Profile IT: Oxfam Australia technical infrastructure manager, Grant Holton-Picard

IT departments should be facilitators, not blockers of technology, says Holton-Picard

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When Grant Holton-Picard isn’t managing infrastructure at Oxfam Australia he likes to unwind with do it yourself (DIY) carpentry.

He spoke to Computerworld Australia about the not-for-profit’s data centre decommission program and the challenges of providing IT to remote locations.

What does your role as technical infrastructure manager involve?

I’m responsible for infrastructure and services including service desk function which is supporting Oxfam Australia and also our country programs. I report into our CIO, David Horner.

What are some of the technology projects you have been working on?

We’ve started the decommissioning of one data centre. That’s because we want to stop owning our own infrastructure and move applications to a cloud hosting arrangement over the next four years.

We’re doing an Exchange upgrade at the moment from 2003 to 2010. That involves putting in a primary Exchange server at our head office in Carlton, Melbourne and a secondary server in the cloud hosting environment. That will help us from an availability point of view.

We’re also looking at installing a Cisco Meraki wireless access point solution because it has a cloud controller which allows us to manage all of our access points globally.

What are some of the challenges you face in the role?

Being a not-for-profit organisation means we work with very tight budgets. We need to ensure that most of our money is delivered on the ground to beneficiaries that Oxfam is there to service.

In Australia, we have reliable power and Internet but a lot of the countries that we have offices in only have limited bandwidth and generators. Trying to deliver good IT services into those remote locations is challenging.

What are the issues facing IT managers today?

People are no longer willing to accept what [technology] IT departments push on them so IT can’t be a blocker, but a facilitator. They need to do this in a way that doesn’t compromise the security of the organisation.