I was initally recruited into the desktop development team at Unilever as a desktop development consultant.

Over my time there I ended up heading up a technical team that was responsible for the design and architecture for project Aztec. Aztec was the standardisation of the whole Unilever desktop and server infrastructure around the world (80,000+ desktops worldwide).  Aztec is still in use in Unilever today.

The team was effectively a small software development unit within Unilever and I was responsible for working with the various technology developers to ensure that all of the many small modules fitted together to create a whole infrastructure solution. I also wrote various modules myself using Perl and Wise.

At times I had to be the interface between Unilever and various external companies such as Microsoft / Dell / Compaq / IBM to ensure that different hardware and software configurations would work within Aztec. During this time I worked closely with the Microsoft Internet Explorer team and identified various bugs and configuration errors within the software that were consequently corrected with hotfixes issued by Microsoft.

Working in a range of International locations including North & South America, Asia and Europe I found myself working within different cultures and also learnt to understand the different business demands placed on the IT solution we had implemented.

The project had the following benefits for Unilever:

• 300 IT administrative centers reduced to 5, operated by a single organization.
• Savings of up to $64 million every year in IT equipment costs
• A common employee desktop and set of technology processes worldwide
• A $20 million reduction in networking costs by routing data through secured Internet "tunnels"