I love coffee. Not just any coffee. I prefer a very strong French Roast from Peet’s or Starbucks. I can drink an espresso and then go to bed. Coffee seems to not affect me.

I am a software engineer and enterprise architect with over three decades of experience. Almost all the products I helped develop became industry successes. Unix, SCSI, Disk Arrays, Paragon, Norton Ghost, and Storage Manager. Except for Unix, I was the CTO, software architect, and a major software contributor. I have participated as a founder with three companies that went from startup to acquisition via IBM, AT&T, and Symantec. I have served as a board member with several companies including Microsoft Technology and Linux (responsible for Linux kernel and storage). I consulted with Microsoft during and after the acquisition of GitHub.

Today I design cloud systems focusing heavily on security and networking, and where applicable apply current AI technologies from Google such as Bard and Gemini, while writing enterprise-class backend software. Authentication and Identity Systems are also favorites. I am a three-time MVP – currently MVP Cloud Networking and Cloud Security. I am an Alibaba Cloud MVP, and AWS Expert. I am a former Microsoft MVP and Google Cloud Platform GDE.

For the past two years, I have been deploying Google services to develop new AI products and services. I have been analyzing many businesses to apply AI to solve common problems, with a focus on knowledge-type systems to improve management, employee efficiency, and customer interaction. I have also been applying AI to security systems to detect and deter theft from both internal and external sources.

In September 2022, I was awarded the Google Cloud Champion Innovator for Data Analytics. In January 2023, I was awarded the Anaconda Pegasus award for my work on PyScript (pdf). I was the only recipient of this award for 2022. In August 2023, I was awarded the Google Cloud Champion Innovator for Security and Networking.

I support Alibaba, AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Oracle clouds. I have fifteen cloud certifications across multiple vendors and over 14 years of experience with AWS, about 12 with Azure, and about 10 with Google.

I have extensive experience in AI, Machine Learning (ML), Large Language Models (LLM), vision, security, file system forensics, authentication, and identity.

Occasionally I do public presentations and speeches. You can listen to me talk about the various clouds here and here. Update: Jan 2024 – those links have gone offline. The company was acquired by INE. I will contact the current company CEO to get copies of the original recordings. I have lectured at NASA Ames Research Center, Oxford, AT&T, Honeywell, Microsoft, IBM, and many times for Novell.

My favorite cloud service is Google Cloud Run, which is a fantastic product. However, I do most of my work deploying to traditional virtual machines, load balancers, databases (MySQL and MongoDB), and cloud storage.

Programming languages: C/C++, Python, Go, PHP, Swift, Java/Scala, JavaScript/Node.js, and C#/.NET. Frameworks: Python Flask, PHP Laravel, and Swift Vapor. My “thinking” language is C but now I am heavily involved with Swift. I worked on and ported Unix and the Unix C compiler/assembler/linker to many platforms including the IBM and Fujitsu mainframes and the Cray supercomputer. My favorite development language is Swift. My favorite prototyping language is Python.

profile for John Hanley on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites

I take part in Stackoverflow almost every day for a few minutes. You can see my profile here. I am a big fan of Qwiklabs. You can see my profile here. Microsoft Learn is another favorite for Microsoft and Azure. You can see my profile here.

For hobbies, I ride horses with my dogs when the weather permits. I am a private pilot – both single and multi-engine. I play golf from late spring thru early fall. I no longer ski (ankle accident) but I spend time at the lodge enjoying dinner and the view. Playing billiards (snooker) is another favorite.