Shantanu N. Zagade
Shantanu N. Zagade
About the Author
Steven Armstrong is a DevOps solution architect, a process automation specialist, and an honors graduate in Computer and Electronic Systems (BEng) from Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
He has a proven track record of streamlining company's development architecture and processes so that they can deliver software at pace. Specializing in agile, continuous integration, infrastructure as code, networking as code, Continuous Delivery, and deployment, he has worked for 10 years for leading consulting, financial services, benefits and gambling companies in the IT sector to date.
After graduating, Steven started his career at Accenture Technology solutions as part of the Development Control Services graduate scheme, where he worked for 4 years, then as a configuration management architect helping Accenture's clients automate their build and deployment processes for Siebel, SAP, WebSphere, Weblogic, and Oracle B2B applications.
During his time at Accenture, he worked within the development control services group working for clients, such as the Norwegian Government, EDF Energy, Bord Gais, and SABMiller. The EDF Energy implementation led by Steven won awards for best project industrialization and best use of Accenture shared services.
After leaving Accenture, Steven moved on to the financial services company, Cofunds, where he spent 2 years creating continuous integration and Continuous Delivery processes for .Net applications and Microsoft SQL databases to help deploy the financial services platform.
After leaving Cofunds, Steven moved on to Thomsons Online Benefits, where he helped create a new DevOps function for the company. Steven also played an integral part in architecting a new private cloud solution to support Thomsons Online Benefits production applications and set up a Continuous Delivery process that allowed the Darwin benefits software to be deployed to the new private cloud platform within minutes.
Steven currently works as the technical lead for Paddy Power Betfair's i2 project, where he has led a team to create a new greenfield private cloud platform for Paddy Power Betfair. The implementation is based on OpenStack and Nuage VSP for software-defined networking, and the platform was set up to support Continuous Delivery of all Paddy Power Betfair applications. The i2 project implementation was a finalist for the OpenStack Super User Award and won a RedHat Innovation Award for Modernization.
Steven is an avid speaker at public events and has spoken at technology events across the world, such as DevSecCon London, OpenStack Meetup in Cluj, the OpenStack Summit in Austin, HP Discover London, and most recently gave a keynote at OpenStack Days Bristol.
Acknowledgments
I would most importantly like to thank my girlfriend Georgina Mason. I know I haven't been able to leave the house much at weekends for 3 months as I have been writing this book, so I know it couldn't have been much fun. But thank you for your patience and support, as well as all the tea and coffee you made for me to keep me awake during the late nights. Thank you for being an awesome girlfriend.
I would like to thank my parents, June and Martin, for always being there and keeping me on track when I was younger. I would probably have never got through university never mind written a book if it wasn't for your constant encouragement, so hopefully, you both know how much I appreciate everything you have done for me over the years.
I would like to thank Paddy Power Betfair for allowing me the opportunity to write this book and our CTO Paul Cutter to allow our team to create the i2 project solution and talk to the technology community about what we have achieved.
I would also like to thank Richard Haigh, my manager, for encouraging me to take on the book and all his support in my career since we started working together at Thomsons Online Benefits.
I would like to thank my team, the delivery enablement team at Paddy Power Betfair, for continually pushing the boundaries of what is possible with our solutions. You are the people who made the company a great innovative place to work.
I would like to thank all the great people I worked with throughout my career at Paddy Power Betfair, Thomsons Online Benefits, Cofunds, and Accenture, as without the opportunities I was given, I wouldn't have been able to pull in information from all those experiences to write this book.
I would also like to thank Nuage networks for permitting me to write about their software-defined networking solution in this book.
About the Reviewer
Daniel Jonathan Valik is an industry expert in cloud services, cloud native technologies, IOT, DevOps, infrastructure automation, containerization, virtualization, microservices, unified communications, collaborations technologies, Hosted PBX, telecommunications, WebRTC, unified messaging, Communications Enabled Business Process (CEBP) design, and Contact Center Technologies.
He has worked in several disciplines such as product management, product marketing, program management, evangelist, and strategic adviser for almost two decades in the industry.
He has lived and worked in Europe, South East Asia, and now in the US. Daniel is also an author of several books about cloud services, universal communications and collaborations technologies, which includes Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Avaya, and others.
He holds dual masters degrees: Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in general business. He also has a number of technical certifications, including Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). For more information about Daniel, refer to his blogs, videos, and profile on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielvalik).