Robert Fowler Email & Phone Number

Irvine, Ca, Us

Pembroke Pines, Florida, Us

Responsible for the delivery of all North America IT infrastructure, operations, and support services with a critical focus on increasing business performance, user experience, and enabling associate effectiveness through technology innovation and optimization techniques. Key advocate throughout the organization working with stakeholders across multiple departments, regions, and countries on solutions to modernize our capabilities and position our technological foundation so that it is more resilient and flexible to rapidly adapt to business changes. Responsible for contributing to the sound planning, effective scheduling/resourcing of projects, exercising financial controls, focusing on appropriate technological investments, continuing to improve support/service quality, and solidifying detailed measurements against which to evaluate the performance of all functions within their scope of responsibility. Specific IT domains of responsibility this role will be accountable for include: • Service Desk Managed Services • Infrastructure Managed Services (compute, storage, virtualization, connectivity, directory/domains, workplace productivity services, mobile, etc.) • Telephony Services • Infrastructure Engineering, Operations, & Support

Irvine, Ca, Us

Oversee IT Business Applications administrators and analysts supporting all the core corporate applications including Salesforce, Netsuite, SharePoint, Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure DevOps, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Web Server Management. Major accomplishments include:Decommissioned our MS AX infrastructure and migrated services to both Salesforce CPQ and NetSuite and leveraging Boomi to complete the integration between the cloud systems and our on-premise licensing platform and fulfillment services. Managed the administrative team and business analysts with the multi-year project. Collaborated with Business SMEs to deliver the best in breed solutions to meet the company initiative to move our core systems into the cloud. Supported transition of development to a new IT development team managing our electronic fulfillment channel which syncs our software output to an Azure CND to deliver our software globally to customers. Our licensing platform is a custom .Net application built to interface with all the various licensors we inherited from multiple acquisitions over the years. Built out the full CI/CD pipeline to streamline and audit changes.Built out SOPs covering development standards, change and release management. Performed annual user access reviews and performed a baseline audit with our compliance department to sign off on the ERP migration. Built out BC/DR documentation for all our Tier 0 and Tier 1 applications including solutions for both on-premise and cloud-based applications. As a hiring manager I grew our team from five analysts and admins located in our California headquarters to a total of sixteen, including a new QA division of two employees and six contractors. Half the team is now spread across the US and the other half are located in Budapest, Hungary to provide follow the sun support. Routine conversations and feedback throughout the year have enabled my team to grow in their roles through this remote Covid workplace.

Irvine, California, Us

Oversaw IT Business Applications administrators and analysts supporting all the core corporate applications including Salesforce, Netsuite, SharePoint, Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure DevOps, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Web Server Management. Major accomplishments include:Successful Data Center Migration during Covid moving over 100 web and application servers hosting more than 75 applications with about half that were load balanced, plus an additional 26 SQL servers of about 13 TB with one physical cluster of 5 TB.Migrated the corporate intranet from on-premise SharePoint 2013 with Project Server and TFS integrations to SharePoint online along with a new SharePoint 16 on-premise farm and Project Server 2016. Also, I migrated a dozen websites into Azure Web Apps leveraging Azure DevOps pipelines for CI/CD and Git for source code management.Successfully managed multiple development firms and managed service providers to support our multi-year initiative of retiring our ERP system on-premise and migrating to a NetSuite and Salesforce in the cloud. In addition to this project, my team supported two SharePoint on-premise farms, three different TFS farms, near two dozen proprietary licensing and software fulfillment web applications, helpdesk and SQL server infrastructure. Support included OS patching and monitoring, application upgrades, SSL certificate management and security vulnerability remediation.

Irvine, California, Us

Involved with multiple mergers and acquisitions, responsibilities included evaluating application software for adoption, integration or disposition to ensure our application landscape was properly owned, used and standardized. Major accomplishments include:Evaluated and decommissioned an entire cloud footprint in Terremark. As there was no one with current knowledge, this effort involved researching every system for application and framework installations, evaluating certificate, network IP and port assignments, reviewing all application configurations to design an architecture of the environemnt, and map a migration paths to destination systems. This project collaborated with IT, Product Development, Technical Support and Finance functional units and was successfully completed within six months saving the company monthly recurring costs and reducing risk to the business.Leveraged internal Kofax Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software to accomplish an number of cooperate initiatives including:1. Migrated a Jive intranet as part of a TSA from an acquisition to an on-premise web server complete with page linking, video and document retrieval to save the company over $300k in professional services exports which would have been flat xml files which the business could not consume.2. Established an integration via REST APIs to pull data from ADP as the HR source of truth to Active Directory to ensure all our personal and department information are in sync. Later upgraded this to work with Dayforce APIs when the company switched. 3. Established a Graph API framework to integrate capabilities to monitor and process emails, send emails, manage SharePoint lists/data, and AD group membership. These jobs served both internal IT process improvements as well as corporate functions including Order Management and document archive.

