May 1, 2020 | Larry Goldman | Senior Director, Product Marketing
One of the great benefits of third-party software support is that each customer is assigned one or more named support engineers. Unlike the randomly appointed junior engineers you receive when entering a ticket with Oracle or SAP, this engineer gets to know you over time and becomes familiar with your technical stack. This is why Spinnaker Support engineers are often described as a natural extension of the in-house customer IT team.
That’s why we’re regularly asked in RFPs and during informational meetings with prospects about the qualifications of our engineers, analysts, and developers. We hire staff carefully in all of our global offices based on criteria that includes technical experience, critical thinking skills, and an aptitude for customer service.
We are justifiably proud of the skills and achievements of our front-line support team, and over the ensuing weeks, this blog will feature an employee spotlight series to introduce a few of them to you.
Darren Evans, Senior Technical Support Analyst, JD Edwards
Hi Darren. Tell us about your role at Spinnaker Support.
I provide all aspects of technical support in relation to JD Edwards (JDE) software to all our clients. This includes Technical CNC, Database, and LogicMonitor support.
What is your background?
When I started my career, I worked as an engineer and then a technical support analyst for IBM products. In early 2001, I began as a Junior OneWorld CNC Technical Administrator and worked my way up to CNC Administrator through several companies over the next decade. Prior to joining Spinnaker Support in late 2017, I was a Manager, CNC at Catalent Pharma Solutions.
When and why did you first get involved with JD Edwards?
In the late 90’s, I was working in Cardiff for Target Group, an IBM financial software house, and had been passed over for promotion a few times. Several of my friends had moved to London to pursue a career in JD Edwards software, and when an opportunity arose for me to go, I took it.
Do you have a JDE specialty?
I have a degree and background in Civil Engineering, so I am quite meticulous in troubleshooting, design, and analytics. Especially when considering “worst-case” scenarios and designing against them. This transfers well into JD Edwards and Database support.
What do you most like about working with Spinnaker customers?
I love that no two days are the same. Every day is a new project or challenge (although a manager once told me there are no such things as challenges, just “solution opportunities”). As a former customer myself (we hired Spinnaker Support for our JD Edwards system at Catalent), I know from both sides that we have the most experienced team I have ever worked with.
Do you have a recent example of going “above and beyond” to help a customer?
We have been rolling out a new cloud-based monitoring solution called LogicMonitor to several clients. I have been the lead engineer on this and have had to train from scratch to design and configure the solution to meet each clients’ requirements. This has taken months of training and two exams but has already provided valuable alerting and information to clients to improve their systems performance and maintenance.
What is one piece of support advice you would give to a JD Edwards user?
Schedule time to perform regular maintenance (or ask Spinnaker to do it). Purges, packages, security, archiving, database, reboots: all help to improve overall system stability and performance.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I like to go on walks and love camping and music festivals. Sadly, COVID-19 has put a stop to most outdoor activities for now, so I am pursuing my indoor hobbies of watching rugby, playing Xbox, building large scale Lego® kits, brewing craft beer, and raising my 18-month old son.
