Preferisco - About

Nigel Thomas

With more than 40 years experience in the computer industry, Nigel Thomas has been involved in all stages of application and product development, from inception, through analysis and design to product launch and post sales support.

SQLstream

Since 2008 with interruptions, and since 2014 continuously, Nigel has been working with SQLstream (now a part of Guavus, a Thales company). SQLstream s-Server is the original and best SQL-based event stream processing implementation, known for its efficiency and performance.

Nigel was first brought in to help introduce SQLstream to the European market. Since then he has worked in pre- and post-sales support, providing training, mentoring and direct support to Guavus and external project teams, and of course working directly with the engineering team on planning, development, testing and performance, as well as writing and reviewing internal and public documentation.

Currently Nigel works as a Principal Technologist / Field CTO, specialising in SQLstream and its potential applications - whether embedded within Guavus's MNO applications, across the rest of Thales, and outside Thales.

SQLstream was a founder member of the INCITS Expert Group that is working on proposing streaming extensions to the SQL standard. Nigel has been chair of the expert group since early 2021.

Preferisco Ltd

Prior to SQLstream, Nigel traded as a freelance designer / developer / consultant from 2003 until 2014. Assignments included:

Investigating the use of a graph database to explore the social graphs hidden in a film download community
Developing and supporting cloud-based Resource Management / Programme Management applications. Dealing with clients for these bespoke applications and defining, agreeing and delivering enhancements and fixes as part of a distributed development team.
Taking a solution architect role working on an Oracle Applications modernisation and tuning project, helping the DWP and its suppliers to solve performance and reliability problems in one of its core financial systems; this ranged from specifying and coordinating work actually done by the main contractors to hands-on development including fixes to Informatica integration components and parallelisation/tuning of an Oracle Payroll process
Evaluating and tuning an in-house Oracle application written in PL/SQL
Defining the data model and data migration strategy for a modernisation project for the UK's most critical payments system
Defining a 30 month data migration strategy for a regulated telco's wholesale and global services operational systems
Defining and implementing an automated test-and-release process for a rather elderly, in-house developed and frequently modified Oracle Forms based application
Leading the end to end performance testing and tuning of a J2EE/OC4J/Oracle RAC application to meet contractual acceptance requirements prior to national rollout for a UK government department
Design and development of a rule-driven, XML based legal document production subsystem for HMCS magistrates courts
Updating competitive analysis of the ETL/EAI market for Informatica, one of the leading vendors in the field
Developing the UK launch product marketing and PR programme for Catchfire Systems.

SpiritSoft

Prior to freelancing, Nigel spent two years as Director of Product Management for SpiritSoft (later bought by SeeBeyond, then Sun, then Oracle), working with the Sales and Marketing departments to develop a market position, evangelise SpiritSoft products, and differentiate them within the Application Integration Market; and with R&D – and customers - in identifying the broad direction and priorities for future product development. Nigel was the main technical and marketing spokesperson for SpiritSoft in US and EMEA with analysts, journalists; writing articles, presentations and webcasts in support of these aims; and was also involved in creating and developing partnership opportunities.

Constellar

Nigel spent six years at EAI pioneer Constellar – which was later bought by DataMirror and is now a part of IBM – in senior development, account management and product marketing roles. During the acquisition period he helped position and differentiate Constellar and DataMirror products in the EAI / eBusiness Integration space, so developing a viable strategy for product integration.

Oracle UK

During the late 1980s and early 1990s Nigel enjoyed nearly nine years learning his trade in a variety of positions at Oracle UK Ltd. Initially leading the analysis, design and build of the Oracle Accounting v3 product, Nigel took on the entire support and onward development of the applications, running a response desk, a small development team, and a number of specialist consultants, as well as being the technical focus of the user group for around 150 customer organisations.

Nigel’s latter years at Oracle were spent as a roving business and technical consultant with special emphasis on technical audit and resolving intractable application performance problems for worldwide customers. He also spent some time as part of the Oracle CASE (Designer / Generator) development team.

Early Career

Nigel's early career experiences are documented at LinkedIn.

Education

Nigel graduated with a BSc with honours in Computer Science with Mathematics from Bristol University in 1980. He is a Member of the British Computer Society (and has served as both Treasurer and Secretary of the BCS East Anglia branch) and a Chartered IT Professional.