Weka is a manufacturer of extremely high-performance, software-defined storage that runs phenomenally well both on-premise and in public clouds including AWS, Azure, Google, and Oracle. I am a senior solutions architect supporting strategic, named customers globally with a particular emphasis on the semiconductor and health/life sciences sectors, plus service providers with Infrastructure-as-a-Service or GPU-as-a-Service offerings relevant to high performance computing or AI/ML workloads.I spend most of my time working with global enterprises to make their "impossible" workloads run better on-premise or migrate them to the cloud. I use my deep experience as a solution architect to gather technical and business requirements and design solutions that incorporate my knowledge of compute, storage, and networking infrastructure, plus my expertise measuring and maximizing application performance. I have personally designed and deployed physical systems using servers from Supermicro, Dell, HPE, Penguin, and others.I have hands-on experience doing the same in all four of the public clouds we currently support.I've created tools for my team to use to size solutions, predict performance, load test clusters, and validate that actual performance meets or exceeds the original design criteria.I've prototyped and validated integrated solutions with third party software such as Perforce Helix Core running on top of Weka clusters, and run multiple industry-performance benchmarks against clusters of various sizes and compositions.I helped develop and productize and object storage solution based on open-source Ceph to work with Weka and provide a cost-optimized storage tier for cool and cold data at petabyte scale that is sufficiently reliable and performant for high performance computing workloads.I have been a consistent advocate for and voice of my customers. I've opened many requests for enhancement on their behalf and resolutely championed their needs.

Worked in a hybrid business/technical role as a subject matter and go-to-market expert supporting the recently launched Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN) service globally. Curated use cases. Advised customers, consulting partners, and NetApp customer-facing teams on recommended design patterns and operational best practices. Coached partners on market opportunities for creating productized solutions and professional services offerings with FSxN as a component. Worked closely with AWS, NetApp, and customer contacts in EMEA, APAC, and the Americas to accelerate cloud migration and application modernization projects. Provided industry-specific go-to-market guidance for the semiconductor, automotive, and health care / life science industries.Being one of only two global BDMs for the new joint offering between NetApp and Amazon allowed me to be involved in product strategy and go to market discussions at the highest level. Every week, I was in meetings that provided me with real world business experiences equivalent to MBA-level seminars and case studies. I interacted directly with NetApp's and Amazon's most strategic customers and helped shape their cloud migration journeys.

I was a very highly technical sales executive.Previously in my career, I had been a hands-on engineer and architect for a wide variety of technologies including servers, storage, networking, security, virtualization, databases, public cloud infrastructure, and more. For my clients, that provided a huge benefit because it was as if I always had a half dozen engineers coming along with me for every meeting and every phone call. I had a solid team of subject matter experts to engage to ensure we collectively got the technical details right, every time. But I didn't need to engage an engineer just to be a translator, thanks to my native fluency in the language of IT department heads, operators, and system architects.That saved time for everyone involved and allowed me and my team to deliver solutions much more quickly and successfully.Thanks to the many brilliant clients I worked with, I also kept up with emerging technologies and evolving best practices. I particularly specialized in helping companies develop digital transformation strategies, modernize application stacks, and migrate complex systems to the cloud.I helped customers with all aspects of their cloud migrations from initial cost estimates and TCO analysis, strategy development and stakeholder buy-in, securing funding, establishing a center of cloud excellence, training and upskilling their staff members, building a landing zone and doing a pilot migration, and progressing through their migration to completion. For companies with established cloud infrastructure, I arranged for infrastructure assessments, cloud finops optimizations, compliance and security audits, and application modernization up to and including complete refactoring to incorporate best practices and maximize the added value derived from having data and applications in the cloud in close proximity to a plethora of ready-to-use services. I've had build-vs-buy-vs-rent discussions far more times than I can count.

I wore many hats at BlueChipTek, and primarily functioned as both the chief technologist and executive leader of the pre-sales engineering and professional services teams.The most rewarding part of my job was helping customers clarify the business and technical constraints of problems they were trying to solve and providing with optimal solutions. As a former director of tech ops myself, I could understand what they were trying to do, empathize with all of the pressures they were under, and coach them on how to influence other stakeholders.I'm proud to say that I am fluent in the sometimes very different languages spoken by customers and vendors. I love translating from one to the other to help get everyone on the same page. The goal, every day, was to add value, solve problems, broker win-win solutions, and let everyone go home satisfied at the end of the day. I was tremendously successful in that endeavor.As a highly valued and trusted advisor, I successfully helped hundreds of Silicon Valley companies break free of the status quo, place big bets on adopting emerging technologies, and improve their business through innovation. Aided by me and my team, ten of my customers grew to full-blown unicorn status with valuations of over a billion dollars.

