Alexander George Farkouh HND MIET MInstP

101 Eden Grove Road, Byfleet, Surrey KT14 7PX England

Mobile / WhatsApp: +44.7973112104   Fax: +44.1483225634
Email: alex at farkouh.net *   Web: https://alex.farkouh.net/


Personal Profile

I am a senior ICT professional with over thirty years experience of designing, installing, commissioning, maintaining and project managing a wide range of information technology solutions for the security and communications markets. I am a natural trouble-shooter and problem solver with first class computing skills.

As a DrayTek Certified Network Admin, DrayOS and VigorAP and Advanced Voice Partner, I have a wealth of experience installing and maintaining IP networks for commercial and industrial customers, including IPv6 configurations. I have worked with a number of customers' in-house IT teams to implement IP networking, both wired and wireless, and IP voice solutions.

Over the last thirty years I have installed in maintained a wide range of Operating Systems, including Windows, Linux, BSD and QNX, including hardening the installs against intrusion for highly available Internet services and applications.

I have been involved in the hosting of websites and email services, since 1994 and over the years I have installed web applications on a number of platforms, both Microsoft and Opensource.

I have provided bespoke IT systems that integrate with customers' existing infrastructure, and so I am used to coordinating with customers' IT teams to make the solution work the way the customer envisioned, using as much, or a little of the customers' existing infrastructure, as the IT department want. This is especially important when streaming large amounts of video data around the network, as this can put the existing network under considerable load, that it may not be able to sustain, with existing workloads.

I spend a lot of time talking to customers for pre-sales and post-sales support issues and I am well versed in communicating with customers of all technical levels to resolve technical problems with systems in an informative and friendly manner.


Key Expertise


Skills


Career History

2021 - 2022
Technical Sales Engineer, S-Connect Limited, part of SPHINX Computer Vertriebs-GmbH

Company's technical expert for both pre and post sales technical support, for a wide range of manufacturers, including:

2020 - 2021
Director, SLD Security & Communications Limited

2019 - 2020
Director, TeleGuard Limited

2012 - 2019
Director, SLD Security & Communications Limited

2011 - 2013
Technical Manager, SLD Security & Communications, part of Surrey Landmark Developments Limited

1993 - 2011
Technical Sales Manager, SLD Security & Communications, part of Surrey Landmark Developments Limited

Expert in the field of IP based Internet (and Intranet) digital video broadcast systems including broadcast systems for large scale public and private audiences. I have been the lead engineer on a number of high profile IP broadcast projects including:

I was overall project manager and my involvement included the overall system design from the customer's initial requirement, coordinating the installation process with suppliers, managing the engineering team during the installation process, the installation of the video encoders and video broadcasting servers and managing the ongoing service and maintenance for the duration of the project.

Expert in the field of IP based network video surveillance systems for security, safety and process monitoring applications in commercial, industrial and educational environments using equipment from leading manufacturers including Active Imaging, Axis Communications, Tecton, VCS (Bosch), Mitsubishi Electric, Eneo (Videor), JVC, Sony and Milestone.

I have been the lead engineer on a number of video transmission projects on the rail network working for Amec Rail and RailTrack / Network Rail including equipping the Three Bridges signal control room with remote video monitoring of strategic points on the rail network using Thales leased lines and video monitoring of remote signal control rooms from the Clapham Junction control room using the Thales PSTN network.

I have wide experience with digital video recorders for surveillance applications, with a special emphasis on the Mitsubishi Electric range as I have run a Mitsubishi Electric Digital Service Centre installing and maintaining a wide range of digital video recorders.

I have many years experience with Business to Business sales for security, communications and information technology. Public sector sales including the prison service, local government and government departments. Retail sales experience for electronic security and portable communication devices.

I have experience of installing and administering a wide variety of computer systems, including hardware and software support; I also have knowledge of a wide variety of operating systems and application software.

I have extensive experience with web design, web site management, site hosting and maintenance; I have designed and implemented a number of corporate web sites and been involved in the hosting and management of a number of sites for third parties.

I have worked for many years supplying, installing, commissioning and maintaining a wide range of video surveillance equipment from leading manufacturers, from simple single cameras systems to large linked multi-site systems, using traditional analogue and new digital technologies.


Studies

2023
City & Guilds Level 2 ICT Systems Support

2022
DrayTek Certified Network Admin, DrayOS and VigorAP

1992 - 1994
BSc course in Applied Physics with Microelectronics & Computing at Kingston University London

1990 - 1992
HND course in Applied Physics with Microelectronics & Computing at Kingston University London

Experience with DEC VAX, Unix, Novell Netware, Pascal, Modula2, Basic, Fortran, Assembler, IP infrastructure and online systems. Work experience was at the Automatic Data Processing mainframe data suite in Staines as a system operator where I gained experience with VM and large scale payroll systems and studied the VM training course. Final year project was a text chat communication programme written in Assembler on CP/M.


Professional Associations


Interests

I am a single 53 year old British national with a full clean UK driving licence. My main out of work interests include paintball, physics, computers, networking and the Internet. I created and administer the Farkouh.NET Internet community which enables Farkouh family members around the world to keep in touch and share family news. I am a member of the English paintball community and a member of the "Jolt" paintball team and so I am to be found down at the local paintball field on a Sunday afternoon. I have also played golf since I was seven years old and enjoy travel.

I am a former elected Governor of the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and also a Member of the Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. If you are a service user of SABP and have a query about the Trust and their policies, please feel free to contact me.


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The publishing of my personal email address on this website and possibly on other Internet sites does in no way constitute a solicitation to receive Commercial Email messages, except for the purpose of discussing a job offer with me. Any Unsolicited Commercial Email received will be considered a breach of the EC Directive the General Data Protection Regulation and/or alternatively the Data Protection Act and/or alternatively the EC Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications and/or alternatively a contravention of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 section 3 and/or alternatively a contravention of the Communications Act 2003 section 127 and/or alternatively a contravention of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and/or alternatively any other law that may be applicable to the UCE in question. Offenders will be brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities and/or prosecuted to the full extent of the law.