Don Estep Email & Phone Number

Verizon Communications

In the Network Traffic Systems - IT group, responsible for supporting a project to consolidate my former Long Distance Mediation System into a larger similar system. This project was the result of the merger of Verizon and former MCI. I attended all project meetings, provided input to project plans/schedules and testing strategies, hired a former employee as a contractor to translate code into requirements, translated code into requirements, assigned tasks to my former team mates to provide… Show more In the Network Traffic Systems - IT group, responsible for supporting a project to consolidate my former Long Distance Mediation System into a larger similar system. This project was the result of the merger of Verizon and former MCI. I attended all project meetings, provided input to project plans/schedules and testing strategies, hired a former employee as a contractor to translate code into requirements, translated code into requirements, assigned tasks to my former team mates to provide information and data to the project, and interfaced with the development team in India as well as the project team in the northeast and northwest US. I was a vital part of this project as I was the only person remaining who had historical business knowledge of the application since its inception. With that knowledge and my contribution, we were able to significantly shorten the timeline of this project. Show less

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

In the Front Door Architecture group – responsible for supporting the contract and Service Level Agreement for a customer that purchased properties and a turnkey billing system from Verizon. Worked with various Verizon application Directors, Managers and their teams to ensure that the customer's software updates and documentation were provided on schedule per the contract. Managed multiple Infrastructure projects concurrently to ensure that the customer maintained the same OS, middleware and… Show more In the Front Door Architecture group – responsible for supporting the contract and Service Level Agreement for a customer that purchased properties and a turnkey billing system from Verizon. Worked with various Verizon application Directors, Managers and their teams to ensure that the customer's software updates and documentation were provided on schedule per the contract. Managed multiple Infrastructure projects concurrently to ensure that the customer maintained the same OS, middleware and hardware levels as Verizon. This entailed conducting conference calls and Webex sessions bringing the development teams together with the corresponding customer teams to assist the customer with the upgrades. Show less

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

In the Billing SLA Team - worked with various Verizon development teams to educate them and to ensure that they adhered to the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the company mentioned above and followed proper procedures and timelines for working Incident Reports (IR's) as well as creating change activity (CA’s) records in Verizon's internal change management system and attaching required documentation to said CA’s. Assisted the development teams with creating Release Notes and ensured that… Show more In the Billing SLA Team - worked with various Verizon development teams to educate them and to ensure that they adhered to the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the company mentioned above and followed proper procedures and timelines for working Incident Reports (IR's) as well as creating change activity (CA’s) records in Verizon's internal change management system and attaching required documentation to said CA’s. Assisted the development teams with creating Release Notes and ensured that they completed documents following established standards per the Service Level Agreement. Show less

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

Responsible for all development, maintenance and production systems activities for two major high-revenue, high-visibility applications. My project management duties included planning, staffing and scheduling of all project activities and resources. My team managed/maintained all test environments and servers including development, integration, user acceptance and production staging. My team also managed the production environments/servers. All test and production machines were migrated to… Show more Responsible for all development, maintenance and production systems activities for two major high-revenue, high-visibility applications. My project management duties included planning, staffing and scheduling of all project activities and resources. My team managed/maintained all test environments and servers including development, integration, user acceptance and production staging. My team also managed the production environments/servers. All test and production machines were migrated to virtual servers utilizing VMWare. I interfaced with all auditors including those working on Sarbanes Oxley audits. I was responsible for all production support activities including ensuring quality and integrity of production services and system outputs, maintaining timeliness of processing, scheduling release installations and software, middleware and OS upgrades, participating in all crisis management bridge calls when they occurred, ensuring production support coverage and scheduling team members for 24x365 pager rotation. I was also responsible for the Security of our data, applications and user access to our Web applications and to our servers as I was the designated company Security Data Trustee for our applications.My applications were client server/Intel based utilizing both MS SQL Server and Oracle DBMS, MS Visual Basic, MS Visual C++, C#, .Net, ASP, Borland C++, Powerbuilder, and Taps (3rd party rules engine software). There were also some COBOL programs running on two IBM mainframes. I was nominated and received three excellence awards and numerous other awards for bringing in projects on schedule and within budget as well as for serving my users in a highly professional manner with urgency. Show less

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

Responsible for systems that consisted of several small applications which allowed GTE to provide integrated billing for various products such as local phone service, internet, paging, cellular and long distance. The applications were client server utilizing MS Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, Oracle, Powerbuilder and Borland C++. The systems operated on a Microsoft NT 4.0 platform. These systems were originally developed outside of IT in Dallas. My team was tasked with bringing these systems into… Show more Responsible for systems that consisted of several small applications which allowed GTE to provide integrated billing for various products such as local phone service, internet, paging, cellular and long distance. The applications were client server utilizing MS Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, Oracle, Powerbuilder and Borland C++. The systems operated on a Microsoft NT 4.0 platform. These systems were originally developed outside of IT in Dallas. My team was tasked with bringing these systems into IT and into an IT datacenter for standard production operations. As Project Lead my responsibilities included project estimating, planning, and staffing; directing activities of team members, ensuring product quality, and working with upper management on the departmental budget. I spent several weeks in Dallas learning the applications and planning their migration to Tampa. Show less

