Macromedia – Thomas J. Ackermann

IT Systems and Network Architect
Manager IT Operations and Support
January 1995 to January 1998

Macromedia, Inc. – macromedia.com
San Francisco, California

Macromedia’s main focus:
Macromedia was an American graphics, multimedia and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005. Macromedia originated in the 1992 equal merger of Authorware Inc. (makers of Authorware) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director). Director, an interactive multimedia-authoring tool used to make presentations, animations, CD-ROMs and information kiosks, served as Macromedia’s flagship product until the mid-1990s. Macromedia created Shockwave, a Director-viewer plugin for web browsers. Macromedia realized the potential for a web-based multimedia platform, and designed Shockwave Player for the leading web browser of the time, Netscape Navigator. Shockwave Player was released with Director 4.0 in late 1995, and branded Shockwave Player 1.0. The first multimedia playback in Netscape’s browser was a Director plug-in. Macromedia licensed Sun’s Java Programming Language in October 1995. In 1996, Macromedia purchased Future Wave Software and the product now known as Flash.

My role:

Designed, implemented, and managed Internet presence (top five on the Internet at the time!)
- Web Site Launch (6/95)
- ShockWave Launch (12/95)
Scaled public access to the web site to 500,000 page views and 25 GB FTP traffic per day
Re-designed, implemented, and managed corporate IT for all US, Europe, and Japan offices
Solely responsible for the infrastructure to launch “ShockWave” – and doing it on time
(President’s Award for Contribution to ShockWave project & Distinguished Performance Stock Award for Internet Contribution)

In detail:

Designed and implemented entire infrastructure for Macromedia’s Internet Presence (a site among the top five percent on the Internet according to Lycos; at that time), scaling public access to the site successfully from 100,000 initially to 500,000 page views
Shockwave Launch
- Recognized the need for a delivery architecture, designed and proposed a plan (approved for a minimum of $750,000 – up to $3m or more, as timely availability for the set launch date was critical for the companies success and for the stock price: it did go up significantly on the successful launch, but would have dropped badly had the launch failed), and executed it on time with significant savings (I ended up spending less than $750,000):
  - convinced MFS Fiber to tear up Townsend St from 3rd to 7th street to lay fiber from the nearest Bay Area Ring access point to the Macromedia HQ building – at their cost of approximately $500,000
  - convinced MFS Fiber to installed the access switch in the Macromedia building – at their cost of $1 million
  - negotiated one live and two stand-by DS-3 = 45 Mbit/s circuits from 3 different vendors – who under-bid each other, so Macromedia ended up with a very competitive live connection to start with
  - negotiated special conditions from Cisco for the 7000 router ATM (155 Mbit/s) modules, since Cisco was unable to provide me with 100 Mbit/s Ethernet ports
  - negotiated for prototype Alantec* Ethernet Switches with specially-made extended backplane to accomodate ATM uplink connections and more slot cards, as Alantec was unable to deliver slot cards with only 100 Mbit/s ports – so I had to use multiple 10 Mbit/s port cards with only a single 100 Mbit/s uplink port to accomodate the high-speed port density I needed
    (* FORE Systems Inc. acquired Alantec Inc. for about $768 million later in 1995. Alantec, a San Jose, California manufacturer of Ethernet and FDDI switching hubs, provided IEEE 802 Ethernet to ATM aggregation)
  - after a lunch with John Mayes (who developed the concept) I negotiated with NTI (Network Translation, Inc.) to use a prototype stateful inspection firewall (“PIX“) using Mayes’ idea of NAT (Network Address Translation) – which was, however, yanked mid-testing due to their acquisition by Cisco — and would not have worked, because even its advanced throughput was not sufficient for the expected download traffic exceeding 45 Mbit/s
  - negotiated favorable rates for the bulk purchase of Sun Sparc-10 and Sparc-20 systems, serving as FTP hosts for the launch download of Shockwave plug-in copies
- Managed the installation of the DS-3 circuits for Internet connectivity on dual-redundant SONET Bay Area Ring to HQ building (MFS fiber circuit and in-house switch installed along Townsend Street for 4 blocks)
- Installed and scaled bandwidth to 25 GB in Shockwave plug-in FTP downloads per day
- Access and DMZ network design, hard- and software evaluation and selection for CSU/DSU, routers, Ethernet switches, WebServer, load balancing options and DNS server design, security design for DNS, email, firewall evaluation, performance testing (with subsequent firewall upgrades from packet filtering, TIS Gauntlet Application Gateway firewall, Sun’s Checkpoint Firewall-1 and NTI, Cisco PIX Firewall).
Designed and managed installation of mirror sites in Europe and Japan, including bandwidth and performance assessment. These were the first international corporate mirror sites deployed on the internet (1995)
Designed and implemented HQ and branch offices’ in-house data center
Designed and implemented new server structure (upgrade to centrally administered NetWare v4.1 OS) for servers in the domestic US and in international locations, UK, Japan and Australia
Designed and implemented internal firewalls and network access security
Designed and implemented rapid application deployment, such as Novell GroupWise (also worldwide)
Designed and implemented international private network, including Frame Relay connections to offices in Japan (Tokyo) and Europe (London)
IT Integration of several acquisitions:
- Future Flash (today’s Flash Player)
- iBand (web authoring software ‘BackStage’, which later led to the development of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver product)
Authored, evaluated, and executed vendor bids on Request for Proposal (RFP) for all corporate Global Telecommunications, including all US-domestic and international (Europe, Asia, Australia)
- Voice
- Public data (Internet) circuits
  with special consideration of outsourcing options for Internet systems (co-location and co-hosting) and technical abilities (multiple routes using BGP4, bandwidth aggregation, NOC administration, peering relationships and management, bandwidth and service monitoring and reporting, local and global load balancing options within and between internationally deployed data centers and scalability options)
- Private data cicuits
- Video Conferencing
- Cellular and calling card services
Designed and implemented a global, multi-point video conference system connecting corporate offices in domestic and international locations through both private and public networks, offering scaleable multi-point conferencing and one-to-many broadcast functionality
Designed and implemented upgrades to the networked NorTel Meridian PBX systems (models 11, 21, 61c) for new and expanded offices
Received executive approval on designs for global remote data access for corporate users with analog, ISDN, and Frame Relay connections with centralized secure authentication, telecommuting options, data network upgrades for public and non-public systems, upgrades and evolution paths for Internet systems to support electronic commerce, global support structure for vendor-monitored networks and data centers
Managed IT Operations staff and help desk with emphasis on team building within local offices and across teams based in different sites (to support offices in the US, Europe, and Japan)
Developed and maintained extensive vendor relationships with domestic and international companies

