


Education Achievements

| School |
Randwich High (Centre Number 571) |
| Candidate No. |
682872 |
| Aggregate Mark |
488/500 |
| Ranking |
NSW Top 1% |
| Subject |
Units |
Mark |
| English |
2 General |
87 |
| Mathematics |
3 Common |
98 |
| Mathematics |
4 Additional |
100 |
| Physics |
2 |
98 |
| Chemistry |
2 |
98 |
| Industrial Arts (Engineering Sc.) |
2 |
95 |

I was admitted as a candidate for the combined Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of
Electrical Engineering in 1984. However, I chose not to complete the Bachelor of
Electrical Engineering component of the program.
During my first three years, I was awarded the E. Trenchard Miller Memorial
Scholarship for outstanding academic performance in my chosen field of study.
My honours thesis was entitled Rubato: A Music Input and
Performance System. It details the design and implementation of a music input
language together with a music performance system that generates real time MIDI (Musical
Instruments Digital Interface) messages. The music input language is a block structured,
concurrent, algorithmic language allowing concise notation of music scores and the
implementation utilises established compiler construction techniques to create an
environment consisting of a compiler, assembler, linker and debugger. The music generated
by the music performance system may be realised on any MIDI musical instrument.
I graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) with first
class honours and I was awarded with the University Medal (award for the
highest-ranking student in each class).
| Year |
Course |
Result |
| 1984 |
Combined B.Sc./B.E. (Elec.) |
|
| |
Pure/Applied Mathematics 1H (Hons.) |
Distinction |
| |
Physics 1D (Distinction) |
High Distinction |
| |
Chemistry 1A (Advanced) |
High Distinction |
| |
Computer Science 1 |
High Distinction |
| |
Electrical Circuit Theory |
Distinction |
| 1985 |
Combined B.Sc./B.E. (Elec.) |
|
| |
Pure/Applied Mathematics 2A/D (Hons.) |
Distinction |
| |
Physics 2D (Distinction) |
Distinction |
| |
Computer Science 2 |
High Distinction |
| |
Introductory Electrical Engineering |
Distinction |
| |
Digital Logic |
Distinction |
| |
Machine Drawing and Descriptive Geometry |
Credit |
| 1986 |
B.Sc. (Pure Maths/Comp. Sc.) |
|
| |
Pure Mathematics 3 (Hons.) |
Distinction |
| |
Computer Science 3 |
High Distinction |
| 1987 |
B.Sc. (Pure Maths/Comp. Sc.) |
|
| |
Computer Science (Hons.) |
First Class with University Medal |

I graduated in 1992 with a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and am currently
an Associate of the Securities Institute of Australia.
| Semester |
Course |
Results |
| 1990/2 |
The Securities Industry |
Distinction |
| |
Financial Statement Analysis |
Credit |
| 1991/1 |
Securities Industry Economics |
Credit |
| |
Foreign Exchange |
High Distinction |
| 1991/2 |
Money Market & Fixed Investments |
Distinction |
| |
Australian Futures Trading |
Distinction |
| 1992/1 |
Securities Industry Law |
Credit |
| |
Options Markets and Trading |
Credit |

I graduated in 1994 with a Master of Applied Finance and won the Australian
Institute of Banker's Prize for Management of Financial Institutions as well as "The
Institute Prize" for outstanding academic performance in banking and finance
studies at Macquarie University.
