AT&T Bell Labs

Enhanced Modular Signal Processor - System Engineer

EMSP is a US Naval signal processor at the front-end of weapon systems to reduce digital sensor data to target data for input to data and display computer systems. My team and I developed computer simulators to demonstrate proof of concept and to optimize the 'principal of operations' early in the design phase of the program. EMSP is an advanced, distributed, parallel, data-flow architecture optimized for acoustic signal processing and supports modular expansion and technology insertion. The architecture is fault tolerant in that any circuit board can be dynamically removed from the system without interuption or degradation of performance. Twenty one of the twenty two integrated circuit chips were custom fabricated with zero defects. The last chip had one defect that was quickly identified and corrected. The software and hardware was developed in compliance with military standards. This process technology was later integrated by me into the AT&T Best Current Practices program.

Program Management - DSMC

I attended the Program Management Course at the Defense Systems Management College in Fort Belvoir, VA (a 4½ month program). This course provided a comprehensive study of program management and an overview of the Department of Defense acquisition policy. It included management techniques from technical, business, policy, and other organizational fields. The course utilized small group discussion and work teams, computer-assisted simulations, case studies, decision exercises, and an extensive guest speaker program. Knowledge, technology, and lessons learned from this experience was integrated into the AT&T Government Systems technical project management discipline with the following benefits:

Contracting, marketing, and customer relations were addressed and improved by executive management.

Executive budget planning and reporting were documented and formalized.

Key process technology was improved via architecture reviews and business process re-engineering.

Tools were adopted to better support configuration control, requirements management, and system testing.

I brought this knowledge and experience to the Software Technology Center years later as we developed the Best Current Practices program.

AT&T Global Logon - Authentication

The AT&T Global Logon provides authentication services for over 5,000 internal applications and 375,000 employees, contractors, and partners. My task in early 2000 was to prototype the proposed architecture, optimize the configuration, and prove the system can support the expected load for the life of the service. A prototype system was developed, six servers running Silk Performer were used for load testing, and an approach to disaster recovery was formulated. In the first ten years of operation there were no outages and we achieved our target reliability of greater than 99.999%. Some of the original hardware is still in production (a scary thought).

Recently, I was assigned the task of developing methods and procedures for top tier technical support. The business value that I established in this initiative include the following:

Methods and Procedures: Develop a set of methods and procedures to serve as an illustrative template. My extensive knowledge of the platform, process engineering, and writing procedures was instrumental in making a set of M&P's.

Automated Analysis: Establish an automated method to analyze the issues and resolutions based on the search criteria entered by a user and the procedure best suited to resolve the issue. The challenge is great due to the complexity of the software and the large number of unique applications. Often the issue resides in the application and not in Global Logon.

Automated Self-Help: A number of issues are candidates for self-help. My platform will allow an end user to access the website, identify the root cause of their problem, and access procedural information to resolve their own issue. The website allows for different levels of access for a user based on their HR data, profile, group memberships, and other parameters. Links to resource websites are provided based on their levels of authorization.

Continuous Improvement: The next planned phase is to use the data from root cause analysis to develop and prioritize requirements so that the Global Logon software can be improved. Long term expectations are to reduce or eliminate technical problems.

Identity Management - Role Based Access Control

Identity Management includes web-based user interfaces and core technology provided by IBM Tivoli's Identity Management product. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) provides for the definition of roles in terms of services, servers, and databases. If a person becomes a member of a role, they will be assured to get accounts on the necessary services, servers, and databases automatically.

Contingency planning provides for a large number of striking employees to be removed from roles and their replacement workers to be added to roles overnight. There are a thousand roles, tens of thousands of employees, and a very large number of accounts. A failure of this system would be catastrophic.

Key aspects of the success of our contingency planning include:

Well established Methods and Procedures accessible by all personnel based on their role and level of authorization.

Troubleshooting guidelines for more complex roles with technical support available at all levels for quick issue resolution.

Automation for large, complex applications and roles.

Segregation of Duties well established and supported by software.

Dependencies defined and conflicts identified so those roles with missing dependent services can be resolved.

Software to analyze and resolve issues associated with complex role assignments.

The support for contingency planning has made the Identity Management service more robust.

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