Data centre recovery
Coordinator during a critical outage of a whole data centre, where the emergency power plant and some recovery procedures failed as well. Back in stable operation before the business opened.
Curriculum vitae
Robert Piil
IT Manager · mainframe, critical operations and leadership of technical specialists
- AddressSmedevej 26, 4180 Sorø, Denmark
- Phone+45 30 36 31 91
- Emailrobert@piil.org
- LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/robertpiil/
- StatusOpen to relevant positions. Based in Sorø, Denmark. Zealand and Greater Copenhagen. Full-time.
About me
I have worked with the IT that must not go down since 1 February 2000 — 26+ years of unbroken tenure in the same employment, through outsourcing and insourcing. I started at the operator desk in a Nordic bank's control centre and have since led the technical specialists who keep operations running. My three focal points are leading technical specialists, major incident management, and large projects that move mainframe workloads. I stay calm when things burn, and I know the dependencies that appear in no diagram. I communicate well with technicians and top management alike — also under pressure.
My skills
Leading technical specialists
Around 20 years of line management for specialists — operators, supervisors, development support and system administrators, of different nationalities and at different locations, both inside and outside Denmark. Recruitment, skills building, difficult conversations, and holding on to deep specialist knowledge through one reorganisation after another.
Major incident management
Major Incident Owner for the largest Nordic incidents at Nordea, and later for my customers at IBM/Kyndryl, with responsibility for Task Force and RCA follow-up. When payments, batch or core banking systems are down, someone has to keep a cool head, keep the overview and keep the customer informed all at once. I have done it many times, also at three in the morning.
Large mainframe migrations
Programmes at the heavy end: moving mainframe workloads from one platform to another, with a requirement that banking operations must not notice. As Head of Mainframe on Linux I worked on moving COBOL programs off the mainframe. Planning, dependencies, testing, cutover and fallback — and the dependencies that appear in no diagram. I have helped move whole mainframe installations between locations and suppliers, both for new business and for a move to a new supplier.
Mainframe and financial infrastructure
z/OS and the banking operations behind it, plus HP NonStop (TANDEM), UNIX, Wintel and storage. I know the systems from the operator desk and up. I understand how applications interact in complex IT environments.
Service management and the supplier interface
Round-the-clock operations all year, ITIL processes, change management and service integration. The role between a bank as the customer, a global supplier as the employer, and an operations organisation in the middle. I translate between those who buy, those who deliver, and those on duty.
Professional experience
I was hired by Unibank on 1 February 2000. Since then the logo on the payslip has changed many times through outsourcing, insourcing, mergers and divestments. All the way through, the job has been about running critical infrastructure for large financial companies.
2021–2026
Kyndryl
Senior IT Manager
- Responsible for mainframe services to NETS, Mastercard and Velliv, and for several deliveries to other customers.
- Competency Manager for zCloud. z/OS, zNW, zTools and zAutomations.
- Kyndryl is spun off from IBM in 2021 — again a new name on the same employment.
- Moved a large global mainframe installation from the Nordics to the EU, successfully and with very short (agreed) downtime.
2019–2021
IBM
Service Integration Lead
- Service Integration Lead for NETS.
- Competency Manager for zCloud.
2019
IBM
Development Tools and Support — outsourced again
- The discipline and the staff are outsourced from Nordea to IBM.
- Same area of responsibility, new employer.
2016–2019
Nordea
Head of Development Tools and Support, Production Engineering Mainframe
- Led a Nordic team responsible for support and maintenance of the development tools on Nordea's mainframe.
- Platforms: IBM z/OS and HP NonStop (TANDEM).
- Coverage: Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
2015–2016
Nordea
Head of Mainframe on Linux
- Led the pilot programme that moved a central COBOL banking application from the mainframe to Micro Focus on Linux.
- Planning, dependency mapping, testing, cutover and fallback.
- Requirement: banking operations must not notice the move.
- We proved that the method worked, with parallel operation and no errors — but also that the business case did not hold, at the time.
2014
Nordea
Delivery Manager — operations are insourced
- Operations are insourced: back inside Nordea.
- Responsible for infrastructure and IT operations at Nordea Finans Denmark.
2011–2014
Nordic Processor / IBM
Delivery Manager
- Delivery Manager for dedicated application support to Nordea Finans Denmark.
- The interface between the bank as customer and IBM as supplier.
2008–2010
Nordic Processor / IBM
OSS Manager, Nordea Finans Denmark
- Head of Nordic Processor Premium On-Site Services — the SFS team.
- The team supported Nordea SFS / Nordea Finans.
2005–2008
Nordic Processor / IBM
Manager for Nordic supervisors and Danish operators
- Line management for Nordic supervisors in an organisation that ran around the clock in three countries.
- Line management for the Danish operators in the Danish Service Center.
- Responsible for Major Incidents, Task Force Group and Focus Group for Nordea.
- Member of the team of Major Incident Owners for the largest Nordic IT incidents.
- Member of the Nordic Service Center Management Team.
2003–2005
Nordic Processor
Computer operator — operations are outsourced
- Nordea's IT operations and the staff move to Nordic Processor (IBM 60%, Nordea 40%).
- Same systems, same employment — a new name on the payslip.
- Continued operator role on z/OS, UNIX, Wintel and storage.
2000–2003
Unibank / Nordea
Computer operator — hired 1 February 2000
- Monitoring, batch execution, error handling and escalation in round-the-clock operations.
- Incident management on core banking systems.
- IBM mainframe (z/OS), UNIX, Wintel, network and EMC storage.
- DB2, CICS, MQ, Oracle, BMS, TWS, Tivoli and CA Unicenter.
1993–2000
Vestbirk Efterskole and Efterskolen Billeshave
Teacher
- Mathematics, physics, IT, English, music and basketball.
- Vestbirk Efterskole 1993–1995, Efterskolen Billeshave 1995–2000.
Concrete results
Splitting complex mainframe systems apart when business applications were sold to another company, with connections to every bank in Denmark. Moving a complex IT environment for a multinational company from one shared mainframe environment to another. Building a third site for disaster recovery at an isolated location.
Mainframe migration
Moving a full mainframe environment with connections around the world, to cloud providers and to distributed application servers. From one country to another.
Change and remote leadership
Building a Nordic team for incident management. Retaining highly specialised staff in a changing world, with remote leadership across several geographies.
Education
1987–1993
Aalborg University
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.), Industrial Management
Technical foundation combined with management and operations economics.
Languages
- Danish
- Native
- English
- Full professional proficiency
- Norwegian
- Professional working proficiency
- Swedish
- Professional working proficiency
Platforms, tools and method
Platforms
IBM mainframe (z/OS), zCloud, HP NonStop (TANDEM), Micro Focus on Linux, UNIX, Wintel, network and EMC storage.
Systems and technologies
z/OS, zNetwork, zTools, zAutomation, DB2, CICS, MQ, Oracle, BMS, TWS, Tivoli, CA Unicenter and more.
Method and processes
ITIL, incident and major incident management, problem management, change management, service delivery, service integration, IT outsourcing and supplier management.
Leadership
Line management of technical specialists and shift teams, Nordic and European team leadership across several countries, competency management, recruitment and skills building.
- Name
- Robert Piil
- Address
- Smedevej 26, 4180 Sorø, Denmark
- Phone
- +45 30 36 31 91
- robert@piil.org