What does your job entail?
I am responsible for IT service provision for 50 offices and around 750 users across the UK and Ireland.

What was your first job?
NHS laboratory scientific officer in haematology.

How did you get into IT?
I took an MSCE in the late 1980s, then got a job with a large construction company, followed by a stint with AXA on the insurance and call-centre side.

If you weren’t in IT, what would you be doing?
Prime Minister perhaps, otherwise a pilot.

What are the biggest IT challenges you face?
My biggest job is to establish the business credibility of IT in the eyes of the board and convince them we can deliver good systems to get the job done. That, and trying to sweat our existing assets as much as possible.

What keeps you up at night?
Security, mainly identity theft, and the network security issues raised by mobile devices – we are just about to deploy BlackBerrys to the workforce. I also have lesser concerns about licence costs and infrastructure virtualisation.

Which IT qualifications have proved most useful to you?
I’ve attended Prince project management and Itil courses. Business skills are more relevant now than handling the technology bits.

Which IT vendor has had the most influence over your career?
Microsoft has the monopoly on the non-open source market. We have an embedded Microsoft infrastructure and any attempt to move that to open source would require a lot of retraining.

What has been the most over-hyped technology in the past five years?
The Y2K bug, though Web 2.0 looks like it might have the same level of hype.

Is now a good time to embark on a career in IT ?
There are lots of opportunities for people interested in linking business and IT requirements, but not necessarily for developers or other roles that might be outsourced.