Originally hired as a software engineer, my initial responsibilities were to learn the technical ins and outs of Apptix’s automated billing and provisioning system (Odin OSA) in order to integrate third-party, cloud-based and self-hosted software and services. Once the integration methodology was proven, an additional developer was hired to assist in integrating the backlog of products into OSA. As director of software engineering, I led a development team as well as a QA team, while continuing to personally remain engaged in software development. We developed a massive APS-based plugin for other companies using OSA (that didn’t want to host Exchange themselves) to connect to our OSA for the provisioning of Exchange and Exchange-related services.We built a core onboarding engine that was leveraged to migrate tens of thousands of mailboxes onto our platform. This brought about our ability to bring on many partners which were getting squeezed out of the Hosted Exchange business, due to its competitive nature, creating a mutual “win.” This allowed Apptix to remain a market leader in the Hosted Exchange world well into the Office 365 era.As VP, along with previous responsibilities, I sat as a member of the executive team and was one of two trusted members on technological business discussions and decisions. By architecting and quickly implementing a system to facilitate the movement of customers, I was a key player in the $22.5 million sale of a dying segment of customers to GoDaddy. The months that followed the GoDaddy transaction, much of my focus was on working with the leadership team on the company’s next move. M&A activity was the obvious need. Once we entered negotiations with Fusion, much of my time was spent working on diligence activities, combing through and reporting on mountains of data, and maintaining course while shorthanded from the necessary reductions from the GoDaddy sale.

MonsterCommerce was an industry leader in ecommerce and they were growing very quickly. Barely able to keep up with systems' maintenance and updates due to this growth, I was hired and I developed a systems management framework and a plan to attack the issues starting with the most important - the ones that impacted our customers. This framework’s first use updated the entire customer base of ecommerce sites in 30 minutes – down from over 6 hours. I built a team that embraced this automation, streamlined many processes, and we could maintain headcount through our company's growth.I reported to the CTO, but worked directly with the CEO on many occasions, especially in crisis situations. I quickly earned the trust of the rest of the senior management team needed to be able to effectively carry out the duties as Director of Systems Operations. After a year, the company was sold to Network Solutions. The purchase by Network Solutions brought about a great deal of integration opportunities and an investment in a new architecture for our ecommerce product. Working with the engineering teams, we designed a tiered architecture that improved performance and lowered per-unit costs. Leveraging our existing systems management framework, integration was relatively simple. Load testing of this new platform showed need for code & database improvements. Working with the engineers, we resolved the inefficiencies. I also managed the necessary cross-functional teamwork. We needed to matrix resources during the lean times created by a hiring freeze, natural attrition, and layoffs. Cutting across the silos to achieve success in an efficient manner was rewarding to say the least. This positioning is critical to the survival of the company during the current economic downturn. In the end, I'm certain this increased efficiency will accelerate the company's growth upon return to normal conditions.

MonsterCommerce was an industry leader in ecommerce and they were growing very quickly. Barely able to keep up with systems' maintenance and updates due to this growth, I was hired and I developed a systems management framework and a plan to attack the issues starting with the most important - the ones that impacted our customers. This framework’s first use updated the entire customer base of ecommerce sites in 30 minutes – down from over 6 hours. I built a team that embraced this automation, streamlined many processes, and we could maintain headcount through our company's growth.I reported to the CTO, but worked directly with the CEO on many occasions, especially in crisis situations. I quickly earned the trust of the rest of the senior management team needed to be able to effectively carry out the duties as Director of Systems Operations. After a year, the company was sold to Network Solutions. The purchase by Network Solutions brought about a great deal of integration opportunities and an investment in a new architecture for our ecommerce product. Working with the engineering teams, we designed a tiered architecture that improved performance and lowered per-unit costs. Leveraging our existing systems management framework, integration was relatively simple. Load testing of this new platform showed need for code & database improvements. Working with the engineers, we resolved the inefficiencies. I also managed the necessary cross-functional teamwork. We needed to matrix resources during the lean times created by a hiring freeze, natural attrition, and layoffs. Cutting across the silos to achieve success in an efficient manner was rewarding to say the least. This positioning is critical to the survival of the company during the current economic downturn. In the end, I'm certain this increased efficiency will accelerate the company's growth upon return to normal conditions.

Started at AGE as an NT administrator as the only team member with MSSQL experience. The company's lack of any kind of server / workstation management system presented a great opportunity. At the request of my supervisor, I took the lead on bringing Microsoft SMS 1.2 into the company's headquarters in St. Louis, serving over 6,000 workstations and about 100 NT servers. Quickly following the completion of the SMS 1.2 rollout, a new effort was afoot to upgrade AGE's email system. SMS was to be the deployment agent for Microsoft Outlook. This coincided with the release of SMS version 2.0, and the Systems Management Team was born, and I served as the technical lead. We took this opportunity to upgrade our installation to SMS 2.0, and had great success with the migration to Exchange / Outlook. Following the migration; I began to realize the potential of SMS. Expanding upon the out-of-the-box functionality, by truly understanding its underlying architecture, my team and I provided asset information never previously possessed by AGE. This proved to be time- and money-saving for the company, as this important information was used for end-of-life management as well as hardware and O/S upgrades. As time passed, the success of SMS led to its company-wide deployment. My team and I rolled out over 650 secondary sites to our retail branches in a period of five weeks, to give us a client base of over 23,000 managed systems – the largest deployment at the time. A. G. Edwards continued to use SMS as its standard for software distribution, remote control, hardware inventory, and software inventory.