About Me
David Anthony Czubala
Senior Technology Leader / Enterprise/Solutions/Service Architect / People Manager
Together we can do anything… after coffee. — Anonymous
My tech history
I have been obsessed with tech since the Commodore 64 / VIC20 came out. Then programming computers and playing games on x286/386/486 CPU's. At University (studying Computer Engineering) I learnt to program 8086 chips using Assembler. I learnt on Unix and Windows PC's to program in Fortran, C++, Modula-2 and Basic.
After a short stint in the RAAF (where I spent every moment trying to get in the back seat of any aircraft I could), I started working in technology. I began in technical computer component sales, then software and hardware support, before moving into technology solution delivery, management and then technology/enterprise architecture.
More recently I've been...
Evangelising about the adoption of Cloud (while also warning companies of the unexpected or hidden costs that would wreck havoc on many an OPEX).
I've been preaching at the alter of technology standardisation & systems management telemetry, extolling the many benefits of the visibility and consistent service, known costs and easy (ok, easier...) troubleshooting that having a control suite and a set of blueprints and patterns delivers.
I've been scaring many a C-suite member with the horror stories (most which were true) of security breaches causing real and/or reputational damage to a company, when they didn't have their Cybersecurity posture at an appropriate level of maturity.
Now I am passionate AI.
I passionately like the benefits. The rapid recording & summation of meeting data. The superhuman speed that it can collect & collate research material. The ability it has to distill & present the information in a pleasing format for your target audience. I love the automation capabilities and integration ease that AI now has, enabling what would have taken many weeks to accomplish in just many hours.
What's not to love about AI?
Well, I passionately hate the way AI lies (and no, I won't use the preferred marketing term the AI companies would like us all to use, when their product responds with factually incorrect responses)
Technology & Projects
Below is a compilation (somewhat incomplete) of the various technologies and projects I have either been involved in delivering, or have championed, designed, developed, deployed and delivered as a main contributor
"...because there are very few instances in life (and tech), where you develop something completely on your own!"
I have architected and/or deployed so many varied technology solutions and performed so many transformations across varied technical stacks, that it would be difficult to encapsulate them all (but let's try):
Technology: CRM / Customer Call Centre
Decision: I made the strategically pragmatic decision to chose Five9 and Gem (over more popular, well known brands) to deliver a technically complex service quickly, launching a new replacement CRM and Call Centre service within six month deadline (required following the incumbent provider going into receivership in 2023).
The solution integrated Gem (a specialist vendor) with Five9 (a global provider), enabling automated customer voucher verification, multi-channel contact—including WhatsApp, email, AI chatbot interactions—and an IVR system that could escalate customers to human agents when necessary.
Business Outcome: This technical choice was made to guarantee delivery by a firm "go live" date, ensuring the new service launched before the previous service was switched off. Meeting this non-negotiable deadline protected the guest experience during the transition, allowing us to retain our high-performing, CSAT-rated South African Call Centre team for continuity. The outcome not only maintained but improved the guest experience, introducing innovative omni-channel capabilities for the UK and architecting the solution for operational performance, with service mappings designed to reduce Single Points of Failure between old and new Vue systems. The project went live as scheduled, stayed within budget, and launched without any customer-facing bugs.
Technology: Telephony
Decision: I made the strategic decision to replace Cisco VoIP CallManager and PSTN (Copper) telephony (ahead of the UK Governments Copper Switch-off originally scheduled for 2025) with Zoom Telephony within Vue’s England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland cinema’s.
Business Outcome: The technical decision was made consciously to deliver a reduced telephony OPEX cost by over 66% (£220k to £74k) annually in the UK alone, providing reliable telephony service in cinemas and in projection areas for the first time in years.
I negotiated a 5 year contract that would see the whole company (Vue International) saving almost £1M (Telephony OPEX) with other included services bundled in for free.
Technology Decision: I made the strategic decision to investigate, evaluate and then deploy WAN Acceleration devices in every Allens office throughout Asia-Pacific.
Business Outcome: The technical decision delivered a cost reduction in planned OPEX spend for Wide Area Network costs by ~$700,000 AUD over 3 years (delivering an ROI in 10 months), facilitating improved business operations with the centralisation of the Firm's Practice Management & Document Management Systems, and a corresponding reduction in environmental costs (i.e., less infrastructure hosted in remote offices, drawing less on energy and cooling).
