Bob Close Email & Phone Number

Morristown, New Jersey, Us

Provided cradle-to-grave product management. • Engaged with both account teams and customers to better understand their issues and needs. • Created and managed backlogs.• Defined and started executing strategy for single administration solutions across all of Avaya’s product portfolio.• Drove direction and led discussions on transforming Aura to be a more cloud-friendly suite of applications.• Delivered the current release of Avaya Control Manager in support of both Oceana and CC-Elite contact centers, providing a path for customer upgrades.• Supplied multiple releases of System Manager, Session Manager, and Device Adaptor in support of the Aura platform, delivering customer-requested features and functionality.• Led Avaya’s market offering for Next Generation 911 – NG911. Engaged with Account Teams to ensure successful deployment of trials into Canadian Public Safety market.• Issued multiple releases in support of the US Federal Government for both the Aura platform, as well as the AS5300 with important OS updates, as well as conformance to current DoD DISA STIGs, enabling JITC certification.

San Francisco, California, Us

Provide pre-sales technical support to both Enterprise customers and global Service Providers/System Integrators for Unified Communications Expert (UCX). • Prepared and delivered a 1-week UCX training course for Technical Alliance Managers.• Delivered presentations and product demonstrations to multiple Service Providers and System Integrators. • Installed UCX at customer premise in London UK and trained them on its use.• Deployed an SD-WAN solution for internal Technical Alliance Manager familiarization.

San Jose, Ca, Us

•Coordinated with multiple Business Units to ensure that Cisco had a deployable Unified Communications system release 9.0; specifically, authored multiple user stories and input them into Rally (agile development tool) to ensure that all UC 9.0 products supported both the latest Cisco UCS servers as well as VMware vSphere.•Authored and presented the Cisco RFP response for Enterprise Connect “PBX RFP – Who Delivers The Goods” for 2010, 2011 and 2012. Strategized with multiple Business Units to ensure that the best possible Cisco solution was presented to this large group of customers.

San Jose, Ca, Us

•Primary driver for increasing solution scalability based on strong customer demand for large-scale deployments. Increased the number of supported devices per server resulting in an overall increase for Megacluster deployments of 20K devices i.e. maximum size increased from 60K to 80K devices. This change in scalability resulted in multiple customers consolidating their existing clusters into smaller groups thereby saving costs in both hardware as well as ongoing operational expenditure. Member of the Megacluster Approval Core Team – advised System Engineers on Megacluster deployment practices and provided input to Product Management on application approval.•Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) scalability improvements. Member of a small team that delivered major improvements to CTI scalability for Communications Manager. Advised on testing scenarios, implementation within sizing tool as well as revising applicable chapters of UC Solution Reference Network Design (UC SRND) guide. Many customers benefited from these improvements, as well as removing deployment barriers for soft-phone deployments.•Product Manager for the Rapid Deployment Method Customization Tool. Solicited Cisco UC Gold Partners on their requirements and evaluated ongoing viability of tool. Multiple enhancements were delivered in-line with supporting later Communications Manager releases.•Played a key role in delivering QSIG functionality on Communications Manager including input to Product Management, development testing at a UK customer site and supporting certification testing effort at Siemens Vienna. Implementation of this standard allowed Cisco to become the number one vendor in the IP Telephony market.•Responsible for supporting both customers and field organizations with various aspects of IP Telephony design related issues. Presented to customers during Executive Briefing Center visits as well as at numerous Cisco Networkers and CIPTUG events.