Australian mainframe company that had started here in Australia from scratch and using their ‘Netmaster’ product he headed up their networking management group for mainframes.
Stepping sideways, Peter then found himself in ‘pre-sales’ and demo’ing – and loved it. This provided him with his first taste of working with customers which was a dramatic shift from internal support where in effect you never got to meet your customer.
The other big shift in working in pre-sales was that he was addressing the stakeholder directly – there were essentially no filters to the discussions and unearthing real business problems.
Keep in mind these were still ‘The good old days’, not so long ago chronologically, but light years from where we find ourselves today. With heaps of coding to ensure the mainframe configurations worked, customers tapped these inputs directly, but all this required substantial behind the scenes comms support with the customer transmitting date at 48K megabits (yes, I did say megabits!) – quite the fastest at the time - now almost laughable.
Peter’s growing knowledge and grasp of the Comms side, again coupled with a growing confidence with the depth of his product knowledge, served to compliment his interest in training and his interpersonal skills saw him succeed in this role.
Way back, we’re talking ’86, Software Development developed a mainframe Service Management product. They heard the initial stirrings of ITIL and they sent four specialists to the UK to assess both what it was and to provide their input. From these rather humble, but insightful beginnings they developed the first discrete Service Management ITIL tool available in our market.
This was designed to answer the question, ‘How do we automate this?’ and it placed the company in the box seat for some time while the rest of the industry tried to catch up with them.
In the year 2000 Software Development was acquired by Stirling and Peter stayed with them for 10 years, a decade which he enjoyed, and which clarified something he had always worked towards without enunciating it: ‘If you want to follow your dream, attach yourself to the leading technology, become its evangelist, the ‘known expert’, and success will inevitably follow.’
Peter’s success took him all over the Pacific region initially, then all over the world.
It was also around this time that Peter began to become involved with ITSMF Australia’s National Conference, and with Stirling’s world-wide reach his opportunities to present both nationally and at international conferences audiences grew.
Peter did then, and still does, enjoy the sense of exposure when he is presenting to a classroom of people, but even more so when he’s standing in front of 100 to thousands of people in an audience – it gives him a rush, the sense of risk energizes him. Quite the opposite of many people’s well-known fear of public speaking
Of course, this only works if you absolutely know what you’re talking about – and he does. Peter is the expert’s expert in his domain, and he adds to that a definite stage presence and the uncanny ability to communicate with his audience, to bring them along on his journey.
He has made the statement that the ‘easiest part of all of this is the product knowledge’, but fundamentally that is the first necessary step in confronting your own fears. And Peter states, ‘You need to own that fear – ask yourself directly, “What is my greatest fear?”, that people will think I’m boring? Fair enough! Confront that fear directly and learn to beat it.
All of this is built on the bedrock of Peter’s enjoyment in imparting knowledge: his enjoyment in other people’s success.
Australian mainframe company that had started here in Australia from scratch and using their ‘Netmaster’ product he headed up their networking management group for mainframes.
Stepping sideways, Peter then found himself in ‘pre-sales’ and demo’ing – and loved it. This provided him with his first taste of working with customers which was a dramatic shift from internal support where in effect you never got to meet your customer.
The other big shift in working in pre-sales was that he was addressing the stakeholder directly – there were essentially no filters to the discussions and unearthing real business problems.
Keep in mind these were still ‘The good old days’, not so long ago chronologically, but light years from where we find ourselves today. With heaps of coding to ensure the mainframe configurations worked, customers tapped these inputs directly, but all this required substantial behind the scenes comms support with the customer transmitting date at 48K megabits (yes, I did say megabits!) – quite the fastest at the time - now almost laughable.
Peter’s growing knowledge and grasp of the Comms side, again coupled with a growing confidence with the depth of his product knowledge, served to compliment his interest in training and his interpersonal skills saw him succeed in this role.
Way back, we’re talking ’86, Software Development developed a mainframe Service Management product. They heard the initial stirrings of ITIL and they sent four specialists to the UK to assess both what it was and to provide their input. From these rather humble, but insightful beginnings they developed the first discrete Service Management ITIL tool available in our market.
This was designed to answer the question, ‘How do we automate this?’ and it placed the company in the box seat for some time while the rest of the industry tried to catch up with them.
In the year 2000 Software Development was acquired by Stirling and Peter stayed with them for 10 years, a decade which he enjoyed, and which clarified something he had always worked towards without enunciating it: ‘If you want to follow your dream, attach yourself to the leading technology, become its evangelist, the ‘known expert’, and success will inevitably follow.’
Peter’s success took him all over the Pacific region initially, then all over the world.
It was also around this time that Peter began to become involved with ITSMF Australia’s National Conference, and with Stirling’s world-wide reach his opportunities to present both nationally and at international conferences audiences grew.
Peter did then, and still does, enjoy the sense of exposure when he is presenting to a classroom of people, but even more so when he’s standing in front of 100 to thousands of people in an audience – it gives him a rush, the sense of risk energizes him. Quite the opposite of many people’s well-known fear of public speaking
Of course, this only works if you absolutely know what you’re talking about – and he does. Peter is the expert’s expert in his domain, and he adds to that a definite stage presence and the uncanny ability to communicate with his audience, to bring them along on his journey.
He has made the statement that the ‘easiest part of all of this is the product knowledge’, but fundamentally that is the first necessary step in confronting your own fears. And Peter states, ‘You need to own that fear – ask yourself directly, “What is my greatest fear?”, that people will think I’m boring? Fair enough! Confront that fear directly and learn to beat it.
All of this is built on the bedrock of Peter’s enjoyment in imparting knowledge: his enjoyment in other people’s success.