| Semester |
Course |
Result |
| 1992/1 |
Corporate Finance 1 |
A |
| |
Financial Markets 1 |
A |
| 1992/2 |
Corporate Finance 2 |
A |
| |
Financial Markets 2 |
A |
| 1993/1 |
Finance Law and Tax |
A |
| |
Swap Financing |
A |
| |
Applied Portfolio Management |
A |
| 1993/2 |
Treasury Risk Management |
B |
| |
Management of Financial Institutions |
A |
| |
Derivative Products and Markets |
A |
- Certificate of Distinction, Australian Mathematics Competition (1983)
- E. Trenchard Miller Memorial Scholarship, University of Sydney (1983-87)
- University Medal, University of Sydney (1988)
- University Postgraduate Research Award, University of Sydney (1988)
- NSW Branch Employee of the Month Award, NCR (1992)
- NSW Branch Employee of the Month Award, NCR (1993)
- Australian Institute of Bankers Prize for Management of Financial Institutions,
Macquarie University (1994)
- Australian Institute of Bankers "The Institute Prize", Macquarie
University (1994)
- C++ Programming Workshop, Sydney (1989)
- Oracle Version 6 with TPO, Sydney (1990)
- Oracle Upgrade to SQL*Forms V3, Melbourne (1990)
- SBV Information Systems Modelling Methodologies, Melbourne (1990)
- Borland Object Oriented Programming World Tour II, Sydney (1991)
- South Pacific Object Oriented Konference 1991, Sydney (SPOOK91)
- USENIX Winter 1991 Conference, Dallas (1991)
- System 3000/TOP END Update Workshop, Sydney (1992)
- 3550 MP-UNIX Support, Sydney (1992)
- Introduction to 3600, Sydney (1993)
- 3600 Operations, Sydney (1993)
- Oracle V7 Migration Workshop, Copenhagen (1993)
- TOP END Design, Los Angeles (1993)
- TOP END Application Programming, Los Angeles (1993)
- AUUG 1993 Conference, Sydney (1993)
- OracleWorld 1993 Asia-Pacific User Conference, Canberra (1993)
- AUUG 1994 Conference, Melbourne (1994)
- OracleWorld 1994 Conference, Melbourne (1994)
- ESI/George Washington University Project Management, Sydney (1994)
- Client/Server Strategies Seminar, Sydney (1995)
- DSTC Distributed Solutions Event, Coolum (1995)
- Ensight training, Sydney (1995)
- Transition Services Methodology training, Sydney (1995)
- Best Practices in IT Architecture Consulting training, Melbourne (1996)
- PSO Asia-Australasia conference, Singapore (1996)
- Australia Money Day, Newcastle (1996)
- Gartner Group Symposium, Gold Coast (1996)
- CORBA Academy, San Francisco (1997)
- Internet Security Seminar, Sydney (1997)
- Microsoft TechEd conference, Melbourne (1997)
- Finance Industry Reform conference, Sydney (1997)
- IT Service Management Assessment training, Sydney (1997)
- Java@Work conference, Sydney (1997)
- PowerTalk training, Melbourne (1997)
- PSO Transformation for Gold, Ballarat (1998)
- Bank Tech '98, Sydney (1998)
I have published the following papers:
- Chris Tham, Rubato: A Music Input and Performance System,
Computer Science Honours 1987 Thesis, Basser Department of Computer Science, University of
Sydney.
- Chris Tham & Tim Posney, Distributed Computing and Risk
Management, SunTech Journal Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1990) pp. 46-52.
- Philip Leong & Chris Tham, UNIX Password Encryption
Considered Insecure, USENIX Winder '91 Conference, Dallas, Texas.
- Chris Tham, Performance Tuning for Relational Database
Applications, AUUG'93 Conference, Sydney.
- Chris Tham, Distributed Client/Server Architectures and
Transaction Processing on Open Systems, AUUG'94 Conference, Melbourne.
- Chris Tham, Distributed Client/Server Architectures and
Transaction Processing on Open Systems, OracleWorld 1994 Conference, Melbourne.
- Chris Tham, Distributed Client/Server Architectures: What Are The Options,
Client/Server Strategies Seminar 1995, Sydney.
- Chris Tham, Electronic Commerce and the Consumer, Finance Industry Reform
conference, Sydney (1997).
Career History
I am currently employed (since October 1995) as a Senior Consultant within the
HP Professional Services Organisation. I specialise in providing strategic
technology planning and IT architecture services within the Software, Architecture
& Methods practice.
Role
|
I focus on providing services to HP's customers in formulating strategic
business information systems strategies and addressing the development of a flexible and
open IT infrastructure or "blue print" that matches their business goals. These
services include:
- IT Strategy
- I help customers define an appropriate strategy for their IT infrastructure based on an
understanding of their business objectives.
- IT Assessment
- I help customers understand at a high level how well their current IT infrastructure
support their business objectives and IT Strategy. I make recommendations that improve the
way IT enables these objectives and strategies to be met.
- Enterprise IT Architecture
- I provide recommendations for enterprise-wide IT architectural components required by
the customer to support their IT Strategy.
- IT Architecture Review
- I help customers review their existing IT Architecture and determine their readiness to
adopt suitable emerging technologies. I verify that selected technologies meet
architectural guidelines and provide advice on the use of standards and guidelines for
interoperability.
- Transition Services
- I help customers develop a comprehensive plan to ensure a smooth transition to a new
environment.
|
Achievements
|
Some of my achievements to date at HP include:
- Acted as the chief architect of a major joint project between HP, Telstra and the
Australian Childrens Television Foundation to develop an interactive on-line
environment targetted at school children based on multimedia content creation and
collaboration.
- Acted as the Technology Strategist/Architect for Unix Servers for a major Australian
building products, contruction materials and energy corporation. In this role, I
helped define the implementation and deploynment strategies and was responsible for the
initiation of several multi-million dollar projects.
- Assisted in providing a migration strategy and project plan for upgrading the systems
infrastructure of a major division of a large Australian telecommunications corporation.
- Provided an architecture review of an imaging and workflow project (claims processing)
that uses client/server technology at a major insurance company.
- Acted as a lead architect during the initial phases of a enterprise-wide client/server
architecture for a major bank. These phases include Scoping, Readiness Assessment,
Business Alignment and IT Assessment.
- Performed system architecture reviews of several mission critical applications of a
major telecommunications company.
- Acted as a Solution Architect and Technical Team Leader for several tender responses.
- Assisted a major insurance company in extending their existing IT Strategy by developing
an enterprise-wide applications architecture.
- As a team leader for the IT Strategy/Architecture practice in FY'95, I was responsible
for formulating the practice plan, including the Hoshin and Implementation plans and
coordinating team meetings.
- I manage and run a mailing list for IT Architecture on behalf on HP consultants who
engage in architecture activities.
|
Papers
|
I presented a session on Electronic Commerce and the Consumer at
the Finance Industry Reform conference held in Sydney in 1997. |

In late 1993, NCR Australia underwent a major organisational restructure with a
name change to AT&T Global Information Solutions and my role in the new
structure was redefined to that of an Architecture Consultant within the Professional
Services Division.
Role
|
I worked with AT&T/GIS customers, internal AT&T organisations and
business units, as well as third party solution providers to guide them on technology
strategies. My role is to provide strategic advice and high level assistance, primarily in
respect of:
- Enterprise architecture and planning,
- Selection of standards and protocols to meet business objectives,
- Use of methodologies and tools in the design of overall solutions,
- Defining, describing and documenting enterprise and specialised systems, and
- Policies and procedures for procuring, implementing and deploying enterprise systems.
|
Achievements
|
During this period, some of my achievements included:
- Designed an enterprise-wide architecture for a branch automation and sales platform for
a major retail bank. Subsequently, I was invited to participate as part of a worldwide
solutions development and marketing team to extend the architecture. The objective is to
create an architecture framework for a Retail Delivery Management Solution that
will assist retail banks in effectively managing the presentation of multiple products
through multiple delivery channels together with a single view of the customer.
- Assisted a major bank in the implementation of a management information and funds
transfer pricing system. This involved an initial business analysis phase to determine
requirements and to select appropriate funds transfer pricing methodologies, followed by a
data extract phase to determine how to extract data from current operational systems into
the management reporting system.
- Assisted a major bank in performing the business analysis to determine the requirements
for implementing a system to track and measure the Key Performance Indicators of
chief managers.
- Conducted an extensive analysis of the support services that NCR was offering to a major
banking customer and formulated a unified services strategic plan that linked the
various services already offered and identified additional services that could be of value
to the customer.
