IT Infrastructure Manager

Abbas Dandach

Mobile: +971**-*******; E-mail: ************@*******.***

Overview:

A career spanning 16 years of experience in Information technology reflecting qualities of leadership and hard work. Have been a strong motivator and inspiration for employees and a great employee in self; in this short career I have gained knowledge of Project Management skills and broaden the base of expertise within the organization.

Key operatives:

Training both existing and new staff to continuously improve skills and knowledge of service Desk

Data Analysis of all incidents calls logged to SD/FE, monitoring their performance and coming up with ways to improve customer experience through these channels in a time and cost efficient manner

Continuously improving the quality of the working environment and calls this happens through live monitoring, monitoring customer and staff feedback

Preparing the Annual Budget to make sure the department does not exceed the annual budget set previously

Managing IT Services covering SAN Storage, Intel Farm, Active Directory, Exchange, Citrix

Vendor & SLA management to make sure all contracted/agreed level are met and prepare list of issues, and investigate root causes and propose corrective actions

Monitoring and Improving Performance through coaching, counselling and continuous motivation using Quality Assurance Techniques. In addition to focusing on customer feedback through After Service Quality Calls. This is also done through the quarterly Performance Appraisals

Preparing the Shift Schedule to guarantee enough staffing against the number of calls projected every day. This is to help the Service desk meet its daily Service Level Agreements

Identifying staff performance gaps in addition to planning and implementing necessary training programs to prepare a human resource cadre capable of effectively implementing the strategic objectives.

Customer Service: Handling customer inquiries and complaints in a systematic manner and completing tasks in a satisfactory manner which meets both customer and Bank expectations. Professional Experience:

Network International (June 2018 – Till present); Dubai, UAE VP IT Infrastructure Services

Network International LLC is the largest acquirer in the UAE, and a leading payment solutions provider in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). The company’s service offering comprises a comprehensive range of payment products and services for both the Issuing and Acquiring segments of banks, financial institutions and retail merchants. This includes credit, debit and prepaid card processing, ATM management and monitoring, merchant acquiring and processing, fraud management, e-commerce services and mobile solutions for the payments industry. Network International is a Principal Member of Visa International and MasterCard International in the UAE and enjoys extension of its MasterCard License in other key countries. It is also a member of JCB and Union Pay card schemes, and it owns and manages the Diners Club Franchise in the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

o Reporting to the CIO, led teams that deliver data center operations, network services, engineering, service desk, infrastructure planning and disaster recovery services for 1300 corporate users and 120 banks locations in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA).. o Ensured consistent compliance with all ISO and PCI audit requirements related to schemes

(VISA, Master card, JCB, Dinners, etc.)

Abbas Dandach

Mobile: +971**-*******; E-mail: ************@*******.*** Network International (May 2014 – June 2018); Dubai, UAE AVP IT Infrastructure Manager

Network International LLC is the largest acquirer in the UAE, and a leading payment solutions provider in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). The company’s service offering comprises a comprehensive range of payment products and services for both the Issuing and Acquiring segments of banks, financial institutions and retail merchants. This includes credit, debit and prepaid card processing, ATM management and monitoring, merchant acquiring and processing, fraud management, e-commerce services and mobile solutions for the payments industry. Network International is a Principal Member of Visa International and MasterCard International in the UAE and enjoys extension of its MasterCard License in other key countries. It is also a member of JCB and Union Pay card schemes, and it owns and manages the Diners Club Franchise in the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

Role responsibility & Achievements:

o Performed disaster recovery twice per year for all mission critical system which include authorization system related to ATM & POS machines. o Manage effective and optimal operations of all IT infrastructure services based on pre-set SLAs and provide appropriate management reports periodically o Create and implement short and long-term strategic plans for IT infrastructure that delivers stable, cost-effective, highly available and scalable integrated solutions that meets current and future business requirements of Network International o Direct and schedule the activities of a team of network, systems and security specialists to address IT infrastructure problems efficiently and in Negotiated with vendors and contractors for all specific products.

o Establish and maintain excellent relationship with NI executive team, stakeholders and department heads which will keep IT initiatives aligned to business objectives o Develop and maintain an IT continuity plan based on risks analysis that will help reduce the impact of major systems disruption on key business functions and processes. o Address/Domain Management, Application and E-mail Services, Configuration Management, LAN/MAN/WAN Services, File and Print Services, Remote Access Services, Maintenance Support, SAN storage (VMAX-VNX, Data domain),VOIP/Call Centre Support, Network Management, Network Operations, Backup/Recovery Services for network servers, Windows servers, and High Performance Computing Support. Computer/System Security Reporting, Firewall/DMZ Management, Incident Reporting and LAN/WAN Security Assessments and Reviews.

o Prioritizing and assigning tasks to network team. o Establishing strong relations and partnerships with major vendors such as Cisco, Microsoft, HPE, IBM and work with them.

o Manage infrastructure, technology and telecommunication vendors, Orange, SingTel, Etisalat, DU & Tawasul effectively to ensure best prices, benefits and service level agreements are provided to Network international and review periodically their performance, deliverables and commitments.

o Manage outsource team along with in-house team in case of outsourced project. o Maintain policies, processes and procedures, as per Network international hand book and create training plans for the IT operations team.

o Active involvement in IT financial management to control operational cost expenditures, costing of IT services, budget planning and tracking o Controlled $10 million budget and multiple outsourcing agreements of over $6 million annually.

Achievements:

o Championed and drove use of server virtualization and Software-defined storage along with Microsoft Hyper-V in the internal data center saving $ 2 million/year o Achieved system up time improved from 99.9900% in 2014 to 99.9980% in 2015 o BCP Surveillance Audit Complete, with Zero Non-Conformity o Migrated few client banks from Individual international link to Orange cloud to reduce dependency on single client & improved connectivity at 40% lower cost. o Avoid severity 1 Incidents on Authorization Switches. o Compliance to 15.1 implemented successfully for (Tier 1 Apps) o India office, network & Voice enhancement, migration from VPN to MPLS cloud. Abbas Dandach

Mobile: +971**-*******; E-mail: ************@*******.*** Network International (January 2013 – May 2014); Dubai, UAE Infrastructure Senior Manager

Network International LLC is the largest acquirer in the UAE, and a leading payment solutions provider in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). The company’s service offering comprises a comprehensive range of payment products and services for both the Issuing and Acquiring segments of banks, financial institutions and retail merchants. This includes credit, debit and prepaid card processing, ATM management and monitoring, merchant acquiring and processing, fraud management, e-commerce services and mobile solutions for the payments industry. Network International is a Principal Member of Visa International and MasterCard International in the UAE and enjoys extension of its MasterCard License in other key countries. It is also a member of JCB and Union Pay card schemes, and it owns and manages the Diners Club Franchise in the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

Role responsibility:

Responsible for managing the day-to-day Infrastructure operation and projects and acting as infrastructure manager when it comes to design and development, testing, implementation, and post implementation phases and some of the end client user`s project: o Meeting regularly with senior managers, stakeholders, project teams and team leaders to review status, make recommendations, and resolve problems o Measuring project performance using appropriate tools and techniques, Building relationships with client stakeholders

o Managed field service team, and end users computing support. o Preparing daily incident dashboard for IT senior management o Create weekly roaster for systems support and network team in order to support all clients Bank and merchant across MENA.

o Attend weekly IT operation meeting to review incident and change release cases. o Follow up with application team for aging incident in SD ticketing system. o Work closely with the Facilities Manager to ensure effective controls are in place within each of the computer rooms

o Ensure a high level of confidentiality is maintained and generate daily report for all data loss. o Pre-weekly meeting with field support engineers and service desk team to ensure smooth operation is followed.

o Having daily contact with multiple functional teams and personnel o Worked with senior management to transform Network international IT help desk to a service desk.

o Manage and ensure effectiveness of IT infrastructure security including firewalls, anti-virus, email security

o Develop and test recovery procedures to minimize IT infrastructure downtime and continuity Project Achievements:

o As part of 2013 strategic initiatives, WAN network re-architecture to MPLS Network and DC core LAN re-design and re-cabling

o Managed to migrate 13 clients (Bank`s) in February 2014 from old legacy network connectivity point to point internet VPN to Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). o Windows 7 migration project from June 2013 till December 2013 for network international offices (625 machine)

o MPS project, centralized printer system for all NI branches (3 offices, Dubai, Egypt & India). Dubai Bank (October 2005 – December 2012); Dubai, UAE Supervisor-Infrastructure services

Dubai Bank is one of the emerging Banks in the country (U.A.E). With the recent conversion to being Sharia'h Compliant i.e. becoming Islamic; the bank is aiming at high Market capitalization in the coming years. Abbas Dandach

Mobile: +971**-*******; E-mail: ************@*******.*** I started in Infrastructure Services as Assistant Manager-Infrastructure services, this is my current role. I am in charge of overlooking the entire infrastructure (Network, Voice, etc.) The general purpose of this job is to enhance all services provided by IT-Infrastructure services. Role responsibility & achievement:

Being responsible for Infrastructure, I was involved in various projects as follows: o Service Desk Improvements:

o Manage service desk, Field services and network teams (15 staff)

Daily incident management for the above functions

Execute yearly IT strategic initiatives and projects support.

