Jason Folkes Email & Phone Number

Houston, Texas, Us

Houston, Texas, Us

Responsible for IT infrastructure including storage & virtualization, VoIP & data networks, systems backup and recovery, SOX compliance, IT workflow automation, customer and vendor relationships, enterprise applications, annual budget review, heavy focus on reducing costs, and daily supervision of IT staff.• Develop corporate IT policies, processes and procedures.• Manage SOX compliance for IT department, reduced time spent on SOX reporting by implementing automated reporting processes, assist Accounting in efforts to automate their controls.• Led design and implementation of acquisition, integrated all infrastructure, systems and applications for 150-employee acquired company on time and under budget.• Led project to automate key IT processes; on/off boarding, data access, security/distribution group and application access requests.• Renegotiated software and service contracts effectively reducing IT budget by $1.7M• Led project to migrate corporate phone system from Cisco Call Manager to Skype for Business from proof of concept, executive presentation and cost analysis, implementation, eliminated 8 vendors and saved estimated $500M over 3 years.• Manage daily infrastructure operations for VMware with NetApp FAS and Cisco blades, Zerto, CommVault, Palo Alto and Meraki, Cisco switching.

Houston, Tx, Us

Provide systems administration of servers, layer2 and layer 3 switches, LAN/WAN/VPN/MPLS administration, Hyper-V cluster and SAN administration. Also manage AD/DNS. Design and implement highly available (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions.Key Contributions:•Consolidated > 40 physical servers to VMs on Hyper-V cluster, saving company an estimated $250k.•Planned and executed the implementation of standard infrastructure of satellite (< 10 users) and hub offices (11-25 users); WAN/MPLS circuit, router, firewall, switch, server, cabling, equipment installation.•Increased Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BC) efficiency and reduced RTO/RPO times with AppAssure, replicated backups to NOC and implemented “Live Virtual Standby” for 46 Virtual Servers (VMs).•Train employees across multiple departments on network operations including log-in procedures, remote access, permissions, printing issues, security and use of software.•Research, recommend and implement network enhancements to improve system reliability and performance.•Primary escalation point and mentor for helpdesk and junior systems administrators, DBA and systems development teams.•Reduced size of Exchange Databases, added Database Availability Group (DAG) for mailbox availability, implemented CAS Array, reduced spam emails by more than 60%.•Network Security assessment, physical, premise and remote access, made recommendations to secure all facets of the environment.•Successfully built 15-site MPLS network for future ERP system, voice and video conferencing and VoIP phone system..

Us

•Infrastructure design for phased approach to cloud migrations•Build and administer VMware ESXi hosts and guests in premise, cloud, co-location, and hybrid infrastructures•Network Stabilization projects to include thorough diagnosis and cleanup of servers, switches, firewalls•Detailed network security audits to include physical and WAN/LAN-based access security•Exchange migrations from 2003 and 2007 to Exchange 2010•Active Directory and Group Policy design administration and troubleshooting•24/7 monitoring of customer networks with Kaseya and respond appropriately•Support Fonality VoIP phone systems at multiple customer sites•Vendor relationships to ensure the functionality and efficiency of hardware/software used•Daily administration of Active Directory users, groups, OUs and group policies•Daily administration of Microsoft Exchange servers, mailboxes, distribution groups, send/receive connectors and SSL certificates

Education record

High School Diploma