Technology Decision: I initiated a strategic effort to research, assess, and ultimately deploy technology aimed at solving a widespread challenge in organizations of all sizes—namely, the need for straightforward and effective communication tools. To achieve this, I led the shift from Cisco Webex to Zoom Video Conferencing.
Business Outcome: The UK team had barely utilized Webex due to its complexity in managing and scheduling meetings, so Zoom was quickly adopted and made an immediate impact. Transitioning in Germany posed more challenging since Webex was widely used there, although they had the benefit of one full-time employee who managed the system. I expanded Zoom’s deployment to Italy, Poland, and The Netherlands, where teams previously relied on varying services like Blue Jeans, Google Hangouts/Meet, and Viber. This transition resulted in rapid operational improvement, enhancing communication, collaboration, and scheduling across the entire organization. Further operational advantages have followed, thanks to features like integrated telephony, meeting recording, language translation, and AI-driven meeting transcription and summarization.
An additional, unexpected benefit was that Zoom was already in place prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which enabled the company to switch to remote work immediately upon lockdown. This allowed senior staff, who were not furloughed, to quickly respond to evolving circumstances by implementing cost-saving measures—such as securing rent discounts or holidays for major leases (saving Vue over £22M), reducing or shutting down unnecessary tech services, and planning for a safe office return—thereby mitigating significant financial impacts and helping keep the business afloat during the pandemic.
Technology Decision: I made the strategic decision to investigate, evaluate and then deploy a cybersecurity solution (Carbon Black EDR) and a Cybersecurity Security Operations Centre (SOC) service to deliver SOC, SIEM and a Digital Forensic Incident Response retainer for use across the entire organisation.
Business Outcome: The service was barely in place when it instantly proved operationally effective, stopping an attempted breech in Italy (with the EDR Service instantly shutting down the attempted malware payload), and in The Netherlands when a 3rd party data centre hosting service being used there was breeched.
Technology Decision: I made the strategic decision at KCL to deploy an Enterprise version of SQL on a large hosted virtual platform, to take consolidate the many and various disparate SQL databases that were spread across many platforms of various capacity and capability.
Business Outcome: This enabled me to:
Reduce the OPEX spend of by consolidating the many copies of SQL Server (taking advantage of the Enterprise Licence model enabling the hosting of as many SQL instances as you liked on the hardware it was hosted on),
Reduce the environmental impact of having multiple SQL Server instances running in many locations across Campus (also freeing up compute space in tightly constrained server rooms).
It improved the stability, availability by ensured critical systems management processes were applied to this business critical platform, that was architected with no single points of failure
Technology Decision: I made the strategic decision at KCL to deploy a digital PBX to replace the legacy Motorola PABX that was hosting the universities telephony capability (that was approaching End of Life, with limited capacity.
Business Outcome: This digital gateway enabled me to put in place a system that could:
handle the Universities growth requirement for more extensions,
enabling new number ranges and dial plans to be expanded and changed without requiring a change to wiring and a telephony engineer to run/move copper
deliver new capability such as enhanced IVR and voicemail capability
Technology Decision: I made the strategic decision at KCL to move their core compute from the old “machine hall” in the basement of The Strand building, to a purpose-built Tier 3 Data Centre
Business Outcome: This change had many business outcomes:
It enabled the University to free up the extremely valuable prime location real-estate in The Strand, for other purposes.
It improved the service reliability of the various IT functions that were being delivered from the old “machine hall” (floods in winter would occasionally threaten the machine hall, and frequently in summer the HVAC could not sustain its output, requiring 50% of compute to be shut down, and the machine hall door having to be left open - with a guard standing on duty - to ensure heat didn’t build up).
It enabled a more robust Disaster recovery plan to be put in place, which could then underpin and deliver an improved Business Continuity plan.
Technology Decision: I established a Cybersecurity Governance Board at KCL to enhance decision-making and improve change control processes.
Business Outcome: Previously, the Security CAB was considered slow, prompting departments to create their own solutions to bypass its extensive and long review process. This resulted in delays for all change requests. By introducing a runbook of standard operational changes and supervising its implementation, I streamlined the service and strengthened governance. Serious changes now receive appropriate attention for risk analysis and action planning. As a result, more change items are submitted properly rather than departments seeking alternatives, which has boosted both the College's reputation and its security posture.
Technology Decision: I established a new Power BI Service, complete with a gateway and Data Fabric Layer, within the Multi-territory Azure Landing Zone to serve as the central repository for the organisation's financial transaction and performance data.
