| CurtCo Media
CurtCo publishes over 15 major magazines, among them are The Robb Report, Show Boats, San Diego Magazine and many others all focused on the luxury lifestyle clientele. Prior to my coming on-board the IT infrastructure was in need of a full refresh, there were major systems that were failing and costs had begun to spiral out of control. I immediately reworked the team, adding a true help desk and creating an infrastructure team. At the same time a comprehensive IT plan was developed which called for a retirement of 90% of the existing infrastructure and replacing it with higher performing infrastructure for what turns out to be close to what the old equipment was worth on the used market. All the LANs were upgraded to Gigabit on fully managed switches and 90% of the servers were replaced with Dell 2850 or Dell 1850 servers with a reduction of 60% in the total number of servers. The WAN was a VPN connecting 12 offices and after testing the security I commissioned an outside review and it confirmed my findings, that there was virtually no security between the Internet and any of the offices. A complete rebuilding of the security systems was accomplished within 30 days and based on a follow-up audit the WAN was made fully secure by the rebuild. Software licensing was out of compliance, I negotiated an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft which provided 100% coverage and actually resulted in a savings of close to $400,000 over the next 3 years. The entire infrastructure upgrade was completed by March 2006 and all core business systems were being reviewed with the replacement of the existing CRM system underway. There were no major system losses since the replacement of the infrastructure began in December 2005.
Lowe Enterprises
When I came to Lowe Enterprises there was a very minimal information technology infrastructure. There was no E-mail, no inter office connectivity, no standard systems, an inadequate accounting system running on an old AS/400 E35 with version 1.0 of OS400 and no inter office connectivity. Along with addressing the lack of technology the entire IT staff had to be replaced with competent technicians. Within the first 18 months I and the team I assembled replaced every system with standardized PCs from Dell, implemented company wide e-mail (Exchange), connected all offices with a Wide Area Network (WAN), replaced the old Accounting system with a two systems, one for corporate management (Clarus) and one to run our commercial property division (Yardi). This was done while Lowe was growing more than 40% per year in revenue and staff. And over the next 7 years Lowe Enterprises came to be seen as a leader in technology within the real estate industry.
Tenant Connect
While at Lowe Enterprises I proposed that Lowe utilize its investment in Commercial Real-Estate by deploying High Speed Internet Access and Voice services to the tenants. To deliver these services a division was formed, Tenant Connect, LLC was the company developed after the merger of SASSCOM with the Lowe Enterprises division. I was the General Manager for the company along with the former president of SASSCOM. All technology, Sales and Marketing reported to me with voice, customer service and back office services reporting to the old president of SASSCOM. We had over 3000 customers in commercial buildings with our CLEC license in California, Texas and Colorado. When the exit strategy became less optimistic due to the market downturn Tenant Connect was sold to Eureka GGN, Inc. I ran this company while at the same time running the entire Lowe Enterprises IT department.
Seven7 Jeans
I managed the ERP solution from selection to implementation for Seven Jeans. Seven Jeans has a full line of fashion jeans, tops and accessories for women. They are featured in Layne Bryant and other major stores. They needed a complete systems assessment, identification, selection and implementation. They selected me to manage the entire project which included training for their Domestic and International Offices. The international offices were in Hong Kong and China. The system selected was a vertical package designed for the clothing industry, Apparel Magic, which has modules for design, production, shipping, factoring and full accounting functions. All the modules were implemented and all the staff was trained.
Phillips Van Heusen
I designed and implemented their multi-protocol network that spanned 26 countries including major operations in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, India, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and over 1000 locations within the USA. The network I inherited was a simple IBM SNA network that only connected a few locations. Within 18 months we had deployed a voice and data network that carried IP, IPX, SNA and Voice world wide. Along with the deployment of the network I was responsible for the deployment of the new corporate E-mail system which I and my team selected (MS-Mail). All training for the over 2000 associates was conducted by my team all within the 18 month project timeframe.
IBM Global Services & Kodak
I was approached by IBM Global Services to manage the Stabilization of the Kodak SNA (Mainframe Connectivity) Environment for the Kodak Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), the largest MAN in the world. IBM Global Services required me to to diagnose and repair the Kodak network where the user community was daily loosing connectivity to the mainframe and midrange systems that were the heart of the Kodak environment. I found the problem, directed the repair project and interfaced with Kodak senior management to explain why it took me team less than 2 weeks to identify the problem and less than 2 months to completely repair it when IBM Global Services had been working on it for over a year.
The Reserve
I designed of the infrastructure for The Reserve private community in Palm Desert. The Reserve is one of the first smart communities designed in Southern California. It was designated a “Smart Community” by GTE and was GTE’s first such project. I designed the entire communications infrastructure and in association with Eagles Soar communications negotiated all the relevant contracts for the project
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