- Evaluated the technical merits of several third party products and technologies for
possible inclusion in AT&T product offerings. This included a client/server
development environment and a performance analysis and benchmarking tool.
- Assisted a major building society in developing a client/server architecture and applications
development environment based on NCR TOP END as a middleware environment.
|
Papers
|
I presented several papers on client/server architectures to several
seminars and conferences:
|

I was employed in February 1992 as a UNIX and Relational Databases Technical
Consultant working in the Systems Engineering Division. I was responsible for
providing in-depth technical knowledge and support in the following technologies and
products:
- NCR System 3000 hardware platform
- NCR UNIX SVR4 MP-RAS operating system
- Relational databases (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Ingres) on
the NCR platform
- NCR TOP END
Role
|
My areas of responsibility included:
- Providing systems analysis and design consulting
- Acting as technical leader for pre-sale and post-sale situations (coordination of
technical team)
- Project management of customer installations
- Pre-sale activities (account planning, customer presentations, proposal preparation,
demonstrations and benchmarking)
- Migration planning and application porting (help identify issues and develop plan)
- Technology selection consulting (such as choosing a relational database or development
environment)
- System performance consulting and capacity analysis/planning
- Operational procedures consulting and disaster recovery planning
- Third level support for client/server technologies like NCR TOP END
|
Achievements
|
My major achievements at NCR included:
- Awarded the NSW Branch Employee of the Month twice: once for outstanding work in
supervising the resolution of a customer incident, and again for the design, project
management and delivery of a system to a customer
- Assisted in the porting of several major applications to the NCR platform
- Helped supervise, construct and execute several major performance benchmarks on behalf
of customers and vendors.
- Provided course instruction (on database design)
- Acted as the primary technical liaison to several major database and UNIX software
vendors
- Created and maintained an internal mailing list for NCR consultants on UNIX database
technologies
- Designed a special purpose transaction management and load balancing system for
regulating access to the Teradata decision support system.
- Acted as a technical team leader for various pre-sales (demonstrations) and post-sales
(implementations) projects.
- Acted as a project manager for several critical large-scale installation projects,
including for a large telecommunications company.
- Supervised the resolution of severe performance issues on two customer sites: a ladies
fashion retail chain; and an electrical product distributor. On the first site, the
customer was deeply dissatisfied and was threatening litigation if the problem is not
resolved within two weeks.
|
Papers
|
I presented a session on Performance Tuning for
Relational Database Applications in the AUUG'93 (Australian UNIX Users Group)
conference. |

I joined in February 1990 as a Treasury Analyst within Treasury Systems,
which forms part of the Domestic Treasury Division of the bank. My objective is to
assist the Division by providing the systems and the functionality that is necessary to
give the dealers a competitive edge in the financial markets, especially in the area of
derivatives.
Role
|
My role within SBV included:
- Business Analysis
- I was responsible for assisting the Bank in determining algorithms and formulae in the
area of financial modelling and risk management, including bond hedging strategies, the
construction of special purpose zero coupon curves, exotic option pricing and risk
analysis.
- Systems Analysis and Design
- This involved evaluating proposals for new systems development projects, analysing
business requirements and converting business specifications into system designs. I also
acted as a technical liaison with the Information Systems Division who was responsible for
the implementation of the systems. This involved working closely with the dealing team and
their managers in understanding the issues involved and designing a solution that met the
business requirements. We typically used the SBV Workbench (based on Excelerator)
as a CASE tool, and systems development was done using C and Oracle development tools such
as SQL*Forms, SQL*Menu and SQL*Report. Data was stored in the Oracle
RDBMS as well as within a proprietary record manager.
- Technology Architecture
- I was required to evaluate new and upcoming technologies and trends in information
system design, including new user interfaces, deal capture and information retrieval,
object-oriented design and development, and new hardware platforms.
- Systems Maintenance
- I was partly or wholly responsible for coordinating the maintenance of some production
applications. This includes designing, implementing, and supporting the applications,
which included pricing, risk management, trading, deal capture, management reporting and
arbitrage.