As a Business Analyst I was focused on consolidating the corporate landscape of several hundred overlapping functional applications left over from multiple acquisitions. This was a global effort which involved engaging with users to discover requirements, compare and evaluate software options, develop a solution to consolidate and migrate data, and decommission retired applications. I enjoyed collaborating with stakeholders and vendors to properly plan project milestones and measure success, and communicating regularly with stakeholders to identify risks and issues well in advance such as a delay with the outside vendor or dependency conflicts.

As Director of Information Technology, I provided operational (day-to-day) leadership to the Information Technology Team (Applications, Infrastructure, Quality and Operations) ensuring all IT functions operated in a smooth, professional manner. While servicing California Southern University through our proprietary web applications, we also leveraged the on premise web application to service international commercial clients as InstructedU. I worked with the V.P. of IT on a 3-year strategy plan to grow the department, align all efforts to the business goals and move the production application to a cloud-based solution, focusing on 5 key result areas: reliability, business alignment, customer service, people and resources. I also maintained an active role in all phases of the product development life cycle; requirements, development, testing, implementation and support by hosting a daily SCRUM style stand-up. This ensured all teams had visibility on projects and obstacles could be identified and removed immediately.

Chandler, Arizona, Us

As Application Development Manager, I oversaw the full software development life cycle. I migrated the SDLC from a waterfall approach to an agile approach using elements from SCRUM, Agile and Kanban via TFS. The new system provided transparency between software development and stakeholders, and it provided a solid cadence for releases.I was also responsible for translating product requirements and business goals into use cases and technical specifications. We developed API integrations with tools like WebEx, our application bridged communication gaps between academic staff, faculty and students. We also developed API integrations with 3rd party tools such as CourseSmart for electronic books, ProctorU for online exam proctoring and LiveText for program assessment. These tools provided a seamless user interface for students and teachers to conduct course related activities from within the university’s online platform. I also coached and mentored 7 new IT development and quality assurance members including conducting performance reviews.

Chandler, Arizona, Us

As a senior application developer, I developed a broad integration with Office 365. With this single sign-on approach, students and faculty took seamless advantage of email and calendar tools, video streaming capabilities via Skype and real-time chat capabilities via Yammer which provided a richer experience.I also built an online exam tool which allowed students to take an exam securely within our own LMS which could be optionally proctored by our partner organization ProctorU. The university now runs approximately 2,000 exams online each month.I also integrated our student information system with our VoIP ShoreTel phone system which allowed staff to dial a number from the web portal. This tool integrated with the prospects, journal and calendar records and accelerated the sales team’s time by 25%.

As a full-stack application developer, I worked with a small team to cover the design, development, testing, and implementation of quality software component modules and feature enhancements for web-based application systems using Microsoft's .Net technologies. I participated in all phases of the software development life cycle; requirements analysis, development, testing, and implementation.I also led the conversion of our classic ASP learning management system to ASP.Net which allowed for more secure and reliable application development, and put the university on a path for growth. I created, maintained, and presented technical documentation of all code development.

Us

Worked with a team of developers to redesign and develop new sites and campaigns for clients including Anheuser Busch (including Sesame Street and Sea World,) Toyota, Sony, Best Buy and Coca Cola. I developed, maintained, and debugged new product features and enhancements. I aided in product conversion to newer technologies, and troubleshooted current production code to assist in production program maintenance.

Maintained and supported network infrastructure for the University. In addition to desktop and phone support, I also maintained the MS Access platform used by administrative staff. I helped upgrade our system to a SQL database and a web platform front end using classic ASP. I was responsible for upgrading the network from NT 4 to Windows 2000 and our MS access student information system from SQL 7.0 to SQL 2000 with a classic asp front end. I maintained and debugged MS Access application for administrative use, as well as developed, maintained, and debugged school’s public website.