Duane Thomas Email & Phone Number

United States

Charlotte, North Carolina Area

AMERICAS BUSINESS LEAD FOR AAD – AUTHENTICATION:Supervised Support Delivery team within the Azure Commercial Support Organization comprised of Support Engineers responsible for managing critical, high impact technical issues. Monitored performance and optimized delivery processes.• Effectively partner across our global organization to achieve company priorities and delight customers who need support across the entire range of Azure services• Strong focus on building diverse teams, increased from 10% women to 25% women, coached and promoted first woman Technical Advisor in the business• Focused on agile ramp up of new hires through a combination of instructor led, proctor led, and self-driven training, along with mentoring and an open swarming phone channel• Lead global projects to develop and deploy new processes and tools for global hand over of customers, simplifying escalations, and reducing noise for accountable managers• Developed Queue Management role to allow for delegating responsibilities from managers to vendors resources, defined hiring process, training, and responsibilities for this role globally • Queue Managers managed a 400% increased customer demand while also increasing customer satisfaction from 4.43 to 4.75 for the year • Worked with global staff and management partners to reduce backlog and exit crisis• Accountable to deliver world-class support, leading a customer obsessed team of deeply technical and highly motivated support engineers, technical advisors, and managers• Effectively partner across our global organization to achieve company priorities and delight customers who need support across the entire range of Azure services• Ensure an effective workflow and feedback loop exists to drive performance including closure on common process breakdowns as seen worldwide• Accountable for operational and business review scorecards to drive performance

Charlotte, North Carolina Area

Developed strategies and solutions utilizing the Microsoft Dynamics Suite, Azure Active Directory, custom applications, and several 3rd party products to resolve business problems for 9000+ internal and 7000+ Partner globally diverse users. Led organizational change management utilizing Prosci methodology to create and deliver formal training, evangelism, global communication strategy, and support. Presented multiple MSIT showcases to Microsoft customers telling the inside story of how Microsoft does IT. • Developed globally standardized troubleshooting and support processes to ensure a consistent and exemplary customer experience resulting in an 27% increase of issues resolved in 3 days or less.• Enabled and deployed opportunity management, lead management, and forecast system for $100B business on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. • Saved $2M in YOY operational cost through the retirement of several outdated and regionally limited tools by clearing technical roadblocks and providing direct Partner support for migrating from the legacy systems.• Authored 80+ Scenarios across 9 personas used to develop SureStep proofs of concept for the latest Microsoft AX deployment within Microsoft. • Developed and delivered training globally for internal sellers and external Partners.• Provided support and escalation for the internal sales team, leadership, and Partners.• Worked with executive sponsors, stakeholders, and organizational leadership to plan readiness, deployment, and support activities.• Led virtual teams comprised of multiple organizations representing 191 countries.

United Kingdom

Managed performance and career progression of PFE engineers reporting to me. Constructed personal development plans for my direct reports and managed overall progress throughout the year. Performed midyear career discussions and end of year performance reviews. Reviewed Premier Business needs, growth plans, and pipeline information to construct fiscal year business plans and success pillars. Responsible for managing projects outlined in the business plans while adhering to budgets, timelines, and CPE targets. Partnered with Commercial Technical Support and EMEA MCS(COE) teams to sync training plans and share training resources. Engaged with WW Dynamics Service leadership to review business priorities and identify fiscal year success factors. Drove growth planning activities with Premier utilizing this information to ensure successful work force plan execution in each fiscal year. Managed resourcing according to workforce plan throughout EMEA. Adjusted assignments, priorities, and locations based on customer demand. Managed escalations related to urgent or unforeseen customer demands.Managed hardware purchasing and budget for PFE UK, working closely with UK finance and procurement to ensure the correct equipment is assigned to each engineer while staying within budget each month. Managed operation of 3 training rooms in UK and Scotland. Responsible for overall CPE, scheduling, maintenance, and budgeting for the training rooms. The training rooms generated 1.7M GBP in FY09 for Premier.

