gr0x0rd systems inc.

local tech > big tech ; est 2010

Operating out of Southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, gr0x0rd Systems Inc provides a wide variety of technical services to clients including government, enterprise, small business and individuals. Over 25 years of information technology experience has provided us with exposure to the justice, internet messaging, health care, regulatory, education, defense, land surveying and entrepreneurial sectors.

Depending on your organization's unique needs, alignment, preferences and budget, our service offerings are capable of encompassing all aspects of the technology life cycle including network and security planning, systems design and architecture, physical infrastructure procurement and deployment, systems installation and configuration, custom software development, real-time systems monitoring and alerting, and general maintenance and support. Be it open-source, closed source, on-premise, hybrid or cloud, we have the experience and the energy to offer complete technical solutions to organizations of any size.

A friendly, casual approach to doing business exemplifies our west coast roots: we take pride in being personable, approachable and accessible while providing knowledgeable, robust and flexible solutions. Our mission is to provide clients with friendly, expert service while building strong, healthy and long lasting business relationships. Our vision is to empower all of our clients with secure, sustainable technical solutions that will improve not only their technical infrastructure but also their bottom line.

Technical Directorship

Since our most recently held position in the Public Service was as a Director of Application Management and Infrastructure, a delegation and management approach has superseded previous supervisory roles which were still highly technical in nature. A vast depth and breadth of technical experience across multiple environments, platforms and services combined with a boardroom friendly disposition and collaborative team oriented approach allows us to offer vision, governance and execution that provides significant value at multiple organizational levels.

Project Management & Coordination

With over 15 years of experience in the Public Service both directly and as a contractor, we are familiar with the people, process and approach used to successfully implement large scale projects across multiple sectors and Ministries. Using ITIL tooling for project governance, we have successfully accomplished a number of high profile multi-year enterprise projects on time and on budget including virtualization and migration of core messaging infrastructure for Citizen's Services, and both a greenfield refresh of over 200 servers and implementation of a Payment Card Industry (PCI) payment gateway for Attorney General. Years of experience managing vendors and budgets combined with our technical knowledge and people-first approach to coordination has been a recipe for repeated success regardless of project size and scope.

Product Ownership

Experience with both the public and private sectors has exposed us to governance and administration of a vast portfolio of products including the Atlassian ITIL toolset, ServiceNow Central Management Database (CMDB), Red Hat JBOSS, Broadcom Layer7 Webservice Gateway, Splunk Enterprise, Reverse and Forward proxy services including IIS, apache, nginx and HAProxy, and DevOps tooling such as Jenkins and ansible. Complemented by our knowledge of personnel and procedure, a wide breadth of detailed product knowledge positions us to slide into organizational product gaps and assist as required.

Systems Administration

Intimate knowledge of the Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Linux and Oracle Solaris server platforms equips us to offer turnkey systems administration solutions. Be it network troubleshooting, log analysis, scheduled task or cron configuration, script design and development, software installation and configuration, systems integration or platform upgrades, our years of systems administration experience can offer much needed stability and provide immediate benefits to any organization.

Enterprise Application Support

Our technical journey has exposed us to numerous scenarios where we have been responsible for installing, configuring, monitoring, supporting and upgrading enterprise applications across a variety of platforms. In addition, we have been instrumental in the development and execution of business continuity and disaster recovery plans for critical business systems. To ensure the lights are always on, we are capable of providing tier2+ level support, liaising with hosting providers, and facilitating vendor engagement.

Real-time Systems Monitoring and Alerting

Transitioning from a break-fix to a proactive operational model is a key success factor for any modern enterprise. As the primary operational resource to recently manifest this vision for a major Ministry, we have hands-on expertise in setting up a robust, scalable and highly available realtime monitoring system on-premise or in the cloud using Splunk Enterprise. With expertise in compute resource provisioning, systems installation and configuration, role based access control and security provisioning, deployment server and forwarder management, dashboard design and alert notifications, our solutions ensure that both staff and stakeholders have an improved experience when interacting with your business systems.

Technical Directorship

Reporting directly to the Chief Technical Officer, our recent executive duties included being resposible for managing large operational budgets, vendor management, staffing, and overseeing technical operations team leads. A vast depth and breadth of technical experience across multiple environments, platforms and services combined with a boardroom friendly disposition and collaborative team oriented approach allows us to offer vision, governance and execution that provides significant value at multiple organizational levels.

