Director/VP of IT Operations or Systems Administration Resume

Title
Director/VP of IT Operations or Systems Administration

Primary Skills
I am looking to obtain a position in the Information Technology industry as a Director/VP of IT Operations, Systems A...

Location
US-MI-Howell (will consider relocating)

Posted
Jan-21-09


VICE PRESIDENT/DIRECTOR of IT OPERATIONS * DIRECTOR of ENTERPRISE SERVICES * CTO
Experienced Information Technology professional with 16 years in the IT industry, specializing in 24x7 data center operations, Linux/Unix and Windows systems administration, office automation, project management, and software development.

Earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Michigan State University, an MBA from Eastern Michigan University, and an ITIL V3 Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management.

Proficient in managing $20M budgets covering staff salaries and expenses, hardware purchases and leases, network circuits, managed services, and maintenance agreements/contracts for servers and facilities equipment.

Accomplished manager and project leader with extensive experience in project portfolio and resource management, leading large and small projects, coordinating data center consolidations and office closures, supporting satellite offices and mobile employees, establishing objectives, developing strategic plans, forecasting annual budgets and project plans, making organizational changes to deliver cost effective services across the enterprise, delivering presentations and reports to upper management, and making timely decisions.

Excellent leadership skills demonstrated by adapting quickly to changing business needs, motivating and inspiring teams to meet aggressive deadlines, and a solid history of successfully achieving desired system availability and performance targets.

Exceptional reputation for developing future leaders and delivering results under budget and ahead of schedule.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
ProQuest LLC - Ann Arbor, MI 1992 - 2008
The company provides seamless access to and navigation of more than 125 billion digital pages of the world's scholarship.

Director, Information Technology Operations 2003 - 2008
Directed 40 staff (including 8 managers) that provided 24x7 data center operations, Linux/Unix and Windows administration, NAS and SAN storage administration, backup and recovery, network infrastructure, and information security services.

Strategic Planning
* Developed a strategic plan to replace an aging Data Center facility.
o Analyzed a complete managed services solution with a top-tier provider, reviewed purchase and lease options with local real estate agents, and developed a greenfield build scenario with an accomplished data center design firm.
o Based on business requirements, cost of each option, and other factors, the Board of Directors approved the recommendation to build an $18M data center facility near our newly built headquarters in Ann Arbor.
* Increased staff efficiency while reducing headcount and expenses transforming the organization to utilize the 24x7 on-site Operators as 1st level support and on-call Administrators as purely 2nd level support.
o Operators improved from handling 0% to 45% of all incidents in 4 years.
o Administrators were able to focus on significant enhancements to patch management, disaster recovery planning, information security, storage administration, and a major data center relocation project.

Leadership
* Developed IT strategic plans, annual operating and capital expense budgets, and company-wide project plans as a member of the management team making overall decisions for the company.
* Aligned IT department objectives with business-level critical success factors, in cooperation with other members of the IT Leadership team. Further developed department objectives into team and individual goals.
* Negotiated with several top tier managed services and information technology solutions providers to develop cost effective solutions for delivering data center operations and facilities services to the ProQuest business.
o Sourced backup and recovery services. Reduced expenses by 44%, saving $100K in the first year and $350K over a 3 year period.

Project Management
* Expanded data center power and cooling capacity to accommodate rapid business growth by relocating the NOC from the raised floor to adjacent office space. The solution to add an additional UPS and compromise with non-redundant cooling was significantly less expensive than a short-term hosting engagement ($165K one-time expense + minimal ongoing expenses versus $330K annual spend + $35K setup charge).
* Managed data center consolidation in Toronto, ON. Operated data center remotely until divestiture of product line was completed. Renegotiated contracts for telephony, data circuits, and office automation support.

Staff Development
* Instituted a process for soliciting anonymous 360 and peer-review feedback for all managers and supervisors.
* Collaborated with all managers to review recommended department appraisals, merit increases, and promotions to ensure fair and equitable ratings, appropriate distribution of pay increases, and assess promotional opportunities throughout the organization.

Project Portfolio and Resource Management
* Established time accounting throughout the organization to analyze time spent on projects, day-to-day operations, incident management, and other important tasks. Used the data to allocate IT costs across various business units, concentrate continuous improvement efforts on deficient processes and procedures, and enhance resource allocation forecasts.

Director, Enterprise Technology and Services 2006 - 2007
Directed 15 staff that oversaw the procurement, deployment, and support of personal computing devices and services for 1,000 employees in 12 offices and a mobile sales force across the US and Canada.

* Implemented a global strategy by unifying the team with the UK team providing similar services to offices and sales staff outside of North America.
* Negotiated new handheld device and cell phone contract. Saved $60K on $300K annual spend, while deploying more company-provided devices, increasing functionality (e-mail, calendaring, Internet access) based on feedback from end-user surveys and focus groups, and reducing the number of service providers.
* Reorganized the team to improve service delivery and customer satisfaction, increase focus on business needs and requirements, apply industry best practices in support and project methodologies, and provide training opportunities for staff.
* Achieved a desired level of 50% turnover by increasing team and staff performance expectations.