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

Usage Processing System. This system processes, edits and rates long distance messages before passing them on to the billing system for billing. The system ran on MVS/ESA IBM mainframes using DB2 and COBOL II. As Systems Engineer, I estimated projects, developed high level and detailed designs, coded/tested/documented programs, and participated in quality inspections. Utilized QMF, SPUFI, Platinum and IBM Utilities, Expediter, Fileaid, Fileaid for DB2, Syncsort, VSAM and Endevor.

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

Other Carrier Systems - This system provides PAR (Purchase of Accounts Receivable) statements to various long distance carriers. The system ran on MVS/ESA IBM mainframes using DB2, COBOL II and CICS. As Project Lead/Systems Engineer my responsibilities included estimating, planning and staffing projects, leading activities of team members, ensuring product quality, developing high level and detailed designs, coding/testing/documenting COBOL DB2 and CICS programs, and leading/participating… Show more Other Carrier Systems - This system provides PAR (Purchase of Accounts Receivable) statements to various long distance carriers. The system ran on MVS/ESA IBM mainframes using DB2, COBOL II and CICS. As Project Lead/Systems Engineer my responsibilities included estimating, planning and staffing projects, leading activities of team members, ensuring product quality, developing high level and detailed designs, coding/testing/documenting COBOL DB2 and CICS programs, and leading/participating in quality inspections. Utilized QMF, SPUFI, Platinum and IBM Utilities, Expediter, Fileaid, Fileaid for DB2, Syncsort, VSAM and Endevor. This department was outsourced to IBM. I was asked to stay with the project to train IBM to take over these systems. As an incentive, GTE placed me in their retooling program which involved 6 weeks of intensive full-time (up to 80 hours per week) training on C, Unix and Client Server. Show less

Greater Atlanta Area

Contel was a major telecommunications company with properties that spread across the United States, mostly in rural America. Contel was acquired by GTE in 1991. I worked on multiple systems as outlined below:Carrier Services - This system provided various reporting and processing systems for AT&T such as MA-9 and BAC. As Project Lead, my responsibilities included estimating, planning, staffing and managing development and maintenance projects. These systems ran on IBM… Show more Contel was a major telecommunications company with properties that spread across the United States, mostly in rural America. Contel was acquired by GTE in 1991. I worked on multiple systems as outlined below:Carrier Services - This system provided various reporting and processing systems for AT&T such as MA-9 and BAC. As Project Lead, my responsibilities included estimating, planning, staffing and managing development and maintenance projects. These systems ran on IBM mainframes under MVS utilizing VSAM/QSAM and DB2.BIS (Billing Information System) - Contel was developing a new telephone billing system to replace three older systems running in their three regions/data centers. I worked on the Usage Processing and the Payment Processing Systems. As Project Lead and Systems Analyst, my responsibilities included gathering requirements from end users, high level design, and detailed design. Show less

Greater Atlanta Area

This was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sara Lee Corp.I served as Technical Support Analyst and Systems Analyst and Programmer Analyst. I provided technical support to Systems Support, Data Base Administration, Operations and Applications Processing departments. Installed and maintained third party software packages, system subroutine library programs and command library. Developed productivity tools for users. Maintained DMIV-TP system software. Provided/maintained system resource… Show more This was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sara Lee Corp.I served as Technical Support Analyst and Systems Analyst and Programmer Analyst. I provided technical support to Systems Support, Data Base Administration, Operations and Applications Processing departments. Installed and maintained third party software packages, system subroutine library programs and command library. Developed productivity tools for users. Maintained DMIV-TP system software. Provided/maintained system resource statistical reporting. Provided backup support for operating system and Communications network (hardware/software) maintenance. Designed, programmed and implemented complex computer systems. Provided assistance in the supervision and training of subordinates. The systems ran on Honeywell DPS-88 mainframes utilizing DMIV (network database, similar to IBM’s IDMS), DMIV-TP (transaction processor, similar to IBM’s CICS), COBOL and various utilities. Show less

Wheeling, West Virginia Area

Started out as Computer Operator and progressively increased levels of responsibility to become responsible for all systems, communications and maintenance programming efforts. Supervised and assigned all development and maintenance projects. Developed and maintained systems to support other smaller area hospitals. The systems included hospital billing, payroll/human resources, pension, inventory control and accounting systems. The systems ran on a Honeywell Level/88 computer.

Wheeling, West Virginia Area

Taught Advanced COBOL on a contract basis.