Robert Potts Email & Phone Number

Boston, Ma, Us

Greater Boston

Just imagine the most diverse open-source tooling group in the business and that might be us. DevOps Enablement, Cloud computing, Containers, Virtualization, Next-Gen Web Technologies, we work with every type of build and packaging tool on the planet. Our EXD organization is a team of world class engineers who are continuously innovating to enable Red Hat to build and deliver products, solutions and technology to our customers. Our product pipeline, made up of over 200 custom services and a myriad of Infrastructure, provides a wide range of services, from enabling customers to purchase and deploy container-based software across clouds with Red Hat Marketplace, to distributing all technologies on redhat.com and everything in between.

Whether it's enabling open hybrid cloud, deploying cloud platforms, or creating automation to rapidly and efficiently develop and deploy applications, it’s in our realm of expertise. Our DevOps portfolio includes hundreds of custom applications and services utilizing cutting edge technologies and solutions; many of which are deployed as customer zero, traversing a heterogeneous infrastructure that is interconnected in over 20 data centers across the globe. Our key product responsibilities include packaging and shipping: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenShift, OpenStack Platform, Virtualization, Kubernetes, JBoss Enterprise, Cloudforms, Satellite, Ceph, Gluster, Ansible… and literally hundreds of the most popular OSS packages on the planet.

Our Mission is to be the catalyst for creating better technology - the open source way - with communities of customers, contributors and partners.It's thrilling to work in a place where people really believe in what they are doing. To Red Hatters, open source is a noble cause, a force for good--a movement that's benefiting our customers and the world. Red Hat is where some of the most passionate, creative, and high-performing people in the technology industry come together to make a difference. Creativity, inventiveness, and collaboration are all part of the way we do business. We dream big and act boldly as we extend the reach of open source.

Managed and led a global team of engineers responsible for developing and delivering Cisco's Secure Access and Mobility product line, including AnyConnect and the Identity Services Engine (ISE). Built a dynamic, efficient and highly productive diverse team through coaching, innovation, and empowering individuals. Fostered a culture and environment that promotes cross-functional collaboration, information sharing and mutual respect based on the theme “have fun and work smarter, not harder”. Developed a passionate, “can-do” culture with execution focus leading to on-time delivery of releases and innovative products. Drove the technical vision and strategy for AnyConnect from inception incorporating layer 2, IPv6 and cloud access capabilities through mass market adoption. Led successful engineering transformation initiatives throughout the organization for improved predictability, higher quality and optimized release cycles. Key Achievements:✔ Achieved successive wins as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SSL VPNs✔ Surpassed 100 Million endpoints running Cisco Anyconnect, the award winning industry leading security solution✔ Responsible for driving and closing millions of dollars of new business and co-creating new solutions with customers to yield force multipliers in sales✔ Drove software quality transformation initiatives to align and track quality efforts - predictive metrics, quality plans, defect containment and prevention; increased CSAT scores by 20%✔ Evolved the software development methodology from a traditional waterfall to an Agile-like framework; improving efficiency, predictability and product quality ✔ Established strategy and executed tactical plans for automation. Achieved a 40% coverage increase in eight months and a reduced release cycle by 3 months✔ Built and strengthened team through Cisco choice, a college recruiting program. Applied creative and engaging strategies to attract more candidates than other business units

Founding member of the AnyConnect Secure Mobility team responsible for ideation through delivery and successful adoption of over 100 Million end users. Led synergistic cross-functional teams throughout the organization, providing technical excellence, leadership and mentoring. Drove innovation across the product road map and provided strategic guidance and support across engineering, product management, support, marketing and sales business units. Developed tools and innovative processes; promulgated them throughout the organization to improve productivity, efficiency and collaboration. Established key strategic partnerships with global sales teams and customers to further drive sales and increase revenue.Key Achievements:✔ Pioneered a defect root cause analysis method that minimized regressions and significantly reduced the incoming rate of customer found defects ✔ Through the use of UX research and a disciplined approach to product quality, maintained customer satisfaction scores that exceeded Cisco “Best-in-Class”✔ Established a tactical “tiger team” to further improve customer satisfaction by focusing on product quality and usability elements within the products✔ Implemented a system to display real-time product feedback from all social media feeds. This allowed the engineers to view live feedback on the product and offered us the ability to proactively respond to any issues, and incorporate additional customer feedback ✔ Forged partnerships with customers and provided our engineers direct exposure to customers and the sales organization. This helped the team better understand and solve real customer problems, identify potential gaps in test coverage, build a more customer-centric culture and spark innovation✔ Developed and published training material, deployment guides, hands-on labs and a knowledge base targeted at educating Cisco’s field and sales teams

Responsible for the Quality Assurance of Cisco’s next generation security products and portfolio. Product responsibilities include the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewall, VPN 3000 concentrator, IPsec and SVC VPN client (OpenSSL), clientless WebVPN, L2TP, Cisco Secure Desktop and host based intrusion protection. Defined the holistic QA methodology and strategy, created test plans and executed test cases, developed automation, drove release planning and project scoping, created and evangelized best practices and procedures, defined quality goals and metrics and ensured continuous improvement by actively monitoring.

Responsible for the overall information technology, computing infrastructure and security of the organization. Designed, built and implemented a highly available and redundant heterogeneous network architecture that included security audits, policy and procedure development, and distributed firewalls. Enhanced operational excellence by delivering data-driven recommendations, metrics, and conducted research on emerging technologies to support changes in the infrastructure. Collaborated with the executive management team on establishing business strategy; reviewing all IT projects, system designs, budget and roadmap.

Provided enterprise customers with real-time network management, consulting, design and analysis using SNMP, RMON1/2 and other various proprietary MIB extensions. Created and presented network analysis reports to our customers and provided systematic solutions to improve network performance, availability, capacity and costs.

Performed onsite and offsite support, design and integration of high-end Remote Access solutions within enterprise customer networks. Product responsibilities included: modulator-demodulator devices, Carbon Copy software and Compaq/Microcom 6000 Series; a chassis-based concentrator with PRI, T1, E1, and analog access capabilities.

Provided CRM support solutions to technology companies and e-businesses.

Responsible for monitoring and controlling all mainframes and databases, troubleshooting software and hardware problems, monitoring batch processing, maintaining and improving system performance and online availability.