MIP, one of South Africa's leading software development houses, has appointed long-serving Patrick O'Reilly as its CIO. In this regard he will be responsible for setting architectural standards, ensuring conformity to these standards for all applications in all industry sectors and the development, implementation and management of an integrated enterprise content management platform.
“Patrick has done an admirable job in introducing a culture of architecture into MIP,” says CEO and chairman Richard Firth. “As an example, he has ensured all of our applications have been engineered to be compliant with services-oriented architecture standards. This means we can re-use more code than ever before, and deliver existing and new applications in record time, which means happier customers and rapid company growth.
"In addition, content management is closely aligned with workflow, which each of our applications enables. As such, our clients have been consistent in requesting the ability to bring their workflow and content management systems together. Patrick will be instrumental in giving effect to this.”
O'Reilly joined the IT sector in 1991, beginning at Unidata. From there he moved to international pharmaceutical distribution company IHD (now UTI Pharma), where he rose to the title of IT manager. At IHD he designed and delivered a Web-based ordering system in 1996, before any of the South African banks was online. He joined MIP in 2000, rising through a series of management positions, along with a directorship, to his new position of CIO.
“At heart, I am still a programmer,” says O'Reilly. “I have experienced the importance of properly architected solutions, so I have focused my attention on how to build systems in such a way that they stand up to the ever changing requirements of business. Well-designed systems are more flexible, and also more resilient. It is a challenge to maintain solid architectural design principles, while also constantly modifying existing or legacy systems.
O'Reilly's experience with online systems has meant all of MIP's solutions are available as fully Web-based applications.
“In recent years, we have actively moved into the services-oriented way of doing things, and so we are now well positioned to open all of our applications to our customers' broader IT infrastructures by means of SOA integration,” says O'Reilly.
Outside of work, O'Reilly is a faith-based, committed family man with a deep interest in astronomy and building rockets.
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