Fran Clark is the President of Arpeggio Technology, a consulting company focused on Service Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Architectures. He has considerable experience with XML Message design, Web services implementation and Portal Application design, development and deployment.
Fran has 22 years experience in enterprise application and architecture design and development. He has worked on major projects with: John Hancock, Genesys consulting, University of Vermont, Unum, Pacific Data Group, Intel, Boston Gas, and Epsilon Data Management. His clients have included some of the world’s largest technology, telecommunications and financial services companies.
Fran was a senior executive with two startup software companies: Wheelhouse Corporation and Swingtide, Inc. In each of these positions, he was responsible for the articulation of a strategic architectural vision and the timely implementation of software products that manifested that vision.
SOA Consultant
Freddie Mac: Financial Services Industry
Provided guidance on the application of SOA design principles and technology in producing a next-generation data management architecture.
Iron Mountain: Electronic Records Industry
Developed set of customized SOA design principles; helped implement first SOA application for transferring large volumes of digital assets.
AIG: Financial Services Industry
Developed service oriented architectural plan for one of world’s largest insurers to facilitate orchestration of disparate CRM touchpoint channels.
SOA and Portal Architecture Consultant
Washington State Department of Labor & Industries: Insurance Industry, Government
Provided leadership and hands-on guidance in the evaluation of portal architectures and technologies to fit into an SOA framework.
Portal Architecture Consultant
Major League Baseball: Sports and Entertainment Industry
Designed and implemented portal applications and databases to support operational integration and efficiency improvements for one of world’s premier professional sports leagues.
VP, Technology
Swingtide
Head of engineering for Swingtide Monitor product, monitoring tool for managing application assets and tracking business activity in XML Web Service networks.
Senior Director, Service Technology
Wheelhouse Corporation
Directed the design, development and implementation of Wheelhouse’s first two software products. Principal architect for content management database (ORACLE) and system (Vignette) for large multimedia outdoor enthusiast website. Co-authored Customer Profile Exchange (CPExchange) specification in October 2000. CPExchange (www.cpexchange.org) is the first XML standard to provide comprehensive data model to facilitate privacy-enabled exchange of customer profile information.
Senior Technology Director
Epsilon Data Corporation
Led design, development and deployment of very large marketing data warehouses. Directed construction of primary data warehouse used for analysis of “business to business” marketing data by one of world’s largest computer companies. Architected and directed construction of principal marketing data warehouses for one of world’s largest communications companies.
Manager of Client Server Application Development
Boston Gas Company
Led development, deployment, integration, and support of all client server applications at Boston Gas.
Client Server Project Manager
Intel Corporation
Led diverse international team in on time delivery of a sophisticated data warehouse and decision support system. Received Intel’s highest award (Intel Achievement Award) for leading client server portion of one of most successful projects in company history. anGLe project was completed in under 18 months, replacing several malfunctioning mainframe legacy general ledger systems with single integrated system for entire Intel enterprise.
Chronological Summary
March 2004 – Present: President, Arpeggio Technology, LLC.
Founder and Principal Consultant for architectural consulting practice focused on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA); Portal application design and development; Semantic Frameworks; Enterprise Architecture and governance; Database and XML schema design. Key projects include:
· Designed and implemented portal applications (IBM Websphere) and databases (DB2) to improve operational integration and efficiency for one of world’s premier professional sports leagues.
· Developed service oriented architectural plan for one of world’s largest insurers to facilitate orchestration of disparate CRM touchpoint channels.
· Created Enterprise SOA roadmap for Fortune 100 financial services organization. Roadmap articulated of vision and actionable plans for enterprise and each SBU. It included recommendations on how to achieve and elevate governance in a federated organization.
March 2002 – March 2004: VP, Technology, Swingtide
Head of engineering for Swingtide Monitor product, a Monitoring tool for managing application assets and tracking business activity in web service networks.
· Created world class software product in under 8 months (PRD to 1.0).
· Created and managed $2MM development budget.
Principal creator/inventor of Swingtide Monitor product architecture, loosely coupled Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) built to be scalable and extensible.
· Employed J2EE and web service standards (Servlet, SOAP, WSDL).
· Unique database (MS SQL Server) design for simultaneous transactional and decision support activity.
· RDF ontology-based semantic modeling framework for representing XML service networks.
· Scalable XML parsing Activity Manager for extracting and correlating business data from XML message payloads.
· Non-intrusive “sniffing” agents for collecting message payloads across heterogeneous (Java/.NET, SOAP/non-SOAP) XML service network.
Lead developer for all data related activities
· Designed XML documents and messages.
· Designed and implemented relational database.
· Lead architect for all aspects of product development from inception through implementation.
October 2001 to March 2002: Independent Consultant
Created business to provide technical architecture consulting specializing in:
· XML schema and relational database design.
· Web service and service-oriented application design.
· CRM database and application implementation.
February 2000 – August 2001: Senior Director, Service Technology, Wheelhouse Corp.
Co-authored vision and architecture for Web Turbine distributed computing platform.
· Revolutionary new application development platform targeted to reduce CRM application implementation and management costs by 50%.
· Employed J2EE standards (Servlets, JSP, JavaBeans, JNDI, EJB), LDAP, XML and Jini distributed agent technology.
· Directed design, development and implementation of Wheelhouse’s first two software products: Service Workflow Asset Navigator (SWAN) and DataForge.
· Targeted to reduce implementation times for CRM applications from E.piphany, Oracle, Microstrategy, Vignette, and Siebel by 50% by codifying best practices for CRM application integration and providing robust facilities for management of marketing metadata.
Principal architect for content management database (ORACLE) and system (Vignette) for large multimedia outdoor enthusiast website.