Deplatform Protection

Deplatforming has become commonplace in the age of cancel culture and censorship. Actions of a third party can result in a second third party doing catastrophic damage to your organization. This service allows a collaborative review of your technical infrastructure, identifies vulnerabilities and single points of failure, produces a detailed report with recommendations, establishes a strategy with you and your technical team and then implements the derived plan. The end result ensures the sovereignty and continuity of your organization's infrastructure so that your online presence persists, despite the best attempts of bad actors.

Project Management & Coordination

Using ITIL tooling for project governance, we have successfully accomplished a number of high profile multi-year enterprise projects on time and on budget including the upgrade, virtualization and migration of mission critical enterprise infrastructure. We have also successfully led ad-hoc agile projects requiring coordination of multiple stakeholders to accomplish organizational requirements with very challenging timelines. Years of experience managing vendors and budgets combined with our technical knowledge and people-first approach to coordination has been a recipe for repeated success regardless of project size and scope.

Systems Administration

Intimate knowledge of the Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Linux and Oracle Solaris server platforms equips us to offer turnkey systems administration solutions. Be it network troubleshooting, log analysis, scheduled task or cron configuration, script design and development, software installation and configuration, systems integration or platform upgrades, our years of systems administration experience can offer much needed stability and provide immediate benefits to any organization.

Enterprise Application Support

Our technical journey has exposed us to numerous scenarios where we have been responsible for installing, configuring, monitoring, supporting and upgrading enterprise applications across a variety of platforms. In addition, we have been instrumental in the development and execution of business continuity and disaster recovery plans for critical business systems. To ensure the lights are always on, we are capable of providing tier2+ level support, liaising with hosting providers, and facilitating vendor engagement.

Real-time Systems Monitoring and Alerting

Transitioning from a break-fix to a proactive operational model is a key success factor for any modern enterprise. As the primary operational resource to recently manifest this vision for a major Ministry, we have hands-on expertise in setting up a robust, scalable and highly available realtime monitoring system on-premise or in the cloud using Splunk Enterprise. With expertise in compute resource provisioning, systems installation and configuration, role based access control and security provisioning, deployment server and forwarder management, dashboard design and alert notifications, our solutions ensure that both staff and stakeholders have an improved experience when interacting with your business systems.

Technical Consulting

Working in the industry since 1996 has brought us experience working with all aspects of technology including planning, purchasing, network and security architecture, infrastructure management, software development, end user support and trades. Many years of putting these broad skills to work in a variety of applications for different clients empowers us with the knowledge and the wherewithal to help you or your organization with any technical project.

Security Assessment

Our security assessment service includes a review of your company's network environment, technical infrastructure, software defenses, staff awareness and disaster preparedness. After providing a list of recommendations, we're eager to help you address and remediate any possible issues including hardware upgrades, network security policy, off-site backup and restore procedures and security awareness training to ensure your business is protected from security threats and has a solid continuity plan in place.

Systems Administration

Detailed knowledge and years of experience using typical business server platforms equips us to offer turnkey systems administration solutions. Be it network connectivity, shared drive configuration, permissions issues, problematic backups, software installation and configuration, systems integration or platform upgrades, our years of systems administration experience can offer much needed stability and provide immediate benefits to any organization.

Web Development

We offer complete custom data driven web based software solutions written in modern languages using a Model View Controller (MVC) based design approach. Further, we fully support out-of-the-box turnkey content management solutions such as WordPress and Drupal. These solutions can be integrated into your existing business system back-ends including your sales, customer management or accounting systems as required. A variety of hosting options are available including on premise, web managed or cloud based solutions.

Software Development

Using IDEs such as Eclipse of Microsoft Visual Studio, we are capable of delivering a variety of desktop software solutions for your business. Familiarity with programming languages such as Java, C++, Visual Basic, C# and .NET allow us the ability to create, upgrade or add features to your business software solutions. Complete documentation and source control are included in this service to ensure your existing investment and intellectual property remain within your walls.

Support & Maintenance

Every business eventually ends up needing technical support and maintenance, be it a failed PC, a problematic printer or uncooperative software. We are happy to offer quick, effective, on-site solutions regardless of your technical ailments. With over a quarter century of troubleshooting experience, we've pretty much seen it all, and are happy to help so you can resume business as usual as quickly as possible.

