approver for platform release and refresh. Departmental was responsible for all technical network training and technical consultants for customer/sales support. • Responsibility for Interoute technical support department with operational ownership across a global platform incorporating DWDM, IP and voice technologies including senior-management escalation and vendor engagement and escalation 24x7. • Implementation of network expansion programs including IP backbone migration to Juniper and Infinera, NGN hardware/software upgrades and delivery of unprecedented IP traffic growth (40GB – 200GB) over a 3-year period. • Implementation of network build across all platforms including network testing, integration, configuration and UAT including the platform integration of acquired businesses (PSI-Net, PI-SE and TPN Bulgaria) • Operational vendor support and supplier-engagement across a range of vendors including Cisco, Juniper, Infinera, Ciena, Sonus and Alcatel. • Implemented strategic role-reorganisation (trouble-ticket impact flow) resulting in a 30% reduction within Prague NMC enabling migration of additional responsibility from UK within existing headcount. • Recognition of two “Chairman Award” winners within department over a 3-year period. From September 2006 to March 2011 (4 years 7 months) Global IP Network Manager @ Managerial responsibility for British Telecom global IP platform related to incident, build, provisioning and configuration management. Direct responsibility for the global IP operations team comprising of engineering team based within Amsterdam, London, Stockholm and Paris with full operational ownership as outlined below. • Responsible for the escalation/resolution of customer incidents for 200+ blue-chip BT customers acting as primary escalation point 24x7x365 for all network incidents across the global platform (North-America, Europe and Asia ranked 7th largest ISP as of 2005). • Implementation and operational project-management of network build including backbone migration from 7500 to GSR platform, hardware/software upgrades and high IP traffic growth (40GB – 200GB). • Provisioning responsibility for blue-chip BT customers circa 250> services per month via team-rotation scheme across a 12hr daily coverage. • Delivered competency training for BT GS NOC/CCC centres comprising of 100+ engineers/agents within a developed framework including developing a cisco certification program. • Successful migration of the BT UK IP platform (2-year period) involving all core sites and 2000+ services and network migration of BT Infonet IP platform (1-year period) resulting in considerable cost-savings. • Youngest BT GS Senior Manager (B7) including the completion of BT leadership management Course. From January 2004 to August 2006 (2 years 8 months) Amsterdam Area, NetherlandsSecond-Line IP Network Engineer @ Second-Line technical engineer role encompassed a range of responsibility including escalation-point, network build, customer provisioning, vendor support and change-implementation. Additional responsibility include NOC training, documentation and operational process-verification. From January 2002 to December 2003 (2 years) Amsterdam Area, NetherlandsMaster of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Business Administration and Management, General, 16 Exams (10*A & 6*B) : Thesis 74 out of 80 @ University of Wales, Cardiff From 2009 to 2011 BA Hons, Business Studies @ Staffordshire University From 1996 to 2000 Craig Ellis is skilled in: Telecommunications, IP, Cisco Technologies, Integration, Management, Network Design, Strategy, Cloud Computing, Networking, Team Leadership, Global Management, WAN, DWDM, Optical Fiber, Juniper