Developed and delivered workshops for Premier customers relating to Active Directory, 64 Bit technologies, Live Communication Server, and Virtual Server. Partnered with customers to develop deployment, migration, and recovery plans using Microsoft Best Practices. Reviewed customer documentation for weak points and provided problem prevention information to reduce the customer's overall risk. Helped streamline offerings and processes to help increase team productivity. Lead a project to plan, build, and deploy a customer facing virtual classr oom to extend the reach of our workshop offerings to Premier and internal customers. Certified Active Directory Risk Assessment Program Lead.Premier Field Engineer focused on platforms and virtualization technologies. Subject matter expert on: Windows 2003, 2008, 2008 R2.Virtual Server 2005Virtual PCSystem Center Virtual Machine ManagerHyper-VApplication Virtualization (SoftGrid)

Enterprise Platform Support (EPS) Partner Tech Lead, Networking Canada: Involved in all phases of hiring three Networking teams in Canada including conducting phone screens, face-to-face interviews, and training. Built a team of 50+ engineers. Identified and trained six Technical Leads. Reviewed cases and mentored engineers. Served as an escalation conduit to CPR and Developer teams. Tracked engineer growth both technically and professionally using professional development plans. Worked with vendor managers to hire and develop 3 Team Managers for the networking teams. Provided plans to turn around or manage-out low performing engineers. Responsible for working with vendors, business owners, and sponsoring General Managers to provide project status and results. Worked with business analysts to build staffing forecast models based on demand and call handling results.; Reviewed cases and mentored engineers located at outsource partners in Tucson and China.

Supported networking technologies for worldwide Premier customers including ISA 2000, Proxy 2.0, TCP/IP, wireless, IPSec, RRAS, VPN, DNS, DHCP, WINS, Services for Mac, Services for Netware, Services for Unix, and SNMP. Provided 3rd tier support and mentoring to our outsource partners located in Deli, India. Premier Data Center IIS Lead: Primary contact for IIS support and training. Handled Windows NT 4.0Enterprise Cluster 1.0, Windows 2000 Advanced Server Cluster, and Windows 2000 Data Center calls.; Wrote and delivered IIS training to our partner OEMs.Small Business Server (SBS) Content lead: Coordinated and oversaw the creation and quality of KB Articles. Participated in article sweeps for new releases. Boosted the amount of SBS related Knowledge Base articles from 125+ to 800 in an 8 month period.SBS Support Engineer: Took front line SBS 4.x calls for Windows NT, Exchange, Internet Information Server and Proxy. Designed and delivered training to VAP customers on SBS Setup and SBS IIS\Proxy. Technically reviewed and contributed to the SBS 4.5 Resource Kit.IIS\Proxy Partner Technical Lead: Worked on SBS 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 Betas. Reviewed and delivered SBS 4.5 training to SBS team and partner trainers. Delivered training to Partners in Boston boosting their knowledge of SBS Proxy and IIS.Windows NT Setup Support Engineer: Mentored partners and peers on Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0. Specialized in Setup of Windows NT Server and workstation using Unattended Install, Fault Tolerance Sets install and recovery, and file system recovery. Took inbound Windows NT TCP/IP and RAS calls. Supported DNS, WINS, DHCP, RAS Connectivity and Windows NT as an IP router.

Responsibilities: Software and hardware installation and support. Contract History: Duke Power: DHCP roll-out and support for workstations and printers, IP scope cleanup. Server decommissioning. Identified what servers were out of date or overloaded and move users, shares, and resources to new locations. Win95 preparation, roll-out, and support. General desktop support. WinNT 4.0 preparation and pilot group rollout and support. Helped design a process for installing NT and all the needed applications on special three-monitor desktop PCs.

Responsibilities: Hiring and training staff. Scheduling of shifts to provide adequate coverage without exceeding allotted payroll hours. Increasing sales and customer satisfaction through promotion of good customer service. Calculating and logging daily, weekly and monthly figures. Achievements: Consistently within budgeted allowances for payroll and other store expenses. Maintained extremely low shrink rates. Sales