Sekuda director and principal consultant Will Bryant brings to his work both a broad range of technical experience and expertise and a solid understanding of the modern business environment.
Having been involved not just in all stages of the software development process - from business analysis and software architecture, to the implementation, testing, and deployment of projects of many types and sizes - but also the management and growth of businesses in the real world, clients find that his ability to understand both their business needs and objectives and the technical complexities and challenges inherent in modern IT projects gives him the ability to bridge the gap between management goals and successfully completed development projects.
Will excels in resolving complex software integration problems, especially those that require solutions beyond straightforward single-tier or single-platform development. He specialises in server application development using C++ and Java, desktop application development using Delphi and C++, web application development using PHP, and Linux system administration.
Professional history
Will started his professional software development career in 1997 by partnering with a consultant colleague to create Fleet Manager, a bespoke database application for clients in the New Zealand government that is still in use today. Will's role included working with the clients to determine their needs, the implementation of the system, and the ongoing support of the client's requirements.
His first moves beyond traditional software development came in August 1999, while studying towards his honours degree in engineering, when he co-founded and launched ShareChat, a New Zealand sharemarket discussion and information site, with business partner Ben Dutton. As technical manager for the company, Will was responsible for all technical aspects of the site and the servers and systems that supported it until its sale to Australian company Iguana2, and continued his role in the site's ongoing development and guidance until the sale of the business unit to Tarawera Publishing, publishers of the popular finance site Good Returns, in 2003. As partner in the company, he was also directly involved in the company's strategy and market planning throughout its growth from a small niche site into a successful business.
Between 1999 and 2000 Will interned at New Zealand's leading broadcast communication engineering company, BCL, contributing to a wide range of electrical engineering work, from contract tendering to planning for the rollout of their digital microwave radio network.
In May 2001 Will graduated from the University of Canterbury with a degree with first-class honours in Electrical and Electronic engineering, specialising in digital hardware, communications, and digital signal processing.
Will then returned to working full-time in the software industry, both for Iguana2, and under contract to Christchurch software house eCOSM as the lead designer and developer for Firetrust Benign, an email security product whose functionality remains unequalled by competitors in the market today.
In May 2002 he joined eCOSM full-time as Software Architect, where he specialised in bespoke scalable server systems. In this role he designed and lead the successful implementation and launch of two projects for eCOSM client Firetrust: FirstAlert, a high-volume anti-spam email content filtration service that debuted in November 2003; and MailWasher Server, a multi-platform server-based anti-spam package that used FirstAlert as the cornerstone of its feature set, released in May 2004 and later open-sourced. As software architect he analysed the needs of the client and their customers, gave advice on the positioning, marketing, and strategy for the client's products, wrote specification documents, and managed the ongoing software development, testing, and deployment process.
During his time at eCOSM he also contributed to the management and growth of the company's development arm, taking a lead role in the training of new developers and in improving the company's development policies and practices, and creating a substantial amount of reusable intellectual property to maximise the profitability of the company's development projects and the reliability of the produced software.
Following the completion of eCOSM's development contracts for Firetrust Limited, he left eCOSM and moved to Wellington to form Sekuda Ltd. He is also partner and head of the new technology development program for Stellure Ltd.