I stepped down from running Blue Chip Tek's sales engineering team to being an individual contributor so that I could focus on helping customers full time. While in this role, I:Greatly sharpened my ability to listen to problem statements, ask relevant, clarifying questions, and design optimal technical solutions to business problems.Dove deep in many technical topics and became a subject matter expert on servers, storage, networking, virtualization, emerging technologies like all flash storage, software defined storage, and software defined networking, and cloud migrations.Between my technical knowledge, business skills, and rapport with customers, I helped close more sales and brought in more revenue than any engineer in the history of the company. Each year, I broke my own previous record.

Blue Chip Tek was one of the top IT resellers and system integrators on the West Coast. We intentionally hired solutions architects with a decade or more hands-on experience building and running IT environments of their own. We used that first-hand experience to design, recommend, and deliver world class solutions to Silicon Valley startups and household name enterprises alike.Along the way, we learned from our amazing customers (YouTube, Microsoft, and eBay, to name a few) and leveraged the insights we gleaned from each project to continually update and improve the solutions we offered. We initially focused on three principal practices - high-performance networking, data storage, and virtualization. In each area, we tightly partnered with the top manufacturers and at least one innovating up-and-coming vendor disrupting the market. In the networking space, we partnered with Juniper, Cisco, Brocade, Arista, Riverbed, and Blue Coat. Our primary storage partners were EMC, NetApp, and HDS. Our virtualization practice focused on servers from Dell and HP running software from VMware, Citrix, and Quest/Vizioncore. We added a fourth core practice, public cloud, focused on helping customers consume IaaS services from AWS and Azure.My job at this phenomenal company was running the team of super-talented engineers designing and delivering IT solutions for customers. Everyone on the team, including me, did the rigorous training and earned the certifications needed to keep us current on products from each of our technology partners. I personally did frequent hands-on projects to provide our customers the full benefit of our combined experience and to keep my skills current.In parallel, I ran the company's on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure.

Keynote was a Software-as-a-Service company that measured and monitored performance and availability of web sites for thousands of customers. I led the team that managed the back-end systems, networks, and databases powering Keynote's customer-facing services.With all of Keynote's customers relying on us to alert them when their web sites were down and then to help diagnose performance issues and restore optimal service levels, the performance and availability of Keynote's own services were absolutely essential to the company's value proposition. In my seven years on the team, we brought overall availability up from 96% to 99.98%, a 200x reduction in downtime.The biggest factor in that improvement was my introduction of standards and procedures for handing code off from QA to techops, deploying into production, and being prepared to roll back if needed. The second biggest factor was creating and deploying application architectures designed to maximize reliability and availability.I was directly responsible for recruitment, retention, and career development of the system architects and operators on my team across multiple states.As a member of the IT steering committee, I was directly responsible for defining and enforcing the governance corporate framework including ITIL-compliant controls, policies, and procedures. The company's auditors found no significant or material weaknesses during any audit. In addition, multiple customers audited us annually for compliance with their security and confidentiality standards. We passed every time.

As a contractor for PwC Global Technology Solutions (GTS), I played a key role in the design and construction of data centers, server rooms, and wiring closets in PricewaterhouseCoopers facilities throughout the United States.My primary responsibilities were:- Project management oversight for the design, procurement, and implementation phases of routers, switches, UPS systems, and structured cabling portions of dozens of IT infrastructure upgrade projects. -Coordination with program managers responsible for all aspects of corporate office space, project managers responsible for other aspects of projects within the corporate office space portfolio, and many subcontractors tasked with specific aspects of project delivery.- Designing and installing networks using Cisco and Nortel Networks routers and switches.- Specifying, procuring, and overseeing the installation of UPS and air conditioning systems for server rooms and wiring closets around the country.- Designing and overseeing the installation of voice and data structured cabling systems in offices and server rooms.- Design and install keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switching systems for server rooms.Doing that successfully involved meeting with PwC managing partners to gather current requirements and growth forecasts, proposing solutions that met needs while fitting budgets, working with architects and construction teams, and managing up to seven simultaneous projects around the country at any one time.Travel frequently involved being in three cities in four days to attend project coordination meetings in person.

Sega was one of the giants of the video game industry when I joined in 1993.I started as a System Specialist in the Quality Control division doing a combination of departmental level IT work and business forecasts. I soon moved into the MIS team supporting Windows and Macintosh users, Novell Netware servers, an IBM AS400, and Sun Solaris systems. Early on, I led a project to build Sega's first Windows NT servers. I was soon promoted internally to lead the team of IT personnel responsible for all desktops, laptops, servers, routers, and switches. I enjoyed being an escalation contact for troubleshooting all types of computer problems on an incredibly diverse range of platforms.

My service in the Marines taught me how to stay calm during a crisis and remain focused on accomplishing objectives. That has helped me tremendously throughout my career by enabling me to make steady progress even when under extreme pressure.The Marines also taught me a great deal about how to lead teams through challenging situations, build trust, and keep everyone focused on accomplishing the task at hand.Led teams of 2 to 26 people.During Desert Storm, I was stationed in the port of Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia.