Roles and responsibilities

James is Oakton’s Chief Architect and one of the industry’s leading authorities on enterprise architecture, enterprise technology architecture, business and IT strategy and change management. Bringing over 23 years of IT industry experience, deep business knowledge and a successful track record of strategic accomplishment in a range of disciplines and industry sectors, James is a trusted advisor, workshop facilitator and communicator.

His expertise and practical enterprise-wide strategies for interoperability, innovation and execution are actively sought by clients at the highest levels of both business and IT management, and indeed, James has earned a well deserved reputation for successfully challenging and questioning the expected thinking of many IT directions and investment decisions — something increasingly important in this ever more interconnected, interdependent and complex operating environment.

What distinguishes James is his experience and knowledge spans diverse disciplines and industry sectors: the advice he provides clients on IT investments and management processes is not only applicable to the design and development of complex business and technology architectures but extends to how enterprise architecture relates to other disciplines, frameworks and maturity assessments.

James is also responsible for Oakton’s technical leadership, where he strategically directs the company’s service development in line with relevant market trends, exploring new possibilities and capabilities. His current areas of focus include the challenges and opportunities facing CIOs and business management teams in the emerging areas of cloud computing and mobility solutions.

Previous experience

Prior to joining Oakton 12 years ago, the first half of James’ career was spent as a senior consultant with Accenture before completing major consulting contracts with Coles Myer, Australia Post and the UK government. He then served as senior software development and customer support manager for the largest software company in the Australian advertising industry, BCC Ad Systems, before joining Oakton in 1997. After managing Oakton's consulting business in NSW for three years, James joined the Oakton Executive Management team in 2007 and was appointed Oakton's Chief Architect in 2010.

Education

Bachelor of Applied Science (Computing) – Monash University (1984-1986)

MBA – Melbourne Business School (1995-1999)