Management Customer

BRIAN DAFFERN

*** ******** ***** 925-***-****

Johns Creek, GA 30097 *********@*****.***

CAREER SKILLS / KNOWLEDGE

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Customer Experience Management

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Budget / P&L Responsibilities

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PCI Compliance Management

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Strategic Planning

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Software Engineering/Development

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High Availability Systems

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Product Innovation and lifecycle

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Production/Data Center Operations

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People Leadership & Team Building

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Organizational Change Management

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Resource Demand Management

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Monitoring Process and tools

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IT Process Optimization Leadership

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Virtualization Solution Strategies

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Solution Architecture & Distribution

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Vendor & Partner Management

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Information Security

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Storage Solution Strategies

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Global Integration & Offshore Mgmt.

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Operational Efficiency/Process

SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS

A passionate, team oriented, senior information technology and customer relationship building business leader with twenty plus years of success in developing and analyzing customer focused products, corporate strategies, and implementing innovative technology solutions that align with business goals. Quickly grasps complex concepts and interprets ideas into a logical strategy with tactical measurements. Demonstrated ability to motivate staff to max productivity and engagement.

CAREER EXPERIENCE

THE WEATHER CHANNEL (an NBC company) – Atlanta, GA March 2015 to Present

The Weather Company provides millions of people every day with the world's best weather forecasts, content and data, connecting with them through television online, mobile and tablet screens. The company delivers superior professional weather services for the media, aviation, marine and energy sectors.

Director of Engineering and Technical Systems

Responsible to lead a group of technical professionals in a highly dynamic and distributed environment, to deliver outstanding service quality and end-user experience while supporting the real-time business demands. Managed both permanent and contract employees to lead the group to world-class technology infrastructure support for The Weather Company. Teams include Engineering, Storage, Networking, and System Administration.

Established best practices and standards for operational activities including capacity planning, environmental management (build/release/deployment/monitoring tools), documentation, security and access controls, and Tier 2 and 3 customer support.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Formulate & Deploy long-term strategic plans supporting team & department infrastructure

Manage department operational and strategic planning, business requirements, project planning, workflow management, and resource negotiation/allocation.

Define and communicate project milestones, issues & concerns, and resource allocations & constraints to peers and executive leadership.

Develop and manage to a budget for department, working with business partners to maximize yield on set budgets.

Virtualize systems from datacenters to AWS, Softlayer, and VMWare.

Benchmark, analyze, report, and adjust IT infrastructure & platforms ensuring best-in-class systems, capabilities, and toolsets.

Develop business case justification and cost/benefit analyses for IT spending and initiatives

Direct research on potential technology solutions and implementations in support of new initiatives, opportunities, and procurement efforts.

Develop and implement strategic policies and procedures, to directly support system administration, user identity management, application implementation, deployment automation, equipment acquisition, and service provisioning.

PEER 1 – Atlanta, GA February 2001 to January 2015

Peer 1 operates as an Internet infrastructure provider, delivering managed, dedicated, collocation, and network services in North America, France, and the United Kingdom.

Senior Director of IT Operational Excellence

Responsible for setting and executing Operational Excellence strategy. Fostered and drove the pursuit of performance excellence across all business functions to drive results that create a competitive advantage. Worked across the organization to ensure that an Operating Management Culture is functional and includes organizational structure, processes/procedures, information technology systems and measurement of results. In addition, worked with Peer Leaders to assess and develop the organizational capability and teamwork consistent with Core Values.

Streamlined Private Cloud in the Data Center process and speed improvements

Developed a continuous improvement strategy based on the philosophy of Lean Six Sigma.

Built Product Management Lifecycle process flow and included artifacts.

Led cross-functional team to help organization pass SSAE16 audit.

DCO operations improvement project to reduce cycle time and synchronize process.

Coach and mentor leaders in change management competencies and strategies.

Work with Internal & External customers to identify and execute improvement opportunities.

Developed and implemented tactical standards, procedures, processes, and best practices.

Director of Product Development and Delivery

Responsible for setting the strategy, governance model and execution plan for all product development, engineering, development, and product management activities within the PEER 1 software, hardware, and infrastructure areas. Managed budget as high as $19M, with over 300 people in the organization, mixed full time employees and onsite/offshore resources. Grew the company’s revenue and EBITDA through a less than ideal economy.

Led Product Management effort to create Public Cloud product after 1 quarter - run rate of 250k.

Created/partnered on strategy for VMware private cloud offering - monthly run rate of 300k.

Developed and introduced security products of IDS, IPS, Log Management, and increased Firewall offering, both software and hardware with a 20% customer base penetration

Successfully partnered with Tier 3 to develop a collaborative Public Cloud offering.

Developed product rollout methodology focused on customer need software development.

Introduced new expanded monitoring solutions to meet customer and internal needs.

Establish templates and process to deliver repeatable product deployment

Managed the strategic and tactical business plans to support infrastructure build out of a new data center in the United Kingdom and the integration of two Atlanta Data Center.

Developed disaster recovery products- Global Load Balancing, SAN storage, and multi-site.

Established a First Call Support Desk with no junior technicians or gatekeepers.

Director of IT Support Operations

Responsible for business units in Georgia, California, Texas, UK, and Bulgaria with duties including, but not limited to Budgets, Customer Relationship, Training, Technical Services and Support Departments with a primary focus on moving the company up-market in service.

Developed and implemented strategic and tactical plan to increase the Net Promoter score. Successfully rose the score from two to 46.

Implemented a Change Control tool to alert and require approval.

Implemented a Critical Issue alert and process to rally organization 24/7.

Developed a streamline process to support product lines in an ever-changing infrastructure.

Successive migration, with zero churn, of over 500 customers (3000+ devices) from our New York and Orlando Data Centers into our Fremont, CA and Miami, FL Data Centers.

Created training, mentoring, and employee engagement program (based on Gallup Q12).

Established Specialized SLA’s and customer demands to handle & attract larger customers.

Led day-to-day activities for infrastructure, network, and application issues with 24/7 team.

Radiant Systems – Pleasanton, CA November 1994 to February 2001

Director of Support

Areas of responsibilities included, Quality, Training, Technical Services, and Facility management, Software distribution, and support in multiple locations.

Developed Y2K plan for software modification, QA, and update deployment.

Developed and implemented regression testing and code review for all product lines.

Developed new channels for software deployment including procedures of product delivery.

Developed and implemented a redundant infrastructure and disaster recovery tools.

Developed a migration, infrastructure, and software plan to move from DOS to Windows.

Grew the support organization to a successful arm of the organization generating revenue.

Previous Companies

Network General - 1997 to 1998

NEC - 1991 to 1994

Computer Intelligence (a Ziff Davis Company) - 1989 to 1991

EDUCATION / AFFILIATIONS

Fort Hays State University – 2014 Fort Hays, KS – Bachelors in Management and Human Resources

Muir Technical College (A San Diego State Campus) – 1989 San Diego, CA - Computer Science

United States Marine Corps – Trained in aspects of hardware and infrastructure support and maintenance.

Certificates include:

Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt, cert. 2021779

Pragmatic Marketing and Product Management Level 2 Certified

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