Thomas Hirsch Email & Phone Number

San Francisco Bay Area

As head of a consulting practice, I specialize in Business Continuity, IT Disaster Recovery, Crisis Management, Security, Data Center infrastructure implementation, and Business Resiliency Management. I transform IT as a Business for my clients by improving service delivery and reducing organizational risks.Clients include: SAP/SuccessFactors, VISA, U.S. Bank, FireEye, Onewest Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, University of the Pacific, Wells Fargo/Wachovia, Thomson Reuters, Sungard, OSI Pharmaceuticals, ATK, Sungard, BNSF Railway, First Data, Chase, Bank of Canada, Canada Life, Protiviti, & BrightRoll.

San Francisco Bay Area

As Senior VP Leader of a Global organization, I delivered Crisis Management (incident management), Business Continuity (people and process recovery), and IT Disaster Recovery (data center systems recovery) services protecting $7B revenue and $2.4B net income from unplanned business interruptions. My scope included 308 business continuity plans encompassing 1440 business processes, 947 production IT applications/systems running at three data centers globally, six global incident managements teams and the corporate crisis management team.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

I directed a $37MM organization responsible for Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity and Capacity Management. I implemented a robust Disaster Recovery program utilizing all 10 professional practices per the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) methodology. I also directed a large capital infrastructure improvement program making incremental investments and improvements to the IT infrastructure resiliency.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Directed a $187MM, 80 person organization responsible for Capacity Management, Enterprise Storage Management, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity, and Security Services.

Dallas/Fort Worth Area

- Directed a $9.3MM multi-year business recovery program for a large Midwest railroad company ensuring delivery of quality and timely services while maximizing client satisfaction.- Implemented an EMC SRDF/Timefinder multi-hop data mirroring solution reducing recovery time from 96 hours to 4 hours and reducing recovery point from 72 hours to one hour.- Implemented a $2.46MM Hitachi Truecopy data mirroring solution for the Bank of Canada resulting in a two-hour recovery time and a five-minute recovery point. Project completed in less than 60 days and 28% under budget.- Implemented a Hitachi Truecopy/Nanocopy data mirroring solution for a large international financial concern providing immediate recoverability for electronic and payment service businesses.

Dallas/Fort Worth Area

Established Dallas consulting practice for a New England start up venture. Defined, integrated and deployed complex best of breed managed storage and backup solutions on multi-platforms mission-critical IT systems. Conducted pre-sales, post-sales, account management, and client relationship activities. Defined overall storage technology and SAN/NAS/backup solutions to meet market and customer needs for managed storage services.

Dallas/Fort Worth Area

Directed activities to accurately predict and efficiently manage the impact of business, application, and technological change on the company's processing resources in order to satisfy requirements in the most cost-effective manner. - Directed capacity planning, performance, & SLA management reporting for all IT platforms.- Designed & implemented intranet/internet web based executive information system (EIS).- Led application optimization and re-engineering efforts focused on core legacy applications aimed at reducing processing costs and improving system throughput and scalability.- Directed IT accounting and chargeback with monthly budget responsibilities averaging $25MM ($300MM annually). Directed billing for all IT Systems and services including profit and loss analysis.

Dallas/Fort Worth Area

Director - Business Continuity 1992 - 1993- Developed and implemented large-scale business continuity program for all IT environments (MVS, Tandem, AS400, DEC, UNIX and NT) protecting $10B in annual revenues. Solutions implemented for over 30 IT environments protecting revenue losses of $400MM per incident.- Saved $510,000/year recurring costs for magnetic tape backup off site storage by implementing the LIFEGUARD (™ LEGENT) application to accurately identify critical datasets required for recovery.Director - System Resource Management 1988 - 1992Directed IT operational department (staff of 65) responsible for capacity planning, performance management, IT chargeback, hardware acquisitions, and storage management. Included $40MM budget responsibility, financial analysis, vendor negotiations/selection, executive approvals, hardware acquisition, installation and maintenance.- Directed data center expansion projects resulting in building three world-class data centers located in Dallas, TX, Sacramento, Ca, and Kansas City, Mo. - Managed daily operations of over 8 terabytes of disk storage and a 750,000 magnetic tape inventory.- Implemented and exploited MICS IT Chargeback resulting in $10MM a year savings in IT costs. Sr. Manager - System Software Development 1988 - 1988Supported and maintained MVS Operating System Software and OEM Program Products suites. Implemented standard change/problem management, and system maintenance methodologies.- Implemented first DB2 database system installation in Southwest US.

Dallas/Fort Worth Area

Directed a department that provided problem/change/configuration management and system maintenance packaging, testing, and distribution to 23 worldwide mainframe computer centers.- Implemented all standards/policies for system assurance and problem/change management.- Vendor management resulted in $1.3MM annual cost savings on IBM maintenance agreements.- Implemented IBM mainframe data processing center for the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, China. Completed project 4 weeks ahead of schedule and 14% under budget. Negotiated and closed two additional contracts for data processing services totaling $11.4MM.

Accomplished Geophysicist supporting seismic exploration for oil reserves in the Middle East and mainland US.