IT Life: Calum Malcolm, Timico CTO
Timico CTO Calum Malcolm talks about his career in IT and why he never wanted to do anything else
What is your role and who do you work for?
Chief Technology Officer for Timico Group, a global Managed Service Cloud Provider delivering full end-to-end solutions including; managed IT services, networks and connectivity, unified communications, cloud and hosting, and mobile services to multi-site organisations.
How long have you been in IT?
30 years
What is your most interesting project to date?
Too many to mention but highlights definitely include being at the forefront of the deployment of Hosted Exchange and Voice (SaaS) way back in 2001.
I was CTO of a Start-up Application Service Provider (ASP) from Siemens Communications, which was the thing back in early 2000. We were at the forefront of exploiting the up and coming opportunities provided by the Wholesale of BT Broadband.
Through this we deployed one of the first instances of a Hosted Microsoft Exchange platform along with Blackberry mobile and Sharepoint. We also utilised the network to provide what was at the time low cost virtual WANs. It was the start of an interesting and challenging journey in what has become the SaaS space as we know it today.
What is your biggest challenge at the moment?
The biggest challenge today is picking the right network strategy to keep moving forward – The rate of change is incredible and it’s easy to make the wrong call.
The pace of change is what makes the job really interesting. The secret for me is to know the market place and invest at the right time. Ultimately as a CTO you need to have an 18-month view of what’s coming, and to ensure your key engineering staff have an input to strategy as they often know much more than you!
What technology were you working with ten years ago?
Hosting services predominantly Microsoft and HP along with Cisco to provide the supporting network.
What is your favourite technology of all time?
On a personal level, Apple – the family wouldn’t be without it
How will the Internet of Things affect your organisation?
Massively, especially with our pedigree in Mobility, Networking and Service provision. It will open the door to many new services.
As technology moves forward Timico is ideally placed to take advantage of many new IoT solutions. We have expertise in Networks, voice, Mobile and managed IT services. This ideally places us able to really help customers liberate their technology.
While automated fridges aren’t quite our thing it does enable us to build and manage diverse and innovative services for clients.
The term IoT is in its infancy but for me refers to a full interconnected service enabling users easy access and providing management and control. Whether this is for a Taxi booking service through to complex logistics or security tracking, or time management reporting for professionals on the move, we can provide underpinning services to enable this. It’s an area that challenges and excites our teams as its new and different and growing at an amazing rate.
Quiz: What do you know about China and IT?