- Database Administration
- I was also given the responsibility of administering the Oracle RDBMS, which is
used manage the data stored by the trading systems. This involved coordinating and
managing development activity involving Oracle, providing technical support to database
designers and programmers, capacity planning, and evaluating new tools for database
connectivity and access.
|
Achievements
|
Some of my achievements included:
- Designed and implemented various pricing tools.
- Designed and implemented a new zero coupon curve for hedging options.
- Consulted on option pricing formulae for the new options trading system.
- Reorganised the Oracle physical database layout and implemented procedures for database
backup and recovery.
- Designed a disaster recovery strategy. The strategy describes procedures for migrating
users and data from the production machine to the development system in the event of a
loss of service.
- Migrated the majority of existing applications from using a proprietary flat-file record
manager for data storage to a fully relational data model on Oracle.
- Migrated existing applications from the OSx BSD to System V environment for
enhanced portability and long term supportability.
|
Papers
|
I wrote a paper on UNIX password security (entitled UNIX Password Encryption Considered Insecure) in
conjunction with Philip Leong for the USENIX Winter 1991 conference held in Dallas, Texas.
|
New Role at CBA
|
After the merger of SBV with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in
early 1991, I was briefly involved as an IT Architect the Treasury Architecture
Project in Institutional Banking, which had the charter of defining the technology and
architectural infrastructure for Institutional Banking systems. |
I was employed in March 1988 as a Systems Analyst. Initially, I worked on
enhancing the in-house synthetic option trading and management system, which was written
in a combination of C and Ingres/ABF (a 4GL).
Role
|
Subsequently, however, I became one of the lead architects
responsible for the design of a Foreign Exchange Options Trading System to be
marketed and sold to major banks and option traders. The project was codenamed
"Tesla" and was designed to take advantage of a distributed client/server
processing features such as concurrency, collaborative processing and fault tolerance.
Tesla was implemented using Sun workstations (running SunOS), the X Window System
and Sun servers (running Sybase). The system was implemented using a combination of
C and C++. I was responsible for part of the data design of Tesla, and wrote the
functional specifications and detailed design of several major components of the system,
including:
- A custom-built transaction processor that monitored all database access and auditing,
- Security access services,
- Implementation of all option and hedging instrument pricing models,
- A distributed, real-time fault-tolerant portfolio position evaluation and re-balancing
service that replicates and distributes itself across idle network nodes, and
- Graphical display and charting facilities.
|
Papers
|
The design and architecture of Tesla is documented in a paper (entitled Distributed Computing and Risk Management) that I wrote in
conjunction with Tim Posney (who was one of the architects of the TOPS system, a sister
product designed for interest rate over-the-counter options trading). The paper was
published in the SunTech Journal (Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1990) pp. 46-52). |
I was employed as a part time UNIX System Administrator and Systems
Programmer in July 1986 for the Fixed Interest Division. Initially, my job
involved administering the division's HP 9000 Series 320 system running HP/UX.
Role
|
My job responsibilities involved:
- Writing UNIX systems software in C and the Bourne/C shells,
- Installing and updating in-house and packaged software,
- Designing and implementing a backup and restore strategy design, and
- Other systems administration related tasks.
|
Achievements
|
My major systems project involved the design and implementation of a
device independent screen manipulation and forms handling library (a library is a
set of routines callable from application programs) that allowed programmers to easily
generate and manipulate data entry screens on character terminals in a consistent way. I
also participated in the design of a generic Bond pricing library that allowed various
types of bond-like financial securities to be priced.
One of my major achievements was porting the money market pricing tools and other
applications from UNIX to MS-DOS, allowing the smaller overseas branches of the company
access to a critical subset of the dealing applications that ran on the UNIX system. This
involved converting all UNIX dependent code to MS-DOS and attempting to fit a large
application within the memory constraints of personal computers. |
I was employed on a casual basis in July 1985 as a Software Engineer. Rational
Research was the research & development subsidiary of Thomas Clark & Sons
and was engaged in the development of security access and environmental control systems.
