What was your first job?

I was essentially a cadet journalist for ACP working on The Bulletin and doing research for various journalists. It was a good introduction into the commercial world outside of school.

How did you end up in the IT industry?

My interest is in corporate governance and regulatory compliance. Being a director and company secretary for Raritan Australia in Asia-Pacific, I became aware very quickly that there are some obligations and requirements shareholders have of directors. Directors also need to be accountable to shareholders for the execution of certain duties. That interest translates into what Raritan does as an organisation: We provide tools to enable organisations to increase their service delivery and performance and ensure it is compliant with certain corporate governance obligations. Before joining Raritan, I was an executive at a technology business called Check Point Meto Group for about four years. The foundation of the business was in intelligent auto ID, which can take many forms such as RFID technology.

How did you progress to where you are today?

I was approached by an independent organisation looking for certain skill sets. How they got my details, I'm still not aware, but they were looking for somebody to reshape their sales, marketing, channel and entire go-to market strategy in A/NZ. It represented a good opportunity for me to build an organisation.

What do you like about your current job?

I like the fact that there is a high degree of autonomy and that it is highly entrepreneurial. Mid-size technology businesses are often fast moving and are sculpting their technologies very quickly. It also requires a high degree of self discipline in terms of learning new technologies and how they relate to what we do as an organisation. I enjoy technology and learning about it. It doesn't stand still and that in itself is challenging. Raritan is vendor agnostic, so we are across many platforms, server operating systems and other infrastructure devices that we would typically centralise the management of.

What is the biggest achievement of your career?

Participating in growing this company from what was essentially a $5 million turnover business to a $50 million turnover business within three years.

What do you dislike most about the IT industry?

There is a lot of great technology out there and there is also a lot of unnecessary technology. People are looking for simplicity - if I can't understand it, then how can my partners or customers understand it?

What will be the 'next big thing' in the industry?

There is a lot of activity around virtualisation at the moment. Virtualising servers is one area, but there is also the virtualisation of infrastructure devices beyond servers and I think that is an emerging technology trend. Any vendor bringing products to market touting the virtues of green, the environment and reducing carbon emissions, needs to measure those claims. Power consumption is a big area. Three per cent of the world's power is consumed through datacentres, which is a pretty big number. I think organisations that can provide solutions that really reduce those big costs for customers are going to be winners.