About William F. Newell III
William Newell is the founder and Principal of WFN Consulting, LLC. as well as a seasoned consultant with expertise in planning, designing and implementing Microsoft centric infrastructure solutions ranging from single servers to high availability multi-tier clustered solutions. More than 10 years of IT Infrastructure architecture and implementation experience combined with a high degree of application development knowledge results in the ability to help clients architect, manage and troubleshoot today's mission critical web infrastructures.
Prior to creating WFN3, Mr. Newell was a founder and Principal of a small successful Microsoft Certified Partner consultancy specializing in custom development of web based client solutions. Previous to that Mr. Newell held the position of Director, eBusiness Infrastructure for a large Microsoft Gold Certified Partner IT professional services firm. While engaged with the IT services firm he was responsible for product development, building delivery teams and technical sales as well representing the firm on the Microsoft eBusiness Infrastructure Partner Advisory Council.
Recent Projects
- Infrastructure Architect Architected and implemented infrastructure solution for client’s custom thin client based Internet access/ entertainment appliance for the hospitality industry. Updated client’s previous PC based solution to thin clients running Windows XP Embedded. Designed IP network and network infrastructure to facilitate communications between the corporate office and deployed properties. Designed property location infrastructure to support the appliance functionality. Created deployment process to customize and deploy clients. Products utilized included Windows 2003, IIS, SQL Server 2000, Terminal Services, Microsoft Office 2003, Windows Media Services, Altiris Deployment solution, Nomadix Hotspot Gateway, Symantec SGS for Firewall/VPN/Content filtering, Authroize.Net Payment gateway, Cisco switches, HP ILO.
- Infrastructure Architect Architected and implemented infrastructure solution for a large pharmaceutical industry client’s Interactive voice response system corresponding Internet web application based on Microsoft Speech server. The production solution was designed to support over 275+ simultaneous calls and 100,000+ users with a smaller disaster recovery solution located in a different city. The entire solution including development, staging, production and disaster recovery consisted of roughly 40 Windows 2003 based servers. In addition to the Microsoft Speech Server farm the solution utilized clustered SQL 2000, IIS web farm, SQL Reporting Services, various firewall appliances, load balancer appliances, VPNs, Cisco switches, NIC teaming, SAN disk storage and Intel Dialogic digital T1/E1 Speech boards.
- Infrastructure Architect Architected and implemented infrastructure solution to support customized reporting portal for a mid-size pharmaceutical industry client. The solution allowed the portal to show statistics for the completed InfoPath forms stored in the server i.e. Total sales by totaling the values on all completed sales forms. The solution utilized Microsoft Windows 2003, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, InfoPath 2003, SQL Server 2005 with Reporting Services and custom C# and ASP.NET modules that exposed the completed InfoPath forms data stored within SharePoint Portal Server 2003 as a data source that could be consumed by the SQL Reporting Services reports.
- Infrastructure Architect As a subcontractor to partner, architected and implemented infrastructure solution to support a custom Controls Management / Business Intelligence Reporting portal for a global financial institution. The partner had previously created a web based controls management application, and a separate set of custom business intelligence tools used to mine client data. Our solution utilized Microsoft Windows 2003, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, SQL Server 2000 with Analysis Services and Reporting Services, BizTalk Server 2004 and custom C# and ASP.NET web parts to convert the BI toolset to the Microsoft platform, automate data collection/transformation and present the enhanced controls management information to the users through a portal interface. The resulting solution bolsters the client’s existing compliance reporting by allowing them to drill through the controls into the data to determine the source of the problem instead of just reporting a problem.
- Infrastructure Architect As a subcontractor to partner, architected and implemented infrastructure solution to support custom Business Intelligence Reporting portal for a global commercial real estate broker. The partner had an existing set of custom business intelligence tools used to mine client data and had previously utilized Cognos reporting tools to display the results of the process to the client. The new solution utilized Microsoft Windows 2003, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, SQL Server 2000 with Analysis Services and custom C# and ASP.NET modules to display the client data in a web based portal. As a result the Microsoft based reporting solution could be delivered to the partner’s client with more flexibility and at a much lower cost than the existing Cognos reporting tools.
