As the Chief Technology Officer at Cisilion, my role is to continually review, define and shape our technology, solution, and service propositions to ensure they continue to meet the needs and expectations of our customers and leading technology partners. I am privileged to work alongside a supportive and agile leadership team and with a some of the best solution architects and consultants in the industry - after all it's our people that makes us who we are and it's these people that make up who and what we are, that our customers' (existing and new) trust for their advice, guidance, support, and operational management. I am a technologist at heart but have successfully transitioned into a trusted leadership role, having previously run our pre-sales teams, new product and services and defined, built, and championed our Microsoft Cloud business within Cisilion. This new role allows me to "spread my wings" and help re-define our services for the hybrid workplace, whilst driving profitability and innovation.In addition to the team leadership duties, I spend much of my time with our key Cisilion customers, consulting with IT decisions makers consulting on their digital transformation and cloud strategies. I often speak at technology events and host my own "Fire Side Chat" with a panel of key customers who represent different industry sectors. I also blog at https://robquickenden.blog

As Chief Strategy Officer for Cisilion, my role (and my passion) is to work at C and C-1 level with Cisilion’s clients to better understand their business, IT and cloud strategy and then to work with them to align these against the direction and development of our key technology partners to ensure we remain forward looking and relevant in our approach - helping maintain a healthy rate of change identified and enabled though strategic and aligned projects.“Technology is evolving at an exponential rate and is at the forefront of everything we do in our modern day lives – both in personal life, business life, and even our love lives! Being part of that evolving continuum is incredible and its why I love working in the industry that I do. From a business perspective, IT service providers and integrators such as Cisilion need to keep up not only with the current leaders in each architecture but also with the new niche players".I am Cisilion’s executive sponsor for our Microsoft Cloud Business which extends to Office 365, Azure, Skype for Business and Enterprise Mobility and Security which is growing at a rate of over 400% YoY. Cisilion is an award winning global systems integrator and managed service provider, working with clients in over 70 countries across 5 continents. We partner with leading technology vendors including Microsoft, Cisco, Riverbed, EMC, Palo Alto and Dell.

My role as C.T.O at Cisilion focuses on evangelising and prioritising technology initiatives to ensure Cisilion continue to deliver against our current and future business goals as part of our transition from a Cisco only SI toward a true vendor agnostic but strategic partner focussed SI. My key responsibilities include- Evaluating how existing and emerging technology can be used to help deliver business transformation for our customers-Working with Sales and Marketing to increase our Advanced Technology sales across both new and existing accounts-Continued Development and growth of our Solution Innovation Centre in the heart of London- Broadening the strategic and technical vision and capability of the company- Technology ambassador with clients, partners, channel, and the press.In additon to this role, I continue to manage our every growing team of technical consultants.

Responsible for the management and growth of the Technical PreSales function at Cisilion, helping design and architect solutions, deliver demonstrations and PoC environments, strategies and transformation projects for our customers.Responsible for bridging the gap between the sales and marketting functions of the business and the technical team.Formed in 2000, Cisilion designs and delivers unified communications, borderless networking, WAN acceleration services and Data Centre services with our worldwide 24/7 support and managed systems. Our goal is to deliver technology and innovation through business transformation which improves the the way in which our clients work. Cisilion operates internationally across a broad range of markets in both the public and private sectors. Working with our strategic technology partners - Cisco, NetApp, Juniper, Riverbed, SolarWinds, and VMware, we design, implement and manage a broad range of integrated networking solutions. Everything we do is focussed on robust systems that deliver higher performance, increased availability, and straightforward scalability, resulting in significantly reduced capital and operating expenditure for our clients. We offer fully-certified and accredited technical resources in consulting, engineering and support. We are proud of the long-term relationships we build with national and international organisations, and the awards that we hold from our technology partners, and the wider technology industry. Cisilion achieved 30% growth in FY12 and 50% growth in FY2011

I am an experienced Solution Architect with 12 years’ experience of working in the Education Sector through programmes such as Building Schools for the Future (BSF) and Academies and Free Schools. Working as sole technical design authority (or as part of a wider design team), I am responsible for the interpretation of customer requirements, technical design, cost modelling and presentation of the entire end-to-end solution for our clients. I work as the lead technical role in medium to large ICT procurement projects and have awealth of bid writing and financial modeling skills. I am also an ITIL Practitioner Certified with 2 ½ years’ experience in Service Delivery Management. I am enthusiastic, industrious and organised with an in depth knowledge of a wide range of IT hardware, software, virtualisation, OS and infrastructure technologies. I work on large (often multi-phase) ICT solutions in the education space working with builders, architects and technology and software partners to create IT rich environments for teaching and learning in schools, colleges and academies across the UK.I am known internally for “challenging the Status Quo” and as such currently sit on a number of product forum panels and innovation groups within RM. Through my business acumen and innovate thinking, in 2009 I won the Entrepreneur of the year scheme which has allowed me to elevate these skills managing a product from initial design, revenue and profit predictions, marketing and product release.

I was single point of contact and owner of all delivery and day-to-day management of a 5 year (now extended) Managed Service Contract at a large College in Kent where all SLA targets and customer satisfaction scores were exceeded 2 years running.Key Aspects of my role included- Reporting at Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly Service Meetings with the Senior Management- Managing the onsite delivery team (which included 3 technical staff and 3 help desk staff).- Designing and successfully delivering a number of upgrade projects including TV over IP, wireless, server virtualisation project, and ICT design of a new build programme.- Performing customer presentations of solutions acting in a Sales capacity where necessary to deliver an end to end solution.- Delivering presentations and training sessions to staff as required.- Producing formal tender response documents and proposals based on technical discussions with the college’s management teams to enhance and extend the length and value of the service as necessary.

Working with Account management team to scope, design and present technical roadmaps, proposed solutions and discuss technology trends with key accounts. Technical authority for technical implementations.