HD TV Service

Tired of paying high prices for digital TV services when all you really need are local channels? Individuals situated on the Saanich peninsula may qualify for our high definition digital TV service. We will come on site to perform an assessment, confirm channel availability, and perform your installation and configuration as required. Your monthly subscription fee includes future hardware upgrades, troubleshooting and support, and can be canceled at any time. The first month of the service is free, so you can try before you buy.

Crypto coaching

Interested in learning about or investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum? We are happy to sit down with you and explain how the blockchain works, which hardware wallet might be right for you, how to establish on-and-off ramps to multiple exchanges, and how to send, receive, buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies. Further, we can explore some crypto stocks and other investment options you might find interesting. Most importantly, we'll convey "not your keys, not your coins", and ensure you have full autonomy over all your assets.

Open-source coaching

If you are ready to take control of your computing environment and enjoy the affordability, security and autonomy of open source solutions, we are happy to offer personalized instruction on building a PC from the ground up using Archlinux. This service incudes a graphical desktop environment, window manager, system monitor, desktop software, multimedia software and productivity suite. Optional instruction is also available for RAID to protect your data, server options such as apache web server, virtualization tools and gaming.

Startup coaching

Thinking about starting your own business, but need some guidance on the technical aspects? We can help explain how nameservices work, assist you in choosing an ideal DNS registrar, and oversee registration of your domain. This logically progresses toward setting up your email services and creating mailboxes, forwarding and setting up your mobile device. We can also provide background on hosting options, decide on an ideal web host, explain different approaches to content management, and help you find an optimal environment for your online presence.

2021 - Technical Director

Prioritized filling divisional vacancies to ensure staff retention and maintain client service levels. Actioned expense authority decisions for operational and vendor application maintenance budgets. Worked closely with CTO on sector initiatives. Directed technical team leads to successfully accomplish organizational priorities such as audits, standardization of critical systems documentation and disaster recovery planning.

2020 - Unix Server Lead

Successfully led a team of Senior technical resources to ensure application and service continuity for the Province's Justice sector. Assisted sponsors and colleages in the sctor implementation of ServiceNow. Led a tiger team of middle tier, architects and developers to stand up a Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant payment gateway in less than a month to ensure Provincial compliance.

2019 - Server Migration Project Lead

Coordinated efforts between middle tier, application management, database administrators, client portfolio services and vendors to successfully perform a greenfield refresh of over 200 Windows, Red Hat Linux and Solaris servers. Helped to refine and coordinate sector change management processes. Created configuration items and relationships in sector central management database (CMDB).

2018 - Middle Tier Specialist

Became a member of the Public Service, joining a prominent Ministry as the first Middle Tier technician specializing in both Windows and Unix. Became proficient with the server ordering process and collaborating with hosting provider. Became engaged with government wide initiative to upgrade all instances of Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Linux 6 and Solaris 10.

2017 - Enterprise Mail Gateway Cloud Migration

Worked with Messaging Architect to implement junk email filtering for end users within the Public Service based on the custom in-house mail gateway system. Planned and coordinated migration of the custom mail gateway solution to Microsoft's Exchange Online Protection cloud solution including migration of all custom rules, policies, routing and domains.

2016 - Virtual Private Cloud Architecture

Established a virtual private cloud environment at a local datacenter in collaboration with a Cisco certified network architect after working with management to determine return on investment after hardware and licensing costs, project costs and tenant pricing. Created a playbook and documentation to on-board new tenants. Coordinated migration of a number of tenants to the new service.

2015 - Web Application Upgrade Project Lead

Led a team of intermediate and junior developers to implement significant regulatory changes and upgrade a large scale php web application from Zend to Laravel for multiple Federal stakeholders. Worked with management and client to scope requirements, establish and approve budget, and procure necessary project resources. Provided project governance, client updates and co-ordinated UAT before successfully delivering project.

2014 - Enterprise Mail Gateway Virtualization

With the physical hardware beyond end of support, worked with Messaging Services management to scope and budget a project to virtualize the enterprise mail gateway. Incrementally delivered the project by building and implementing virtual nodes in separately located datacenters, adding high availability and redundancy. Overhauled searching and monitoring tools.

2013 - Datacenter Migration

Researched hardware, licensing and human effort required to approve project budget. Established a site-to-site VPN tunnel between the office datacenter and a local datacenter provider using Cisco routers and Juniper switches. Designed and implemented network routing and security policies. Migrated critical operational and client systems to the new production datacenter.

