Terry Johnson

Terry Johnson

Terry has a strong background in IT consulting working with large organizations like Adelphia, Alcoa, AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Federal Reserve, HP, NSA, PerkinElmer, TransAmerica, Tyco, Unisys, Verizon, Westinghouse, and many of this country's finest Universities. Terry has over 40 years of experience working within the computer industry. Terry joined xforty technologies in 2008, became a board member in 2010 and has been acting President since 2011.

Military Career

Terry is a Vietnam veteran having served honorably in the US Navy. While stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea Terry's main responsibility was managing the SPN-42 All Weather Carrier Landing System (ACWLS). The SPN-42 is a computerized (Dual Univac-1219 computers) automatic carrier landing system (ACLS) radar that provides precise control of aircraft during final approach and landing. The equipment was able to automatically acquire, control, and land a suitably equipped aircraft on aircraft carriers under severe ship motion or weather conditions.

Advanced Education

After Terry's military obligation was finished he worked full time while continuing his education part time. Although he never completed his BS EE requirements for a degree, he did accumulate over 140 Credit hours attending classes at MATC, UW, NIU, and Rutgers.

Professional Career

Johnson Controls

Terry started his professional career working for Johnson Controls installing and maintaining computerized environmental systems.

Wells Manufacturing

After working two years with Johnson Controls Terry took a took an engineering position at Wells Manufacturing designing and implementing state of the art computer controlled manufacturing of continuous casting of gray iron bars. Process control was managed by Intel Single Board Computers withtransducer inputs were gathered by thermocouples and InfraRed readings to control teh gray iron continous cast via an industrial eletronic brake/clutch. Well at Wells Manufacturing TErry also mantain and management the lab equipment which included a Baird-Atomic Mass Spectrometer which leveraged a DEC PDP-8 minicomputer.

Hewlett Packard

After working five years at Wells Manufacturing Terry took an position as customer engineer for HP's new business computing division. Working on HP-3000 series MPE mini-computers. Besides working with many Fortune 500 companies while at HP Terry benefiting from HP's on going training taking courses ranging from HP's fault tolerant architectures, Xerox listening, and Enterprise Media business skills course-ware.

Apollo Computer

After working five years for HP Terry joined a young networked computing start-up called Apollo Computer. He worked one year as a consultant to Unisys group developing a FORTRAN based CAD package, and then worked a year at Bell Labs consulting with their Unix development group responsible for the Korn Shell. While at Apollo Terry transferred to open a new office in the Pittsburgh area initialing working with Westinghouse and Ansys Cad software and finally working with the Carnegie's Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and Pittsburgh Super-Computing Center (PSC) on software development methodologies. Terry also completed Dale Carnegie’s evening sales training program while working in Pittsburgh.

Sun Microsystems Inc.

As fortune would have it, just prior to Apollo being acquired by HP Terry joined another start-up Sun Microsystems Inc. Terry worked for Sun Microsystems for over 11 years holding positions in software engineering, sales and sales management.

Perfect Order Inc

Terry left Sun Microsystems to start Perfect Order Inc a Value-Added Computer Reseller (VAR) for Sun Microsystems Inc. Terry held VP of Sales position for over five years prior to becoming President of CommNav a software start-up funded by Perfect Order to develop and sell Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) software. After four years both CommNav and Perfect Order were acquired by a Canadian firm. After the acquisition Terry works as an independent consultant for Sun Microsystems until joing xforty technologies in 2008. While at Perfect Order Terry held several industry certificates including Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE), Mircosoft Certified Trainer (MCT), Checkpoint Security Specialist, Solaris Enterptise Security, Networking, and Systems Adminstration.

Personal Information

Besides technology, reading, and traveling, Terry also enjoys outdoor adventures mainly hiking, kayaking, camping and motorcycling. On his longest motorcycling trip he traveled solo camping across North America, starting from State College, traveling down to New Orleans, across Texas, down through Northern Mexico, up the Pacific Coast Highway to Vancouver Island and then finally across the Canadian Rockies to home. Terry's latest Open Source technology interests are in the areas of home-automation and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). Recently Terry has been experimenting with 3D printing.