Chris Cassens Email & Phone Number

Chicago, IL, US

Chicago, Illinois, US

Chicago, Illinois, US

As the Senior Director IT Operations, I lead the development and implementation of a strategic IT Architecture and Infrastructure plan, aimed at facilitating the company's growth and global expansion efforts. My responsibilities include crafting a forward-looking multi-year technology roadmap to anticipate capacity needs, schedule vendor upgrades, and.

Chicago, Illinois, US

• Lead the IT Infrastructure team to deliver solutions for colleges and universities to reduce administrative costs while transforming the academic experience.
• Design, deploy and maintain SD-WAN and SD-Network with Cisco DNA.
• Lead Team in Effort to consolidate legacy Enterprise MPLS Network to new IPSec failover Architecture saving 75% of secondary circuit costs while increasing bandwidth from 10Mb to 100Mb for 20 Campus locations.
• Implemented corporate policy for operationalizing server patching to increase security posture and lower risk to the organization from unpatched threats, while freeing up team resources for increased efficiency.
• Executed on Disaster Recover testing to prove out RTO and RPO objectives to minimize risk to the business.
• Lead initiative for enterprise security assessments and penetration testing bringing company into alignment with PCI, FERPA, and HIPPA regulations.

Chicago, Illinois, US

• Designed and Developed disaster recovery procedures to protect data in the event of loss of production systems and service to limit downtime for critical applications and services.
• Expanded current infrastructure to accommodate new business and requirements off of previously designed architecture that had expansion goals in the design.
• Migrated Enterprise Exchange hybrid 2007-2010 environment which consisted of +3000 accounts for all of TCS and Affiliates to Office 365 delivering more robust uptime and increased productivity tools for collaboration.
• Migrated Student population from 5 separate google apps environments to Office 365 for over 15,000 email accounts. This lead to simplified management and account provisioning automation.
• Redesigned and upgraded corporate wireless nationwide from legacy coverage model to density model increasing quality and capacity for faculty, staff, and student devices.
• Lead transitioning team for new TCS Affiliates to migrate servers, email, and data to TCS Enterprise Data Center.

Chicago, Illinois, US

• Deployed new Data Center infrastructure utilizing FlexPod architecture with NetApp SAN, Cisco UCS and Nexus fabric, and VMWare Hyper-visor. The Migration of production data was focused around providing reliability and.
• Conducted enterprise wide remediation's that led to performance and reliability of critical infrastructure. Remediation's included switching upgrades to new iOS and security standards. Retiring units out of contract.
• Upgraded Edge infrastructure to include new Cisco ASA firewalls, and DMZ architecture, also implementing public BGP with redundant providers to give automation in fail over.
• Redesigned existing infrastructure Dell R710 Servers and Dell PS400xv SAN architecture to increase performance and expanded network security. This helped to stabilize the network by having increased throughput for.
• Developed system images that allowed automation of the deployment process. This process has allowed for increased efficiency with system setup and deployments.
• Worked with a team to conduct a Forest Migration in our Active Directory and helped design, clean up, and consolidate the system to allow for a more efficient logical structure of the systems affiliates and.

Chicago, Illinois, US

• Reconfigured VMWare architecture for HA and fault tolerance
• Deployed Enterprise patching solution for TCS and Affiliates to strengthen corporate security posture and stability.
• Redesigned Enterprise files shares to utilize Microsoft DFS to simplify management and deployment of data to TCS and Affiliates.
• Upgraded AD Domain from 2003 to 2008 R2.

Chicago, Illinois, US

• Developed system images that allowed automation of the deployment process. This process has allowed for increased efficiency with system setup and deployments.
• Worked with a team to conduct a Forest Migration in our Active Directory and helped design, clean up, and consolidate the system to allow for a more efficient logical structure of the systems affiliates and.
• Worked with testing and development with Windows 7 and Office 2010 Migrations.

Joliet, IL, US

Provided Windows Systems Administration support for casino operations. I was responsible for help desk support, system troubleshooting and repair, daily closing for the casino financial systems and support for the Illinois Gaming Board business systems. Automated the manual process of reporting regulatory compliance errors by designing and implementing a.

Laredo, Texas, US

I was responsible for monitoring backup schedules, maintaining servers, and providing support for desktop, and Voice Over IP phone systems. Helped resolve Quality of Service issues between remote service providers and our network by working with our Internet Service Providers. Optimized Network performance and coordinated with multiple locations for WAN.

Novi, MI, US

Assembly of APD ProductsShipping and Receiving Unit Programming and Testing

Kalamazoo, MI, US

I worked with a team to help other students and faculty with software support such as program installations, device configurations, malicious software removal, and user account support. Ethernet and Wireless Networking support E-Mail Support for VMS and Unix systems and Client SoftwareTroubleshooting for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systemsSKILLS /.

Dearborn, MI, US

I designed Distribution images for planned expansions and upgrades for the campus. These images streamlined deployment and allowed for projects to complete ahead of schedule.Staged and Deployed PC's to new lab locations for expansions, which allows students access to computer resources and allows teachers the ability to use computers for student projects.

Bachelor Of Applied Science, Computer Studies; Network Systems

Computer Information Systems