Costing and budgeting for the above functions as well as people soft management

o First call resolution improved from 10-12% to 35-40% o Onsite visit requirement reduced to about 50-65% by enhancing remote support skill sets of the staff using SCCM for application configuration and troubleshooting support o Customer feedback measure (QOE- Quality of Experience) has been regularly maintained and improved 3.9 – 4.2 out of 5, which measures various aspects of the service desk deliverables.

o Establish on-going communications with Branch managers to ensure needs and expectations are being met and to identify new needs related to branch operations on daily basis.

o Take over IT operations with no business impact to our internal clients such as (Retail branches, Corporate banking, Treasury department, finance, Legal, HR, etc.) o Attend weekly IT operation meeting to review incident and change release o Preparing daily incident dashboard for IT senior management o Active involvement in IT financial management to control operational cost expenditures, costing of IT services, budget planning and tracking. o Infrastructure segregation (data center, call center and billing) o Program manager for the following projects which are part of year 2008 Bank`s strategic initiatives

IT asset management take over

Voice asset management take over

VOIP infrastructure management

Service desk improvement to increase Quality assurance

Network bandwidth engineering and QOS implementation o Branch Expansion: Coordinating and supervising the project phases and the activities with management of the contracts, the project plan and risks, the internal (team up to 15 people) and external resources, the Costs and budgeting, the quality of the project reference to QMS ISO9001:2000 certification.

ATM Network Expansion: actively involved in a Network Optimization Project to remap Dubai Bank ATMs in a way for our machines to perform better and be more profitable, and at the same time meet our customer expectations in terms of convenient locations. We relocated more than 45 machines which had a higher number of transactions and reduced customer complaints drastically.

Stock market: Leading the Projects for establishment of Dubai Bank Tadawul stock market linked with Dubai Financial market and AUH financial market

Other projects: as a continuous effort to grow business and the increase usage of services, actively involved in Office relocations, windows 7 migration, and IT asset consolidation. New Horizon (March 2003 to October 2005); Dubai, UAE IT Network technical supervisor

New Horizons Dubai has been serving businesses and individuals in the UAE community for many years, New Horizons has been awarded more times by major vendors than any other training organization in the region. Role responsibility & Achievements:

Throughout the two years I spent in the Regional Training Centre, I was in charge of three branches

(AUH, Dubai & Qatar). In addition, I was involved in several projects. Abbas Dandach

Mobile: +971**-*******; E-mail: ************@*******.***

I help launch the Human-soft training centre, which proved after only several months, to be the most successful Arabic training centre in 2005.

Leading private college system focused on technology-oriented programs of study that blends traditional academic content with applied learning concepts.

IT Security, including: penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, creating proof of concept exploits, reverse engineering, risk management, security audit, staff education, incident investigation, firewall design and implementation.

Performed various tasks including; Administration of network and programming environment, provided support to instructors

Orientation of staff regarding policies and procedures.

Investing extra time in research and preparation for new technologies as well as demonstrating the ability to develop effective network security solutions across all components of designated platforms developing experience in responding to security threats while providing solution analysis.

Bright target engineering (May 2002 to September 2003); Dubai, UAE Senior systems administrator

o As a system administrator, I was in charge of managing of DNS, DHCP, OU and Active Directory infrastructure and basic e-mail processes, data centre administration, ISA Server o Installation & repair of internal components & peripherals o Resolution of escalated technical issues for notebooks & PC’s o Effectively determine and communicate solutions in a timely and efficient manner Documentation of procedures taken throughout troubleshooting & repair process Professional Qualification:

Bachelors in computer engineering – Lebanese university (Beirut-Lebanon)

Network Engineer (MCSE major, Cisco & System admin minor)- New horizon(Dubai- UAE)

Prince2 foundation

Prince2 Practitioner

Advance Communication Skills

Business English

Time Management

ITIL V3

The Power of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership Skills

Multipliers – Liz Wiseman

Personal Information:

Marital status :Married

Nationality :Lebanese

Date of Birth : May 21, 1980

Visa Status :Resident Visa (Transferable)

Languages : English, French and Arabic; written and spoken fluently

Interests : Off road driving, diving and sports

Abbas Dandach

Mobile: +971**-*******; E-mail: ************@*******.*** References: To be furnished upon request.

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