2012 - Enterprise Mail Gateway Operations

Joined the Ministry of Citizen's Services as a subcontractor and took over responsibility for operating the Province's custom virus firewall and email gateway based on Red Hat Linux, sendmail, mimedefang, clamav/sophos and multiple realtime block lists. Actioned incidents, improved monitoring and expanded the perl based search, reporting and notification systems.

2011 - Datacenter Operations

Researched and invested in expanded UPS capacity and oversaw numerous after-hours projects to rebalance and align datacenter power systems after a number of winter storms impacted operations. Established realtime server resource and service health monitoring using nagios. Implemented WAN failover capabilities and expanded redundant split horizon DNS infrastructure.

2010 - Infrastructure Lead

Joined a small family run tech company and took over responsibility of a small datacenter comprised of appoximately 20 servers. This involved oversight of all company operations including network access and security, directory and email services, ITIL infrastructure, multiple hosted clients and numerous development environments required to support government contracts.

2009 - Provisional Patent

Worked with a law firm and patent offices to eventually be granted a provisional patent for securely transfering files between a web host and a USB or desktop client. Due to challenging market conditions, a drop in external investment, a lack of human resources, declining sales and a large competitor in the space (Dropbox Inc) pursuance of a full patent was abandoned.

2008 - Entrepreneurial Venture

Began an entrepreneurial journey to create a web managed software system written in php and javascript that initially deployed content to a custom USB device using C++, then later to a desktop client. Worked with a vendor in China to create a custom API, with KPMG to procure research grants and contractors to develop a Mac port.

2007 - Enterprise Reporting

Wrote custom software that parsed a collection of client software databases, aggregated the appropriate data, then compared quarterly outputs to identify patterns, accentuate trends and provide quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to facilitate development and balance resourcing for health authority programs.

2006 - Business Development

After a promotion, we took on the role of customer engagement, sales and marketing, and traveled the Province performing installations at care facilities then training the staff on product use while overseeing support operations. We helped organize seminars and engagement sessions, attended conferences and worked with stakeholders to secure product adoption at the health authority level.

2005 - Small Business Support

Joining a small family run software company in the health care sector provided an opportunity to become acquainted with the user base, gather feedback for bugfixes and feature enchangements, and contribute to the company's growth. A pivotal moment occurred after a database presentation by an IBM consultant revealed Gentoo linux running underneath a virtualized instance of Windows.

2004 - Enterprise Systems Support

A return to the Federal Government environment as a full time employee exposed us to facilitating the technical functions of the construction and engineering sectors along with the essential administrative supports at an enterprise level. Supported applications included AutoCAD, Simply Accounting, Oracle Forms and a portfolio of custom applications.

2002 - Office Systems Support

A return to the Provincial Government environment as an independent contractor at a time where each Ministry had its own in-house technical staff afforded many opportunities to develop contacts, troubleshoot software and domain issues, work with vendors and other contractors, and extend our knowledge of government operations and hierarchy.

2001 - Organizational Workstation Upgrade

An opportunity to work at the Federal Government level afforded us the experience of working with a small team of dedicated techs to upgrade hundreds of workstations from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2000. This was accomplished using Norton Ghost to clone the system drives; once the new images were deployed, the workstations were rolled out to end users and we then worked with them to migrate their settings and software.

2000 - Web Development

Our first exposure to working in a Provincial Government setting, an initial 4 months to build a static public facing website became 8 months as the project scope was expanded into building a data driven intranet site for a major regulatory agency to ensure the safety of field workers using classic asp and Microsoft Access. Recommendations from a mentor shifted focus from purely technical to a business oriented approach to technology.

1998 - Local Area Network Installation

A need to enable internet in the classroom provided an opportunity to join a physical network installation crew. In this role we learned how to install physical network infrastructure from the ground up including industry standards, physical design, pulling cable, node termination, patch panel implementation and network performance testing. Our first exposure to working in a municipal government setting.

1996 - PC Assembly and Repair

After a month of volunteer work to learn the basics, a steady summer job was earned assembling, upgrading and repairing PCs as early as the pre-Pentium 386 and 486 machines. Answering phones, greeting walk-ins and sales soon followed our PC service responsibilities, providing initial exposure to customer service.