- Infrastructure Architect, Application Developer Architected and implemented infrastructure solution to support custom transcription reconciliation and document management application for the 2nd largest cardiovascular group in Pennsylvania. The application was developed to automate the process of reconciling the 75,000+ transcriptions the group generates annually and improve the retrieval of those documents along with 200,000+ existing documents. The solution was based on Microsoft’s Windows 2000, SharePoint Portal Server 2000, SQL Server 2000 and custom C# and ASP.NET modules. Transcription documents were retrieved from the offshore transcription agency via the Internet, compared against patient records from the AIX based billing system, tagged with metadata to enhance retrieval and inserted into the SharePoint document store for storage.
- Infrastructure Architect, Application Developer Designed and implemented a smart log-in and user profile management system solution for a large University’s foreign language lab. The solution involved extending the existing University Active Directory schema and generation of additional Active Directory objects based on data received from the University’s legacy student registration system on a daily basis. Created management console application to monitor and mange processing of the solution which automatically generates student accounts and folder structures for 3000+ students each semester who have classes scheduled in the lab.
Relevant Work
- Principal Founding partner of a small successful Microsoft Certified Partner consultancy specializing in custom development of web based client solutions. Jointly responsible for all aspects of operations and delivery of the corporation as well as client satisfaction.
- Director, eBusiness Infrastructure Reported to Chief Technology Officer. Responsible for providing infrastructure related technical direction and strategy to the application development practice. Technical direction responsibilities included identifying, evaluating and developing new service offerings, defining engineer skill sets required to deliver service offerings and maintaining quality of existing service offerings. Also responsible for supporting sales and marketing efforts including executive level pre-sales client consultation, development, review and approval of proposals and Engagement Authorizations as well as creating and maintaining partner relationships. Partnering responsibilities also included serving as the organization’s representative on the Microsoft Infrastructure Partner Advisory Council (IPAC).
- Infrastructure Delivery Manager / eBusiness Infrastructure Architect Reported to Director of Infrastructure Delivery. Responsible for managing eBusiness Infrastructure Architect team and Senior Network Engineer. Duties included managing team operations, performance, career development and reviews. Also responsible for providing sales support as well as Architecting eBusiness Infrastructure solutions.
- eBusiness Infrastructure Director / eBusiness - Infrastructure Architect Reported to Executive Vice President of eBusiness. Responsible for building Solution Provider's eBusiness Infrastructure Architecture capabilities including defining skills, assembling the Architect team from internal and external resources, managing the Architect team and managing delivery of eBusiness Infrastructure capabilities. Also responsible for designing, deploying and managing organization's internal development environment including developer workstation builds, individual project server environments, and application load testing facility. Provided CEO/CIO level plan, design and deployment phase consulting as well as proposal development and sales support for customers engaged in developing custom eBusiness solutions. Designed Microsoft DNA/.net solutions for several clients. Typical solutions involved a collocated installation of 4 to 15 servers, load balanced web farm, application servers, and clustered database servers.
- Microsoft DNA Infrastructure Architect Responsible for planning, designing, and implementing the infrastructure necessary to support several Windows Distributed interNet Applications Architecture (DNA) applications. One of the custom DNA solutions was selected by Microsoft as Global Business Solution of the Year from a field of 800 entrants. The application database tier consisted of Microsoft SQL server 7, the business logic tier consisted of Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0 and Microsoft Exchange 5.5 while the presentation tier was developed utilizing both Microsoft Outlook98 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. Duties also included planning and managing a three-phase process for transitioning completed applications from the development lab to the production network. I also spent some time developing custom Microsoft Exchange/Outlook collaboration solutions for the client's executive team.
- Global Desktop Architect Responsible for planning, designing and implementing a global Windows 95/NT configuration. Developed a custom version of Windows 95 to suit client's hardware and software needs. Ported the English Windows 95 configuration to the German and Italian versions of Windows 95. Teamed with the Windows NT design team to create support for roving desktops. Created a completely automated scripted installation of the custom Windows 95 configuration, which reduced deployment time while ensuring a standard configuration. Duties also included traveling to both national and international locations to consult, customize and supervise the installation of the Windows 95/NT design. Delivered and facilitated presentations to the global IT staff - CIO, Director and managers from each location.