Kelvin KH Soong

Lead a team and work with global SME and technology partners for the plan, build and run of IT infrastructure of offices and data centres of Chubb Life Hong Kong while ensuring the adherence to the group standard and compliance requirements.

Acted as the platform owner, architect and admin of the Observability technology (APM, log management, synthetic monitoring) and ServiceNow CMDB. Lead the newly established Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team, involved in infrastructure design and focus on enhancing the performance and reliability of mission critical application to support the growth in A.S. Watson O+O (Offline plus Online) global business model. Design the group Observability Framework to integrate dashboard, alert and ITSM and presented the framework to the senior management. Work closely with AS Watson Europe to align the standard of the observability. Roll-out the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) for full-stack observability (traces/logs/metrics) to meet the requirements of the application owners. Conduct the training in regular basis. Lead the project of supermarket Self Check Out (SCO) monitoring, including gather requirements, define Critical Success Factor (CSF), prioritise the incidents to be handled (80/20 principles), compare different solutions, lead the discussion of cost benefit analysis, architect the infrastructure topology, define Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and arrange the demonstrations to senior management such as project sponsor and Head of business units. Act as the member and one of the approvers of the Change Advisory Board (CAB) to review and approve (or not to approve) the change of infrastructure and engaged in the Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of the major IT incidents. Architect the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) of Asia IT infrastructure and equipped Event Management and Service Mapping on top of it.

Held the role of head IT infrastructure and helpdesk of St. Teresa’s and St. Paul’s Hospital with 20 teammates (Network & Security, Systems & Storage, SAP and Helpdesk) to support projects and daily IT operations. Liaise with senior management to ensure IT services provided are aligned with hospital direction and objectives. Propose and identify new IT technologies to improve operational efficiencies and productivity. Initiate and evaluate project proposals from vendors and gather requirements from clinical and non-clinical staffs Ensure external service providers are meeting agreed Service Level Agreements (SLA). Define priorities and manage the budgets for IT department. Regularly present to hospital’s management and department-in-charge regarding operations, KPI, quality and risk, solutions and forecast.

Lead CLP’s Network & Security team and manage the Security Operation Centre (SOC); work on network and security projects and manage project delivering teams with matrix structure, including project planning, design (logical/physical/security), budgeting, hands-on implementation, vendor management, RFP, tendering and contract lifecycle management. Responsible for daily operations, BAU change and optimization of CLP data centre’s network and security infrastructure in both Hong Kong and regions. Direct pitching to senior level management, and work closely with internal and external stakeholders (such as application, end users computing, servers, cybersecurity, PMO, Technology and Architecture, data centre operations, IT helpdesk teams; internal & external auditors, IT finance, legals, office users, service providers, external consultants) for problem solving, technology refreshment and business development. Key accomplishments: 1) Re-designed and migrated core switches of CLP primary data centre 2) Designed and implemented Guest Wi-Fi platform 3) Re-designed and deployed regional network interconnection 4) Co-designed Microsoft Azure Infrastructure 5) Revamped Web proxy supporting whole CLP 6) In-sourced the firewall administration from managed vendors to CLP in-house 7) Established new Outline Agreements (OA) for service providers of external circuits (Internet, Azure ExpressRoute, Inter-DC) and Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW)

Designed and implemented the IT Infrastructure of payment platform with Disaster Recovery (DR) solution and work on the platform drill and maintenance. And responsible for the design and perform AS2 and GPG security setup in the payment platform from scratch. Designed, PM and performed administration and troubleshooting of the server farm such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Cisco ASA firewalls and the Middleware such as application server, Message Queue (MQ), and Storage. Worked with external auditors for attaining PCI-DSS and ISO27001

Play a leading role in project management including planning, monitoring, control and reporting of infrastructure projects Collaborate with various vendors and other parties on delivering project documents including project plans, design specifications, testing plans, rollout plans and presentation materials; and with other parties on exploration and adoption of new infrastructure technologies. Conduct CAPEX/OPEX cost model evaluation and Business Case analysis. Key accomplishments: 1) Reviewed SDNet3 possible solutions and evaluated the performance 2) Evaluated OTP-C (Orion Trading Platform - Cash) Network Infrastructure and Services

Head of Section (HoS) of HAECO Network team with leading four talents (and temporarily supervised Server and Operations team with total 10+ teammates for half an year) and responsible for the design, implementations, operations, project and contract management of HAECO's network infrastructure including routers and switches (core/ distribution/access), phone system, security platform, Wi-Fi infrastructure (Hangar/ Offices/ Common areas), video conferences, telecommunications (Internet/ Metro Ethernet/ IP-VPN/ BP/ PSTN), structural cabling (MDF/ IDF/ Cross-Hangers fibers), network Infrastructure to business partners, Site-to-Site VPNs, SSL VPN, Network Monitoring Systems (NMS) and Mobile Device Management (MDM). Key accomplishments: 1) Skills and experience transfer to team mates 2) Started and completed the network revamp of the whole HAECO (Topology re-design/tendering/PoC/planning/implementation/documentation...etc.) 3) New office installed with site-to-site VPN 4) HK<>Xiamen Connection (topological design/equipment purchasing/circuits subscription/on-site technical support/UAT/documentation/operation handover....etc.)

Perform project planning and network design. Lead Proof of Concept (POC) test, perform technical evaluation and review the solutions proposed by vendors. Draft RFI/RFP and Manage vendors and sub-contractors. Key accomplishments: 1) Implement the Web caching project and put it into production within the urgent time frame. 2) Supervise the Video Optimization project 3) Issue RFI and RFP for the Wi-Fi offload 3G project, reviewed and evaluated the whole network design with thousands Wi-Fi hotspots in Hong Kong

Provide network design based on the user and SI requirements, prepare BoM and purchase order, liaise with regional network team and vendor to estimate the budgets (e.g. MAN/WAN links CAPEX/OPEX) of the project. Liaised with suppliers for timely delivery of circuits, equipment and services and implement the provision of network devices (Cisco router, switch, PIX and ASA, F5 Load Balancers) in Asia as project implementation. Arrange the handover, including to host the handover meeting, prepare the documents and ensure all the new devices are met the corporate handover requirements, such as IOS version, SNMP, etc. and provide operational support. Document the technical details (network diagram, IP addressing scheme, inventory utilization, firewall security policies, and the data flow of the application, such as Market Data multicast between bank and the Exchanges) Perform firewall security policies changes for the new project Key accomplishments: - Deployed the network infrastructure in Delhi, India. The tasks include to conduct network design, consolidate the quotation and approval from senior management, prepare technical documents, host the cutover meeting with Operations, perform on-site equipment installation, configuration and tackle the unexpected challenges (technical, administration and logistics).

Implement APAC WAN/MAN projects, such as perform the migration from leased line to MPLS VPN and setup MAN links in different regions. Perform network monitoring by using Concord. Liaise with the Global team to ensure the projects meet the bank standard Coordinate and manage the project rollout in Asia Pacific and prepare technical documentation (network diagram, IP addressing scheme, QoS schemes, etc.) Key accomplishments: - Migrated APAC leased lines (10+ locations in Asia, such as Beijing, Tianjin, Seoul, Bangkok, Jakarta, Taipei, Sydney, etc.) to dual Carries MPLS infrastructure. The tasks include the network design, IP address scheme design, QoS negotiation with carriers, cutover configuration preparation, communication with different local teams, and actual change implementation.

Publication in HKU Scholar Hub: Relative clauses in Cantonese: an LFG approach (http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/56702)