Acting CTO, Bigchalk Division 2003
Directed day-to-day IT operations and all ongoing software development projects for a $25M acquisition.

* Managed shutdown of the acquired data center.
* Ensured timely completion of software development projects and knowledge transfer to ProQuest staff.
* Worked with IT Management and HR to determine staff synergies, candidates eligible for retention and relocation, retention bonuses, termination dates, and separation benefits for 30 staff.
* Saved $500K in expenses on a $3M planned spend.

Senior Manager, Operations Support and Services 2002 - 2003
Managed 3 teams responsible for Linux/Unix administration, backup and recovery, and application support.
Senior Manager, Online Operations 2000 - 2002
Manager 1999 - 2000
Senior Administrator 1998 - 1999
Provided and managed 24x7 on-call application support for the company's electronic product lines.

Senior Software Engineer, Systems and Product Development 1997 - 1998
Software Engineer III 1995 - 1997
Software Engineer II 1994 - 1995
Programmer Analyst 1992 - 1994
Held multiple positions of increasing responsibility for various components of the ProQuest flagship product.

EDUCATION
Master of Business Administration - Eastern Michigan University
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science - Michigan State University

CERTIFICATIONS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
ITIL V3 Foundation Certification - Examination Institute for Information Science (2008)
Situational Leadership II - The Ken Blanchard Companies (2005)
Security Leadership Essentials for Managers - The SANS Institute (2005)

ACHIEVEMENTS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Strategic Planning
* Created a strategic plan for improving IT Service Management (ITSM) throughout the organization.
o Reviewed best practice frameworks for providing ITSM (e.g. ITIL).
o Performed self-assessments of incident management and change management processes.
o Produced an implementation plan for incorporation into the company-wide project portfolio.

Leadership
* As Manager of the newly created Online Operations team that provided 24x7 on-call support for the ProQuest flagship product:
o Successfully recruited and interviewed candidates for the entire team of 8 positions.
o Expanded the scope of responsibilities from the flagship product to all customer-facing online products.
o Met or exceeded Service Level Agreements for performance and availability.
* Served as Change Control Administrator, overseeing the approval of changes to the production environment.

Organizational Design
* Orchestrated numerous organizational changes that streamlined IT service management processes, adapted to changing business requirements, and provided development opportunities for staff.

Project Management
* Consolidated 2 data centers (located in Hopkinton, MA and Ann Arbor, MI) hosting components of the ProQuest flagship product. Managed 30 staff from 8 different teams, completing the project 1 month ahead of schedule. Saved the company $1.5M in the first 6 months and $7.5M over 4 years.
* Managed the replacement of over 350 leased desktops and laptops, a company-wide upgrade to Office 2007, and an initiative to increase security of the environment by restricting user privileges on desktops and laptops.
* Coordinated 12 application teams for a major project to migrate 8 Oracle databases from Sequent to Sun. Ensured all database dependent applications were tested in development, pre-production, and production environments, contributed to the overall project planning and scheduling effort, and managed open issues.

Project Portfolio and Resource Management
* Restructured the Enterprise Technology and Services team's project portfolio based on resource constraints, skill sets, size and scope of projects, and business priorities. Introduced the team to industry best practices in project methodologies designed to address run-on projects, ill-defined project scopes, scope creep, and a number of projects that were behind schedule and over budget.
* Conducted monthly project and task reviews to ensure that milestones were being achieved, priorities were set appropriately, resources were available, and department staff had visibility into ongoing activities.

Staff Development
* Pioneered a succession plan by working with team managers to identify and evaluate the next generation of leaders in the organization. Provided formal mentoring and development opportunities to the individuals, all of whom have gone on to become leaders throughout the broader IT organization.

Information Security
* Created a dedicated Information Security Office to manage intrusion detection and prevention, desktop and laptop security, development and enforcement of IT policies, regulatory compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley 404, Payment Card Industry, HIPAA), investigations, forensics, chain-of-custody, and other security matters.
* Ensured security and operations personnel attended security training sponsored by the SANS Institute.
* Provided company-wide user awareness training on several security topics related to both business and personal use of computers and the Internet.

Software Development
* Managed several production releases for the ProQuest flagship product.
* Key designer and developer for the ProQuest search engine.
* Experienced with design, development, testing, implementation, and production support of search and indexing technologies, ASCII and Image document storage and retrieval, credit card transactions, web applications, integration of third-party applications, and CD-ROM mastering.
* Authored technical and design specifications, engineering verification and capacity test plans, operations manuals, design proposals, and system performance reports.
* Experienced with C, ksh, perl, and html.

Certifications
See above


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