ROBERT L. BERRY

ada167@r.postjobfree.com 850-***-****

**** **** ****** *****

Lawrenceville, GA 30043

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL

“Striving to Solve problems with technology, not technology problems.” Strategic and forward-thinking Senior IT Professional with a career history of effectively managing technical operations and supporting organizational goals while elevating productivity and modernizing systems. Diligent and resourceful in uncovering solutions that meet all business needs; skilled at balancing resources and forging cross-disciplinary relationships to align business and technology objectives. Conceives and executes strategies that optimize business operations, elevate productivity, and reduce costs. As a dynamic leader with expertise in modern IT infrastructure and business process automation, I’m capable of critically evaluating and responding to rapidly evolving technology environments. Areas of expertise:

IT STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT – ROI – DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING - PROJECT MANAGEMENT– IT INFRASTRUCTURE/CLOUD – IAAS/SAAS/PAAS – HARDWARE/SOFTWARE – IT SECURITY - SYSTEMS ENGINEERING – TEAM LEADERSHIP – VENDOR RELATIONS – NEEDS ASSESSMENT – PROCESS IMPROVEMENT – COST REDUCTION

SELECTED ACHIEVEMENTS

− Establishing values that promote trust and respect among team members, providing consistent and sound decisions, and promoting an atmosphere that values candor, leading to success for the team and individuals alike.

− On multiple occasions, inherited aging environments burdened by technical debt, either through neglect or M&A. Managed debt reduction and modernization of the environments with sound IT roadmaps, focusing efforts, and aligning with the business needs.

− Modernized and unified siloed software development staff accustomed to monolithic systems by moving the team to a more agile 12 factor app development process.

− Developed API wrappers in Golang, to place an abstraction layer between the application and the Oracle DB so we could break apart the schema and allow for Open source solutions such as PostgreSql and NoSQL data persistence, saving the company hundreds of thousands in Oracle licensing costs.

− Using known microservices patterns, decoupled monolithic applications into Docker microservices and orchestrating the environment with Swarm and AWS Container Services.

− Deliberated with teams and business units to redesign business processes to be Cloud ready in order to move workloads to AWS using services such as Elastic Container Services, Lambda, and RDS. Also managing and automating the environment with DevOps concepts like configuration management and infrastructure orchestration. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

VERITIV CORPORATION – Atlanta, GA 2018 (October) to present A Fortune 500 company, and a leading North American business-to-business distributor of packaging, facility solutions, print and publishing products and services; and also a provider of logistics and supply chain management solutions. MANAGER OF ENTERPRISE IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND SERVICES Leading and fostering a group of talented IT managers and engineers to better prioritize, negotiate, and communicate. In an environment steeped in technical debt and complexity, helped managers to prioritize by identifying actions that are value-add rather than simply commodity in nature. Pushing the management team to negotiate with stakeholders and guide them to more productive actions to achieve meaningful results, and promoting honest communication that incorporated listening in greater proportion to speaking.

− Recognizing with Veritiv’s adoption of a new Cisco ACI fabric and a greater push generally toward software designed networking that the team needed to be better equipped to manage such environments, and began demonstrating and driving automation and configuration management tools like Python and Ansible. ROBERT L. BERRY ada167@r.postjobfree.com 850-***-**** Professional Experience Continued…

− As Veritiv continues using more SaaS and considers O365, it’s obvious the traditional hub and spoke architecture is no longer going to work going forward. Also recognizing the problem that MPLS presents with its high cost to low bandwidth ratio, that SD-WAN had to be a part of the solution. Veritiv had attempted several PoCs with SD-WAN solutions, but these failed largely because they functioned primarily at layer 2 and 3 making it difficult for them to work in the current telephony and MPLS architecture. Understood that the right and modern solution would need to function at layer 4 to 7 allowing for gradual, staged adoption. This resulted in the first successful PoC of a SD-WAN solution at Veritiv.

− Data warehouse team was plagued by poor performance, despite residing on extremely powerful hardware. Understanding that the problem was because of high I/O and understanding the reason was because the data volumes were file level mounted storage, convinced the team to switch to block level storage and with some DB tuning, the month end issues disappeared.