These systems are based on custom-designed 8088 motherboards connected to peripherals such
as access key readers, lift controllers and environment sensors.
Each motherboard runs a proprietary in-house developed real-time, multi-tasking
operating system (written in C and 8088 assembler) plus a control program (written in C).
Motherboards are connected to one another via a proprietary message-passing network based
on RS-422 connections. An RS-232 connection to a PC allows a user to change access control
list and modify system settings via a friendly user interface. Another RS-232 connection
allows a terminal to be hooked up for interactive diagnostic activity.
Achievements
|
During my period at Rational Research, I designed and implemented door
access and lift security control programs. The door access control program performs access
validation when a magnetic key is inserted into a key reader (based on an access control
list stored in memory). The lift security control program is an extension of this concept
controlling entry into various floors within a building based on the access level of the
key holder. I also participated in implementing some components of the proprietary
operating system for the motherboards, including:
- the diagnostic interface (which allows an RS-232 terminal connected to the motherboard
to change system parameters and monitor system status) and
- a machine language monitor (which allows interactive real-time debugging of the
operating system and control programs).
|

I was employed on a casual basis by the University of Sydney in various
capacities:
- programmer for the Department of Chemistry in 1984-85
- Computer Science Tutor for the Basser Department of Computer Science in
1987-88.
As a programmer, I was responsible for developing programs and tools for analysing
laboratory data.
As a tutor, I was responsible for supervising computer science labs and tutorial
sessions and assessing student performance in assignments and lab exercises.
Strengths and Skills
- My strong background in banking and finance and understanding of financial markets allow
me to grasp business challenges and drivers and help customers understand the impact of
technology on business strategies.
- I have specific knowledge in the area of financial mathematics, financial modelling and
risk management.
- I have a broad experience in working with many organisations in different industries,
including banking and finance, communications, manufacturing, retail and transportation. I
can adapt to different organisational styles and cultures.
- I understand and can apply different IT architecture consulting methodologies to
real-life engagements.
- I have a broad technical background spanning many different areas, including IT
architecture, business and systems analysis, application development, maintenance and
porting, IT operations and performance/capacity analysis and planning.
- I have specific skills in areas that are currently of high relevance in the IT industry,
such as object distributed computing, oriented design and software development,
transaction processing, systems software development, relational database design and
implementation.
- I have strong analytical and problem solving skills, plus a proven track record in the
ability to apply these skills in critical situations.
- I am a good communicator (in terms of being able to listen well, ability to articulate
difficult technical concepts without resorting to jargon, good presentation skills,
ability to build a rapport with customers, excellent report writing skills)
- I have an ability to consistently exceed customer expectations and deliver quality
results on time.
- I have an ability to manage people (both internal and external), schedules and
deliverables based on prior experience in managing large projects.
- I work very well within a team and contribute effectively as a team member. I have the
ability to take the initiative when necessary.
- Programming languages: C, C++, Smalltalk, RPL, FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, various
assembler (6502, Z80, PDP-11, VAX, 80X86), and many more including 4GLs
- Operating systems: CP/M, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1/95/NT, UNIX (various, including
HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris, NCR UNIX, Pyramid Osx, AIX, NetBSD, Linux), VMS, MVS, GNU
- Development environments: UNIX, Internet/WWW, MS-DOS, Win16/Win32, X Window System
- Relational databases: Oracle, Sybase, Ingres, Informix, Postgres
- Groupware/messaging: Lotus Notes, Microsoft Mail, Lotus cc:Mail, HP OpenMail,
Internet mail/news
- Networking/communications: NFS, LAN Manager, NetBEUI, TCP/IP, SNA, LAN and WAN
technologies
- UNIX shells and utilities (including make, SCCS/RCS, sed, awk and perl), *roff/TeX
- Mainframe utilities such as ISPF, SCLM, etc.,
- Wide variety of PC tools and utilities (e.g. Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project,
Lotus Smartsuite, Norton Utilities, Adobe Photoshop, etc.)