Tom Sparks Email and Phone Number

I'm currently working on personal projects and expanding my knowledge on a wide variety of topics.

Director of Intel Service and Support for Dell Services’ external customers• Responsible for Intel infrastructure support for 80+ clients totaling 44,000 Intel / Windows based systems (clients included fortune 500 customers in the hotel, entertainment, healthcare, insurance and financial industries) • Led a team of 500+ Systems Engineers performing day to day operations support• Implemented improved monitoring to increase uptime and reduce incident ticket volumes by 50%• Implemented a low cost support model for cloud based hosting clients• Standardized Incident Management, Cost Recovery and Downtime metrics to provide customers with a clearer view of the environment• Performed on-site health and wellness visits with critical clients to improve client relations• Budgeting of $2.5M / mo

Manager of the mainframe engineering, operations and DBA teams at Dell. Responsible for capacity, performance, monitoring, code deployment, data replication / integrity, security, disaster recovery. Intimate knowledge of systems responsible for order management, accounts receivable, manufacturing control, customer support and services. • Responsible for infrastructure capacity and growth of core business applications, including Order Management, Factory Planning, Shipping, Services and Accounts Receivable. • Responsible for review and approval of migration roadmaps for key service areas to new technologies.• Implemented and standardized enabling technologies for migration to commodity based platforms.• Charged with managing / reducing $10M annual budget for hardware / software and support.• Realized 66% decrease in operational costs through off-shoring Level 1 support functions• Achieved 25% reduction in vendor support costs through contract re-negotiations

Responsible for engineering teams charged with the development and deployment of technologies supporting Electronic Messaging, Collaboration and Document Management, Identity Management and Encryption for Dell’s 100,000 user base.• Responsible for development and approval of technology roadmaps for key service areas.• Implemented Globally accessible SharePoint infrastructure to improve collaboration.• Implemented global Identity Management infrastructure and processes to enforce SOX 404 compliance with regards to Dell’s Identification and Authorization policy.• Deployed global Public Key Infrastructure to facilitate issuance of certificates for SSL, code signing, machines and users. Resulted in over $1.6M in savings compared to decentralized, out-sourced model• Involved and coordinated global resources during the upgrades of Active Directory and Exchange to 2003.

Responsible for the systems engineering team responsible for designing and deploying the Austin, TX based Wintel infrastructure used to support Dell’s internal applications including: Dell.com, Sales, Support, HR, Manufacturing and Shipping.• Consolidated processes, activities and standards from four distinct line-of-business oriented organizations into a single cohesive unit.• Implemented Infrastructure Requirements Documentation program as part of CMM Level 2 certification.• Reviewed and approved consolidated server hardware forecasts totaling over $20M / year.• Averaged deployment velocity of 200+ servers per month.

Assembled a new team that researched, developed and implemented a consolidated storage model for Dell IT. The team developed the technical architecture, processes, procedures, monitoring and cost model for deploying consolidated storage. • Worked with numerous business partners and application teams to gain acceptance and set standards. • Provided storage to a heterogeneous OS and application environment.• Generated over $2.4M in cost avoidance (roughly 25%) in the first year of operation.• Architecture has scaled from 500 terabytes to 7 petabytes and 6500 ports without significant modification.

Served as Lead Architect for Dell’s Disaster Recovery Phase I project. This entailed designing, validating, implementing and testing a set of standard application architectures for implementing DR into 43 Class I applications with one to four hour recovery time objectives.• Responsible for reviewing application architectures for DR standards and business recovery planning compliance.• Responsible for reviewing and approving DR recovery documentation.• Responsible for setting hardware platform and configuration standards for all deployed Wintel servers.

Contracted to EDS as the System Engineering and Database Administrator Manager for the Jeffersonville Indiana Data Capture Center for the Census 2000 project. Responsibilities included the supervision of 6 system engineers, 8 DBAs / SQL programmers and 3 maintenance technicians. The team was responsible for the monitoring, maintenance and support of over 200 servers and 600 workstations used in processing approximately 15 million Census forms at the Jeffersonville site. Responsibilities also included personnel scheduling and oversight of end user helpdesk support, production report generation, performance report generation, troubleshooting / rewriting custom program code, monitoring and performance tuning of 13 Oracle databases and maintenance of a 6 terabyte Storage Area Network. Contracted to AEGON Insurance as the Year 2000 Project Manager for the Louisville Regional IT department. Responsible for inventorying all production hardware and software used in support of the 1,000 users located in the Louisville area. Managed a team of ten people responsible for installing, testing and documenting over 200 pieces of commercial software in the test lab. Successfully migrated over two-dozen in-house developed client server applications to new software versions, new hardware configurations and new RDBMS versions. Compiled project plans and composed procedures for the hardware and software upgrades required for the production network in order to attain Y2K compliance. Maintained detailed documentation of the entire project to limit potential legal liability. Formulated and instituted a formal Disaster Recovery plan for the Louisville office. Established plans and procedures for the continued use of the test lab for QA testing after the Y2K rollover was completed.

Commissioned Officer responsible for providing direction and focus for a team that maintained a 3,000 record personnel database of reserve soldiers. The team provided technical support and training for 34 end users responsible for personnel data input. The team was also responsible for maintaining local security, troubleshooting application errors and installing updates and patches. Generated and presented statistical analysis reports, for the Division Commander and his staff, on strength, attrition and duty qualification.

Non-Commissioned Officer In charge of the team responsible for the maintenance of Fort Knox’s personnel database of active duty soldiers. Responsible for soldier’s workload management, skills training and counseling. Oversaw day to day activities and maintained data entry accuracy metrics for over 50 units at above 95%. Also served as Platoon Sergeant for daily physical training and field exercises.

Computer Aided Designer. Transformed sketches and ideas into blueprints for commercial construction projects. Notable projects include Chevy Chase Plaza and French Quarter Square located in Lexington Kentucky.