− Receiving a test AWS environment from a third party, the Data Analytics and the Infrastructure team had a lack of Cloud experience and were faced with networking, security group, and network ACL issues. Leading the team and using prior AWS experience we were able to work together to clean up the environment to the point that it is now a production environment. INNOVATIVE ARCHITECTS, LLC.– Duluth, GA 2018 (March) to (October) 2018 Microsoft Gold Partner providing flexible, customized technology solutions for any size enterprise. INFRASTRUCTURE AND CLOUD ARCHITECT

Responsible for designing and managing the execution plan for physical, Cloud, and hybrid IT infrastructure solutions for various companies in health care, banking, and engineering.

− Client was having issues implementing DevOps in their team, identified that the leadership didn’t understand the complexity that DevOps presents to an environment. Taught them reduce the complexity by leveraging automation tools to simplify development pipelines.

− Demonstrated to a client how to leverage Terraform and AWS AMI, ROute53, and Application load balancers to manage a blue/green deployment environment.

− Designed Azure Site Recovery plan for a company that was looking to move their Atlanta based DR site into Azure.

− After a health care client’s AWS site was compromised, assisted and instructed them in properly building an AWS environment that met best practices for security.

NEWPOINT MEDIA GROUP, LLC.– Lawrenceville, GA 2014 to 2018 Premier real estate marketing company providing resale and new home brands throughout North America. DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

After M&A, inherited an aging technical environment, burdened by technical debt, costly contractors, and excessive complexity, laboring tirelessly to successfully bring the IT department from consuming nearly 10% of revenue to a more manageable 6.9%. While reducing the complexity of the existing environment, simultaneously negotiating the technical acquisition and merger of new products into the technology infrastructure. Successfully shuttered an aging data center located in another city merging it into the main corporate COLO facility, further reducing environmental complexity, expenditure, and improving efficiencies. Successfully managed and earned the respect of the technical staff, which included infrastructure personnel as well as software engineers, leading them to the successful and timely conclusion of many highly technical and complex projects.

− Evaluated and identified contracts that were neglected and costing the company for services that were either unnecessary or overpriced. Saved the company nearly $250,000 in the first year alone.

− Inherited a networking environment that was burdened by over complexity all in the name of “best practices”. Its complexity made adaptability and daily processes burdensome. Re-evaluated and simplified the environment reducing the complexity and support costs, and increasing the responsiveness and manageability of the network.

− Modernized and unified siloed software development staff accustomed to monolithic systems by moving the team to a more agile 12 factor app development process. Developing APIs, microservices, using Docker containers and moving from the physical data center to more ephemeral Cloud based infrastructure.

− Simplified production and QC workflows by evaluating business processes and replacing both human and technical processes with more efficient methods that sometimes cost nothing more than simply writing a script to automate an action. ROBERT L. BERRY ada167@r.postjobfree.com 850-***-**** Professional Experience Continued…

− Wrote a text code engine using Golang and Twilio APIs, when Sales and Marketing had an idea for a text code product, but was unsuccessful in acquiring one with the necessary flexibility.

− When it came time to address an aging data center, several months of meticulous man hours went into evaluating and planning the move that then was carried out in near flawless fashion over a single exhausting weekend, and meeting all SLA’s.

− Took over the management of a team of developers that were having difficulty meeting deadlines, with some changes in priorities and leadership the team became reliable and productive.

− Consulted on a number of occasions to evaluate both existing and proposed technology environments, when the equity firm purchased other companies.

− Set the overall strategic outlook for the technical infrastructure of the company, using modern techniques such as micro services driven by Vmware, Docker, and KVM virtualization technology. Along with cloud based services, the company became more nimble and responsive to a rapidly changing technical environment.

− Cut the footprint of the COLO facility in half, reducing the cost of the service by a third, while enhancing the existing services provided by the COLO company.

HOMES & LAND AFFILIATES, LLC.– Tallahassee, FL 2001 to 2014 Premier real estate publishing company.

DIRECTOR OF TECHNICAL SERVICES

Designed Homes & Land corporate data centers while managing technical teams at multiple locations, nationwide. Determined technical direction and provided strategic vision in designing and maintaining data centers and main Internet provider for entire company. Ensured alignment of cost-effective technical solutions with business goals and corporate strategy. Coordinated with backbone providers and oversaw architectural initiatives and technical improvements while guiding the creation of IT solutions. Defined IT strategic architectural goals and established required infrastructure platforms, security solutions, and new network technologies.

− Streamlined and automated workflow by building a RESTful service using Phalcon PHP and Python to receive 3rd party web hook data and laying the groundwork for a database abstraction layer.

