Thomas Gronke Email & Phone Number

Redwood City, California, Us

Solve problems for customers restricted to US-based support, including government customers requiring background checks. Added problem support includes flows through F5 load balancers and SSL inspection; Blue Coat proxies (being replaced by the F5's); routers, out-of-band devices, and the attached circuits. Incoming ACD call volume 80-100 calls and 100-150 tickets monthly.

AT&T Cybersecurity manages physical and virtual security devices and related security services in hosting locations and customer premises. IBM outsourced all network services to AT&T in 2008, continuing original outsourcing of wide-area network services to AT&T about a decade earlier. I continue the same work supporting IBM and IBM e-Business hosting customers while also working for AT&T Cybersecurity. All work is performed remotely, occasionally working with on-site peers and vendors providing hands-and-eyes support.Globalization in my group accelerated with a reorganization in 2013. My group supported IBM internal systems, and approximately 500 IBM and AT&T customers, mostly firewalls. We coordinate with peer teams in Czech Republic and India to provide continuous work on open problems and changes. Our work direction is driven by requests in multiple problem and change tracking systems, but is continuously changed by pages, requests through an internal chat system, and hundreds of messages sent daily to mailing lists.In 2016, we are merged into an existing larger AT&T firewall support group, adding standardized support of thousands of Juniper, Cisco, and Fortinet firewalls located globally. Work is directed by ACD call distribution and pulling next critical tickets from a shared queue. 10-20 calls and 30-50 tickets handled monthly.

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

Firewall, load balancer, switch, and router support in web hosting centers nationwide. All work performed remotely.

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

Router, switch and desktop support for multiple offices, mostly performed remotely. Continuing support for NEC phone system and replacement Avaya voice-over-IP phone system, until all phone system support was centralized.Ruthless standardization and centralization is constant theme, and constantly reduced number of people support more devices in more locations, mostly performed remotely.

Victoria, Bc, Ca

Returned to previous job, doing same network support as performed by Sequent, and doing more with fewer people (this is a constant theme). Sequent was acquired by IBM in 1999, the EDS outsourcing contract was cancelled, and I became an IBM employee.

Router, switch, wiring, desktop, and large NEC PBX support (about 3000 stations) in campus location. Assisting network and telephone system support in field offices, most performed remotely.Sequent was a manufacturer of mid-range computers, mostly used as database servers. As Sequent declined, multiple layoffs occurred, and all IT personnel were outsourced to Electronic Data Systems (EDS).