BS CSC 1984

In 1976 Zeigler was selected to attend the NSF summer program 'Introduction to Programming and Hardware' at NCSU for rising juniors  in high school. His teachers nominated him because of his interest in computers, and the fact he had already begun auditing a course at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, in BASIC programming.
 
Because of that experience he decided to attend in NCSU after high school. Zeigler matriculated in 1978, with the intention of double majoring in physics in computer science.

To help pay for his education he began working for the University Systems Analysis and Control Center as a student programmer.

At USACC, Zeigler worked on several projects including adding a computer to a numerically controlled milling machine for the Industrial Engineering Department. As a sophomore he wrote a small kernel (technically a monitor) and simple code editor in assembly running on Texas Instruments TI 9900 32 bit Chip. It used a 9-inch floppy disk and was inserted between an ASR 33 Teletype with a paper tape reader and punch and the milling machine itself.

At USACC he also began working with UNIX, first on a PDP 11 and then on a VAX.

Dr. Siamak Khorram, of the (then) NCSU School of Forestry, arranged for Zeigler to be qa Visiting Scholar at University of California, Berkely, where he helped translate an early LandSat image analysis package into C.

In 1982 he was hired as an SPA employee at the University to be the full-time system administrator for the VAX, for the Computer Communications and Signal Processing Laboratory, while working to complete his undergraduate degree in CSC part time. That was the first VAX to run the Berkeley Software Distribution (a UNIX variant) in North Carolina
He was responsible for connecting that lab to the USENET, and gave lectures in C and UNIX programming to the Faculty and Graduate Students during this time, as well as providing technical support.

In 1983 Zeigler was recruited by SAS institute to help them implement their software system on UNIX.

He spent the first year at SAS working part time and going to NCSU full time. But in early 1985 SAS offered him a full-time position with Tuesdays and Thursdays off to work on his studies fulltime. He was responsible for developing the source code management tools and the first formal 'Release Engineering' (named as such) process at SAS.

One of the his major accomplishments at SAS was to demonstrate how to use a very simple PL/1 to C translator to help convert their SAS source code to C. While this was not a complete translator, it allowed the R&D staff to avoid thousands of hours of coding. This was of significant factor in the decision to implement the software on the IBM PC.

Zeigler worked to create the Ethernet LAN for that development, and arrange for SAS to register the 'sas.com' domain name.

In December 1985 (just as he was graduated with a BS in CSC) the UNIX project was launched and he was made the manager of the UNIX Host group. The first production release of SAS Version 6 for the Solaris operating system was in 1988.

The UNIX host group was primarily responsible for developing the techniques for coding in the C programming language that allowed SAS to use the same source code across all the systems SAS supported.

That is, they developed the UNIX specific code that went into the product, and the 'development host' layer that was used as a reference platform for all the other Host groups and the product layer developers.

As the number of 'targets' (CPU and Operating system pairs) grew, Zeigler was personally involved in getting SAS to establish and support the Intel ABI and the MIPS ABI. This work is what made the Linux operating system possible.

As a representative of the Independent Software Vendor community, Zeigler was invited to the 1989 COMDEX meeting to present the ISV view on the topic of RISC vs CISC architectures.

His presentation was basically:  Independent Software Vendors do not care about RISC vs CISC. They can optimize their own code, and the most expensive thing ISVs can do to their software is to re-compile it, because of the testing requirement. The fewer binary targets we have, the better. At the clock speeds of modern silicone, the architecture is not relevant. Consistent results are relevant.

Because of Zeigler's involvement in these ABI and other UNIX standards, he was offered the position of Vice President of Technology of the UnixWare Technology Group, where he was asked to lead the UNIX industry in furthering the ABI standards, as well as such issues as multi-CPU architectures and similar technical standards.

But Novel sold the UnixWare business to SCO and Hewlett-Packard about two weeks after he started that position in December 1995.

After spending a year to help SCO digest the UnixWare development team and source code, He took a position as the Director of Engineering for a startup in San Francisco, DBStar. They developed a metadata discovery tool that was used by DBAs to transfer data from such legacy systems as VSAM to modern relational systems. That startup was eventually sold to Accenture.

In 1997 Dr. Goodnight bought Midway Airlines and recruited Zeigler to be the CIO.

At the airline, Zeigler led the development the first web-based ticket vending system that ran directly against an airline's inventory. He also was also able to reduce the per passenger on-boarding IT costs from over one dollar to less than 20 cents, saving the airline millions of dollars in operating costs. He built a NOC at RDU and a nationwide radio telephony network that allowed flight operations to have better control, and to have voice contact with our planes directly.

As well as doubling the size of the call center while halving it's cost, Zeigler implemented other systems such as upgraded maintenance, crew scheduling, and time tracking systems.

After Midway, Zeigler joined a startup called Knowledge Vector that was creating a Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination system under contract to the NSA. This was a very early effort to collect information from sensors, news sources, voice recognition and such systems and process that information against rules to determine how to route it for appropriate response.

From 2004 to 2005, Zeigler worked with an angel funding group in Asheville NC to fund tech startups in the Asheville area. Their first venture was Real Food Fast, a company that allowed consumers to order food directly from restaurants that was integrated with their Point of Sale System.

The second venture was Learning Management Systems Inc., which he actually bought. Their service was to provide what would now be called Distance Learning Infrastructure as a Service. They provided the equipment for the classroom, as well as all the technology needed to distribute content to students in real time as well as recorded sessions.

He is still running that company, which has evolved into providing Managed Applications Services to non-profits, and has been working on government contracts providing SAS Support.

In 2008 Zeigler was recruited to work with NAVAIR, who took the Knowledge Vector system and was using it to integrate radar and Maritime ADS data so the US Navy could protect the Coast of Kenya. The system allowed for the interdiction of piracy and human trafficking in the waters between Somalia and Yemen.

Then NAVAIR asked Zeigler to work with a company called Neany in Maryland that was making Drones and Special Surveillance systems used to provide situational awareness for protecting troops in Afghanistan.

Among other things, Zeigler helped Census to reduce the processing time (for a SAS program) used to produce the American Community Survey from 15 days to three days.

He also helped the TriCare group at DOD obtain a DIACPP certification for their SAS Based analytical systems.

For the Last two years Zeigler has been the SAS Solution Architect for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, a component of the Department of Homeland Security where he is working to bring all their various data sources and analytical processes under a single organization umbrella with the SAS System as the primary analytical tool.

For the last four years Zeigler has volunteered as the elected Chairman of The Board for the Swannanoa Valley Medical Center.  This 501c(3) organization was created in the early 1970s to attract medical services to the then rural Swannanoa Valley.  They use their endowment to make grants to local service organizations and operate a small medical facility, they have granted over $900,000.   Zeigler is currently working with the Board of Directors to sell the building, which will add at least $1.5M to their endowment.