− Foresaw the explosive growth of corporate data and services, and met the challenge by expanding the IT infrastructure to manage the current growth and any future growth, through flexible, manageable infrastructure virtualization and automation.

− Collaborated and partnered across multiple agencies to build a national network between multiple geographically dispersed plant facilities and providing secure VPN services for nation-wide satellite offices within budget and on time.

− Written extensive documentation for, and presented to, C-level executives explaining the impact of technological initiatives to corporate organizations and the path to ROI.

− Lead consultant in drafting and implementing backup and recovery steps and procedures to ensure enterprise level business continuity in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

− Saved $10K+ in space and cooling costs by consolidating the datacenter using more compact blade server and VNXe SAN technologies, yet increasing capacity..

− Realized $10K+ in cost reductions by designing, writing, and implementing a C program to automate purchase ordering system and entire PDF proof processing, which the labor intensive Kodak system was incapable of achieving.

− Developed and instituted C/C++ programs to enhance communication with Oracle databases and email services while automating job ticketing, SFI auditing, and purchasing system processes for The Printing House, Inc.

− Conducted key demonstrations to local state government agencies regarding server virtualization, iSCSI SAN’s, and the benefits to disaster recovery planning.

− Designed The Printing House website using Drupal content management server and wrote 10K+ scripts and programs to automate management and monitoring processes.

− Researched and evaluated the benefits, negative aspects, cost, and steps of moving datacenter onto cloud-based software and presented findings to C-level executives.

ROBERT L. BERRY ada167@r.postjobfree.com 850-***-**** Professional Experience Continued…

HOMES.COM, LLC.– Tallahassee, FL 1998 to 2001

A dotcom start-up key in revolutionizing the real estate industry with Internet technology. IT MANAGER

Spearheaded the modernization of an aging data center while managing a team of 20+ comprised of programmers, systems engineers, data aggregation personnel, and other technical support staff. Determined specific IT solutions and application architectures and integrated key technical components to support all data center requirements.

− Remodeled and centralized phone systems, networking closets, server farm, routers/switches, and incoming bandwidth.

− Modernized database environment and data aggregation of MLS data by writing Pro*C applications and developing oracle in PL/SQL.

− Built and installed Oracle database on Sun 6500 multiprocessor system and worked as DBA to coordinate with Oracle tuning experts to achieve high volume OLTP database.

HAYES COMPUTER SYSTEMS – Tallahassee, FL 1995 to 1998 Consulting firm offering premier systems integration services to companies and State agencies. SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Oversaw several projects involving software engineering, SUN Unix system installs and Cisco networking installations for customers that included private industry, Florida state agencies and Bradley County Sheriff’s Department in Tennessee.

− Played pivotal role in providing the proof of concept in the State of Florida for displaying University data on the Internet by writing software that extracted the data from University mainframes and displayed it on a web page.

− Extensive experience writing in various languages and environments including Unix C (Sun & HP), Visual Basic, C++ (MFC), Java, MQSeries, and Lotus Script.

ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE

Hired as freelance IT Architect for Rose Printing to plan a successful revamp of the data center, provide a network topology redesign, implement automated processes for backup procedures, and helped hiring IT staffing. Designed, built, and documented a VoIP based call center for GoWaiter.com, training the Call Center Manager on its usage and operation.

Software Engineer for Spectrum Sciences & Software, Inc.writing software for environmental studies and noise analysis for U.S. Military government contracts.

Served 8 years in the United State Air Force in the 7001st SSS Elite Guard, responsible for the personal protection of VIP personnel like German Chancellor Kohl and General Colin Powell. TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES

Cisco IOS networking – Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Windows Server operating systems – Data Center builds and migrations – Network Security, Cisco ASA Pix Firewalls, IDS/IPS – Shell Scripting – Python – GoLang – Enterprise level Server Virtualization Projects (Parallels Virtuozzo and VMWare ESXi 6.x) – Oracle 11gR2 – MySQL5.x – MongoDB – Monitoring/Alerting/Log Analysis/Analytics – Cloud based initiative via Amazon AWS –Azure - Microcontrollers – iSCSI, Fiber Channel SAN’s, EMC VNXe-5400 and NetApp, NAS, LAN’s, WAN’s, ERP Implementation EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science in Law Enforcement/Info Systems – University of Maryland – College Park, Maryland Master’s in Software Engineering – University of West Florida – Pensacola, Florida (not completed)

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