· Reduced customer attrition by 12% in the six month period following implementation of personalization and enhanced customer database.
- Increased per user page views by 30% resulting in significant increases in ad revenue.
Co-authored Customer Profile Exchange (CPExchange) specification in October 2000.
· CPExchange (www.cpexchange.org) is first XML standard to provide comprehensive data model to facilitate privacy-enabled exchange of customer profile information.
Created technical vision for next wave of Wheelhouse products and services:
- Defined CRM web services application to orchestrate customer interactions across multiple disparate touchpoint systems.
June 1997 – January 2000: Senior Technology Director, Epsilon Data Corp.
Led team of up to 40 technologists in design, development, and deployment of very large (up to 2 TB) marketing data warehouses.
· Directed construction of primary data warehouse used for analysis of “business to business” marketing data by one of world’s largest computer companies. Integrated view of customer base resulted in improved market targeting and multi-million dollar ROI. Effort provided Epsilon with over $10MM revenue and 60% gross margin.
· Architected and directed construction of principal marketing data warehouses for one of world’s largest communications companies. Initial system employed by customer after only 4 months. Incremental projects over following 20 months resulted in dramatic functionality and performance improvements. High levels of client satisfaction were attained while achieving annual revenue ($6MM) and gross margin (55%) targets.
· Led engineering group responsible for bringing Epsilon’s CRM services to the Internet.
· Key contributor to the design, architecture and deployment of Epsilon’s e-one suite of Internet marketing tools. e-one enables marketers to use proven database marketing concepts to target individualized messages to customers on the Internet.
September 1996 – June 1997: Manager of Client Server Application Development, Boston Gas Co.
Led development, deployment, integration, and support of all client server applications at Boston Gas. Directly responsible for the work of 4 project teams, 10 Boston Gas IS professionals, and up to 15 external consultants.
Systems included: Facilities Management System (ArcInfo/GIS, ORACLE); ORACLE Financials; Field Work Management System (ORACLE, C, PSDI’s MAXIMO); and, Computer Aided Dispatch (MDSI’s UCAD/R5, ORACLE).
· Led IS-wide organizational improvement effort that resulted in 35% reduction in time and cost related to IS process execution. Implemented processes that dramatically improved ability of IS to deliver value-added products and services to enterprise.
Directed deployment of first “intranet” application and articulation of strategy and architecture for web-centric development.
July 1994 – March 1996: Manager, Client Server Project, Intel Corp.
Led diverse international team of 15 systems professionals (Intel employees and external consultants) in on time delivery of a sophisticated data warehouse and decision support system. This system now functions as primary General Ledger information delivery vehicle for over 900 GL users across Intel enterprise.
· Led team to successful development of sophisticated and reliable client server architecture. Architecture included as many as 12 “servers” geographically dispersed throughout world. Maintained high reliability and data integrity.
· Received Intel’s highest award (Intel Achievement Award) for leading client server portion of one of most successful projects in company history. anGLe project was completed in under 18 months, replacing several malfunctioning mainframe legacy general ledger systems with single integrated system for entire Intel enterprise. Successfully met all interim (Europe, Israel, Asia, US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Ireland) and final implementation dates while exceeding user expectations for functionality, quality and reliability.
November 1993 – June 1994: Information Systems Consultant, Pacific Data Group
Designed data architecture to reconcile object oriented system design with relational database technology.
November 1990 – June 1993: Systems Consultant, UNUM Corporation
Directed technical architecture team for UNUM’s groundbreaking claims processing system (LEADER) based on client server model. Reduced claim processing time by 35% while establishing architecture that would serve as foundation for all client server development at UNUM.
· Project leader directing staff of 8 business and systems professionals in effort to re-
engineer broker commissions process/system.
Senior member of Information Systems Consulting Services (ISCS). Group of 20 internal consultants charged with enhancing system development efforts.
Chaired UNUM’s DB2 Project Leaders Group. Created roadmap for DB2 deployments that resulted in significant improvement in project success rates.
September 1989 – September 1990: Technical Consultant, GENESYS Consulting Services
· Designed and implemented CICS on-line system that significantly improved cost tracking and corrective action delivery related to product complaints in large manufacturing environment. Conducted user training sessions. Employed CASE tool and structured methodology for all phases of system design. Designed production IMS databases and SQL/DS relational tables used for MIS reporting.
June 1986 – June 1989: Analyst Programmer II, University of Vermont
Project leader for two application areas, Human Resources and Student Information. Designed relational database to replace existing HR hierarchical database. Designed and implemented system to improve annual budget building process.
November 1983 to June 1986: Programmer Analyst, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance
Led an interdisciplinary team of programmers, users and analysts that successfully developed a complex subsystem to track all coverage changes and the billed premium associated with those changes.
Education
Bachelor of Science, Magna Cum Laude, Boston College, Boston, MA
Professional Training in:
XML Schema design
XML Vertical Industry Standards (ACORD, MISMO)
J2EE platform
Web Services
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Development
Object Oriented Analysis & Design
Database Design
Project Management
FAST Facilitation
Rapid Application Development
System Development Methodologies
CRM Architecture
Database Marketing
Presentations
“Applying Data Modeling Disciplines and Techniques to the New World of Web Services, XML and Semantics,” DAMA International, Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, CA, May 2004
Metatopia 2004: A Symposium On Metadata and Data Management, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, DC, November 2004
“Building Better Enterprise Message Models with Semantics” (co-presenter), Semantic Technology Conference, San Francisco, March 2005
“Building Better Enterprise Message Models with Semantics” (co-presenter), Semantic Technology Conference, San Jose, CA, March 2006