Story share IBM 一同事職業發展履歷

1. Your job scope?

--- My Job role is P4 client architect. The responsibility of this role is listed as below:
1). Support sales team to win new deals on P4 by clarifying clients' requirements, designing competitive solutions for clients, deliverying PoC for clients if required, proving IBM's private cloud building capability through technical workshops or presentations.
2). Deploy P4 to clients who have signed contracts with IBM.
3). Feedback to development team on prioritized marketing needs on private cloud. Provide valuable feedback to P4 development team on the key features that missed in P4 offering but which is very popular in the market and help development team review the revised design.

--- 我目前擔任的是P4雲平臺客戶架構師，個人責任包括:
1)，輔助銷售團隊明確客戶需求，基於P4雲平臺和IBM相關產品爲客戶設計有競爭力的總體雲解決方案； 實施POC，爲客戶講解IBM私有云方案以及負責相關技術研討。
2)，爲簽約客戶設計並部署P4雲平臺。
3)，基於市場動態和客戶需求的優先級，爲P4開發團隊提供產品開發建議，包括新功能點和已有功能須要加強的地方，並協助開發同事審查功能設計方案。
 
 
2. What's project you're leading/supporting? Were there any business challenges for you to finish it? And how do you make it?

---  Currently I am working on the Foton cloud deployment project as leading architect. I worked as leading technical architect from the project engagement phase, solution design phase through the current deploying phase.

The major challenges for this project are:
1).At the early stage, there were many strong competitors like H3C, Huawei, HPE, the private cloud requested by Foton would be used for their internet of vehicle. So the business impact was critical for the winning of this contract. The client's technical discussions with all the competitors had been kept for around 1 year but  still hadn't not decided before I joined the team with our P4 offering.

2).Foton has multiple organizations who wish to use the cloud platform, but each organization has different requirements for the cloud and some of their requirements are conflict. The worst situation is that they do not have a high level executive to manage this conflict from the client side.

3). The schedule of the design and deployment for this client was extremely tight. They asked us to complete all the works including requirement clarification, hardware bidding, purchasing, cloud platform design, deployment and tests in 3 months. I never saw such tight schedule. But the client needs the system for their production use and can not miss the schedule.

During the engagement phase, I helped IBM team influence Foton clients to choose IBM solution. We carefully investigated client's requirements, their deployment situation, and compared our solution with the competitors' and addressed our strengths to focus on clients' key pain points by integrating P4 together with multiple IBM products. We tested clients' feedback, recorded all their concerns and addressed them pro-actively by providing specific workshops or presentations.

To resolve the conflict requirements from client's different teams, we worked closely with them, listen to their requirements, provide recommendation from technical profession perspective and try my best to avoid any further conflicts. And make them to be awared that I am helping them achieve the common objectives of the project but not arguing with them.
 
Regarding the tight schedule, the entire IBM team had been working very hard to make this happen. The management team also helped find experts and the development and testing team resolved tough technical problems in very short time and provided different documents within a limited amount of time. To achieve this same goal, it was only a team work that can make it happen. Even it is still in the middle of the deployment work for this client, but everything goes well so far and  I have confidence on this team to make another impossible happen.  

In this case, IBM solution's "easy to use" by providing a self service portal, strong process customization capability, competitive bare-metal management capability, software pattern provisioning capability and comprehensive IT monitoring capabilities made the customer finally made their choice.  And IBMer's profession on design and deployment also impressed our clients. The client now can be able to meet their production schedule by deploying their private cloud and IBM wined the contract of this key client as well as the trust from the client.

--- 目前我在福田汽車私有云項目裏擔任首席架構師，我是從這個項目售前階段就參與進來的，經歷了項目簽約，總體設計，硬件採購，一直到目前的實施階段。
這個過程當中咱們項目組遇到了不少挑戰，主要有：
1)，在項目售前階段，咱們遇到了很多強大的競爭對手，包括華爲，H3C，惠普等。因爲福田汽車雲平臺是用來支撐其核心的車聯網系統的關鍵基礎平臺，因此公司上下都很是重視, 以致於在IBM P4雲平臺和福田客戶討論以前，客戶和相關競爭對手的技術討論持續了近1年的時間，客戶還沒法決定究竟採用哪家的產品和方案。
 
2)，福田汽車有多個部門都會使用這個雲平臺，每一個部門都有本身比較獨特的需求，並且其中有些需求是相互衝突的，更糟的是有些時候客戶沒有一個統一的高層去化解這些衝突的需求，須要咱們來幫助他們梳理。
 
3)，因爲客戶須要用到雲平臺的系統上線時間已經肯定，因此雲平臺從設計到實施時間很是緊張只有3個月，須要作完從需求分析，硬件(服務器，存儲，網絡)選型、招標、採購，雲平臺設計、部署和測試。我以前歷來沒有遇到過期間這麼緊張的項目，可是由於客戶車聯網和全球CRM系統的上線時間不能推遲，因此咱們整個IBM團隊的責任和壓力是很是大的。

在售前階段，我幫助IBM團隊一塊兒仔細分析客戶需求，對比咱們和競爭對手的不一樣產品，從客戶的真實痛點出發，結合P4雲平臺和IBM的不一樣產品，爲客戶作方案講解和技術討論，針對客戶的反饋不斷修改咱們的方案使其更符合客戶的需求。
 
針對客戶部門之間有衝突的需求，咱們積極的和客戶不一樣的部門進行溝通，認真聆聽他們的想法，從專業的技術角度爲他們提供建議，盡最大的力量化解不一致的需求。讓客戶感覺到咱們是在幫助他們達成一致的目標，從而使項目順利進行。
 
關於項目時間週期很緊這個難點，整個IBM團隊爲了達到客戶的指望，都很是努力的工做。管理團隊及時幫助咱們協調相關專家支持，開發測試團隊每次都在很短的時間解決咱們遇到棘手的技術問題而且按時提供客戶須要的各類文檔。整個項目進行過程當中，IBM團隊充分展現了非凡的團隊協做能力，從而使項目到目前爲止十分順利，我也很是有信心即便將來還會遇到什麼問題，咱們團隊都有能力解決它。
 
最終，IBM雲平臺解決方案所提供的易於使用的門戶，強大的流程定義能力，有競爭力的物理機管理功能，還有軟件部署和全面的IT監控運維能力，促使客戶選擇了IBM。然後咱們爲其提供專業的設計和實施也給客戶留下了深入的印象，客戶也很是信賴咱們有能力幫助他們實現其應用按時部署到雲平臺這個艱鉅的任務。

3. What kind of believe drive you or your team to make it success?  What you've learned from this project?

--- First of all, I believe our solution is very valuable for our clients: it saves their cost, makes better use of their resources and makes their daily work much easier.
Secondly, I also believe whenever I encounter a challenge from the client, I can always rely on my management team and the development team to support me on my back.
Thirdly, I have confidence in IBM that I can always get an expert's support on any technical challenge I encountered. And I can learn from them to continuously improve and develop my skills.

--- For what I have learned:

Although the project is still moving forward, I have learned a lot, e.g. how to continuously improve our product to make it attractive to our customer, how to support our sales team to manage clients' endless requirements, how to collaborate multiple teams including sales team, deliver team, clients, business partners to achieve the goal of completing the projects and bringing value to the clients.

--- 首先，我堅信咱們的雲解決方案是可以給客戶帶來真正價值的，是能夠幫助客戶減小開銷，更好的利用他們的物理資源，而且可以使客戶天天工做得更輕鬆。
其次，我深信我在客戶這裏不論遇到什麼挑戰和問題，我均可以依賴個人經理、還有開發測試團隊的隊友，他們會盡最大可能地給我提供幫助。
第三，我對IBM的技術實力很是有信心，不論遇到什麼的問題，我均可以從相關的技術專家那裏獲得幫助，而且不斷提升我自身的能力。
 
--- 雖然項目目前還在緊張的實施過程當中，我已經從中收穫了不少東西，好比如何結合客戶的需求不斷的提高咱們本身的產品從而使其對客戶更具吸引力；如何幫助銷售團隊去控制客戶無限的需求；如何在客戶，銷售，業務夥伴和實施團隊之間協調使你們達成一致的目標，充分合做。