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Mike Heller: Bell Head Turned Net Head
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After working 41 years in the telecommunications industry, Mike retired from Cisco Systems in June of 2004.
He worked for the old Bell Telephone System, for a computer company now part of HP, and
for Cisco. His career provided the opportunity to live in the Los Angeles area, the San Francisco area,
the New York City area, and in London, England, and for business travel to over 30 countries, all connected
to the telecommunications industry. Mike is now spending more time building houses for Habitat for Humanity, activities at church, and traveling with Sandy, and but still spends some time doing consulting projects for various financial institutions interested in insight into the telecom industry, as well as some occasional things for Cisco. Mike started out to be a "telephone man," and was indeed that for many years, starting work in Los Angeles for the old Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company the Monday after his college graduation. His initial work there was in engineering assignments, but then he was moved to Ventura, out on the coast, to become a Repair Foreman (and see how he would do supervising craftsmen, etc.) It was back into engineering for another couple of years, and then he was transferred up to San Francisco, for a engineering headquarters position. Next stop was New York City, where he spent four years working at the AT&T Headquarters. (Interestingly, during his time in New York, and right outside his office window in lower Manhattan, the World Trade Center towers were under construction.) Mike came back to California, and once again went into operations, this time managing a group that ran all of the long distance switching equipment in the San Francisco area. Part of this job entailed the installation of new digital switching systems that reduced the size of his group from over 200 to about 50 - lots of interesting times in dealing with all the displaced workers, the union, etc. When the government decided AT&T was too big and moved to split it up, Mike went with the newly-formed international division, and became that company's first employee to work in England. That was a great assignment, and provided opportunities for both professional growth as well as lots of travel around Europe (both business and "holidays" with Sandy). Upon returning to the U.S., he expected to resume working at the telephone company, but in his time away, they had become "leaner and meaner," and were busy down-sizing their staff. He found a job with a computer company in Silicon Valley which sold solutions to telephone companies, and worked there for 9 years. (That company, called Tandem Computers, was later bought by Compaq Computers, which in turn became part of HP. It's still in business today as the NonStop Systems Division of HP.) This did nothing but continue his shift away from telephones and toward computers, so his next job, in the new network service provider segment at Cisco Systems was practically all about computers and data networks. Much of Mike's work involved frequent travel to Asia Pacific and Latin America, which he enjoyed very much. By 2004, he was ready to devote much more time to Habitat and to travel with Sandy, so it was time to "hang it up" and retire. 
In the course of his work in the telecom industry, Mike has written many white papers, magazine articles, and chapters for books. Some were published in the trade press (e.g., Telephony Magazine, Telephone Engineer and Management Magazine, and others by the International Engineering Consortium (IEC), the Pacific Telecommunications Council, and in numerous conference proceedings. While some are quite technical (e.g., "How Signaling System 7 Works - a Technical Review"), most tried to apply technology to business problems, or to be more tutorial in nature. Examples of this latter type include papers on Disaster Recovery for Small and Medium Businesses, How To Increase Network Reliability, Strategies for Insuring Universal Service in an Era of Rapid Industry Change, and Finding the Killer App for Broadband: Could It Be Plain Old Voice ? Mike is so busy in retirement, he often wonders how he ever found time to hold down a (often more than) full-time job! | |
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