greg forsyth

As the monitoring specialist for M-Powered IT at Markerstudy Group I am responsible for configuring, maintaining and managing the various monitoring tools used by the Network Operations Centre and developing & advancing solutions for monitoring requirements for a fast moving diverse group. I work closely with the various IT teams and the different businesses to define and implement a range of monitoring solutions and processes for systems & applications, networking, data centres, cloud, websites and server estates. I manage the configuration of monitoring & alerting, building dashboards for various teams and management levels and system & application performance reporting. In addition to configuration, I focus on developing the NOC and integrating monitoring with IT Operations by providing training on the monitoring toolset and available features, as well as troubleshooting best practices, and the value of good monitoring.

On the Service Desk at Markerstudy Group I worked supporting the internal users working for companies within the group for various issues across a wide variety of Insurance, leisure and retail industry applications. I have gained experience working with ticket management solutions such as ServiceNOW and SupportWorks and ITIL practices. I have created scripts for the knowledge base to assist the Service Desk and help add value to the service.

I started at CSC doing general service desk duties for Royal Mail dealing with account and machines issues. I advanced quickly to the 2nd line support team working mainly on migrating the Royal Mail, Post Office and ParcelForce estate from Windows XP to Windows 7 along with providing 2nd line remote support and staff training.

Paintwork restoration and detailing as well as high quality valeting for Gilder Group Volkswagen/Audi UK flagship showroom.

Working with a newly developed NOC team to implement a high class Network Operations Centre for Markerstudy Group to provide 24/7 2nd line support for network, server, application and data centre issues for multiple sites and businesses within the group using a variety of monitoring tools including Dell Foglight, Orion Solarwinds, vROps, McAfee, Darktrace, SCOM, Struxureware, Monitis, Big Data services and PRTG. The NOC monitor, troubleshoot and resolve issues for a range of services such as Active Directory, Exchange, SCCM, DFS, DHCP, DNS, IIS, SQL, Windows, Linux, Hyper-V, Cisco (routing, switching, Nexus, ASA and Meraki), cloud services, internal and 3rd party business applications, security services, Big Data, SAS and Citrix. Working with the NOC I am also responsible for managing daily checks, backup tape changes, incident and major incident management, change review and general system maintenance. We provide an out of hours service to VIPs and provide support to 3rd party vendors and engineers.