Business Outcome: Implementing Power BI delivered to the Senior Leadership a consolidated view of the whole organisation’s financial health (using sanitised data), and regional leadership detailed insights at the transaction level of their financial performance (specific to their respective countries). Also achieved an OPEX reduction by consolidation of PowerBI licences.
Technology Decision: Collaborated with Vista to develop a pricing model that supported Vue’s shift from an on-premises platform to Cloud Native Services.
Business Outcome: Established a simplified subscription-based cost structure tied to cinema count, transaction volume, and loyalty metrics, achieving an OPEX breakeven in under 18 months while safeguarding Vue’s legacy licences.
Technology
· Regional-Data Centre Architecture & Fit-outs in China, Australia and England
· Migration/consolidation of multiple email systems to centralised systems & Microsoft Exchange Online for Italy, UK, Poland, Denmark and The Netherlands
· Azure Landing Zones for multi-territory Identity & Services Collaboration, with Cloud-Native & Hybrid architectures
· Cloud Idp for multi-country on-boarding of company user identities, enabling autonomous hybrid local identity management, with Centralised control of Service access
· Cloud Firewall Services for Multiple Countries, enabling secure authentication for Remote Access to corporate business systems, incorporating posture determined access control
· Architecture Governance of major commercial Website's migration from AWS to Azure, transforming from silo'd country-specific to service-specific stacks (i.e., legacy 3-tier server model to AKS Containers & API Gateways)
· Championed PCI Compliance Programs in every Retail sector I’ve worked.
· Selection, inspection and implementation of Security Operations Centre integration to deliver Cybersecurity services for the entire organisation (across 9 countries)
· Upgrade of infrastructure hardware platform AND software code base for Hummingbird Document Management System at Australia’s oldest legal practice (Allens)
· Keystone Practice Management System delivery, support and maintenance for Australia’s oldest legal practice (Allens)
· Transformation of physical facsimile services to digital for Australia’s oldest legal practice (Allens)
· Implementation of automated imaging system facilitate weekly maintenance & patching routines
· Selection and deployment of Cybersecurity EDR/XDR Service (across 9 countries)
· I conducted the technical architecture design review with our French collaborators (Pathe) ahead of the setup of 3-tier PKI Infrastructure for secure authentication for the new implementation of Vue’s first automated eGates & Self-service POS terminals. Having first proposed eGates in 2022, the trendlines (and budget) took almost 2 years to build, before a successful pilot was completed at Vue Swindon in Feb 2025.
· Analysis of the features of Vista Cloud Cinema Management software, financial analysis of the proposed contract and negotiation of the fee structure to create a cost benefit that would be a win-win for by Vista (as a vendor) and VUE as the customer.
· Architect the technology strategy to enable selection and delivery of the integrated solution for digital advertising to be delivered in the retail areas of cinemas for the UK and Germany.
· Provide architecture governance and technical design oversight for the delivery of Hubspot CRM in the UK
· I instituted an automated Snapshot imaging process at Allens, to perform nightly images of all online servers & services. This technology supported a zero-day patching policy (to apply patches as soon as released) as it facilitated rapid rollback if a patch ever caused unintended technical issues to a system/services/application.
· Lead a team to deliver projects and provide hands-on support and maintenance for the EUC technology being delivered to BHP Companies (now BlueScope) for their Landside and Maritime Logistics arm (BHP Transport), their Mining arm (BHP Collieries) and their Steel Manufacturing arm (BHP Steel). The experience gained here ingrained in me the critical importance of all components of manufacturing businesses (in this instance, the “Soup-to-Nuts” process is from the raw materials extraction from the earth (mining), then the transport of raw material to plant for processing (smelting, pouring, moulding, extruding, shaping and cutting), and back again to the transport arm with delivery of the completed product to customers (BHP Transport).
· During my time in the RAAF as an “Air Defence Controller”, taught me to see things from the perspective of others. I needed to have an appreciation of the situation my pilots are flying into. Then once engaged in an action, I also must have an appreciation of what the person and machine are capable of (i.e., pilot and aircraft) so I can effectively guide them into and out of contact encounters. As this job literally involves “life & death” decisions (even when no combat is involved), it teaches you to be able to calmly assess situations and react accordingly.
· Led the transformation of the EUC estate within the University of Wollongong's administration department, overseeing the migration from Apple to Windows platforms and the deployment of PeopleSoft Server and client applications.
- and many more (telephony, WAN/LAN/SD-WAN comm's, EUC, EDR/XDR, SIEM, SOC, etc...)