Inital Macromedia Business Card Jan 1995

BEFORE – what I found upon joining

AFTER initial clean-up – Jerome

AFTER initial clean-up

BEFORE – what I found upon joining

the 1st Ethernet Switches: instant fix!

the 1st Ethernet Switches

AFTER initial clean-up

ShockWave Award

ShockWave Stock Award

Flash Acquisition San Diego

Joi Shappee ran the world-wide Help Desk.

one of my accomplished Unix Administrators, Chuck Aude

Web Site Performance

Shockwave Japan

Shockwave US

ShockWave Download Servers

The original ShockWave racks where thrown out in 1998 – here in Texas 2005

NTI “PIX” Firewall Tests

NeXt Stations in Richardson TX

Novell GroupWise

We called IT the “CEIS” Dept

90s Tech …

Me at the time

Cisco 7000 Core Internet Router

ShockAudio Setup

Another Firewall Test

Initial Quick Fix for internal nets and WAN links

Testing NTI’s PIX firewall – shortly after, Cisco acquired East Palo Alto-based NTI, and it became the Cisco PIX firewall…

Future Shockwave / Internet Server Room

The new Redwood Shores Building I helped set up, replacing the San Mateo software development office

one of my offices / cubicles

one of my bosses, CIO Jacque Silver

one of my offices / cubicles

Prepping for the ShockWave Launch

RMON NetTracker Evaluation

The DS-3 data pipe went live

DMZ Switch and NTI Firewall Sniffer

The NTI PIX firewall – John Mayes personally picked up the prototype the day after the sale to Cisco was signed.

ShockWave Download Servers

Secret Macromedia Palo Alto office I set up to develop Sun Java applications next to Sun’s super-secret JAVA development office

Richard Wainscott, Richardson TX

Sherman Canady, Richardson TX

Joi Shappee, Global Helpdesk

Tokyo Systems ready for shipment

Making the Daily Plan …

Daily Master Plan :)

Future Shockwave / Internet Server Room

1 weekend to revamt the entire server room

Future Home of the Internet Server Room

Richard Wainscott, Richardson TX

Richardson TX Office

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER – 1st IT phase completed

Customer Support John and CEIS Joi

My Feb 1995 original CEIS Team

RDS Consultants

Ed Chiu works on the firewall

Consultant Terry Lillie

Senior IT Admin Ed Chiu

Ed Chiu, Manny Barrera, and the guy from Alantec

IT Phase 2 – Novell Servers with RAID Array

Remote Access Modem Banks

The initial T-1 Link to the Internet

Hub Re-wiring

NGC Network Sniffer Systems (Quality Control)

Shockwave Download Servers

Sun 1000 Systems and the old 370 – Customer Support

Shockwave Launch Testing

Ed Chui, Sherman Canady, and myself (from right)

one of my Macromedia cubicles

1996 while at Macromedia

1997 while at Macromedia

Bona Allen Roper

High Sea (05 JUN 1998)

Johnny (05 JUN 1998)

Me Driving Cattle (05 JUN 1998)

TJ with High Sea in the arena (05 JUN 1998)

on Carrot – Bettencourt Field (05 JUN 1998)

on Carrot – Practice Field (05 JUN 1998)

on High Sea (05 JUN 1998)

tacking High Sea (05 JUN 1998)

Joi Shappee in her final days, here at the Roddy ranch for a rodeo (25 MAY 1998)

Roddy Ranch rodeo (25 MAY 1998)

Trivia (05 JUN 1998)

Tucker (05 JUN 1998)

Tucker and Carrot (05 JUN 1998)

Carrot grasing (05 JUN 1998)

Macromedia ShockWave Racks in a transmission shop in Dallas TX (mid-2012)