Mike's Resume

MICHAEL A. CURTIS

***** ******* **** **. • Alpharetta, Georgia 30022

PROFILE

Senior-level Information Systems executive with diversified experience in the management of systems, applications, technology, operations, networks and standards.

Experience leading the design, integration, deployment, implementation, operations and management of leading edge customer-facing systems including significant experience in telecommunications, network and system security, systems architecture / design, and ISP build out operations.

Strong emphasis on strategy, direction, vision, innovation, and creation of sophisticated key business process solutions in support of organizational dynamics and corporate business objectives.

Areas of expertise encompass:

 Identifying Key Information Technology Initiatives

 Building IT Help Desks

 Seamlessly Upgrading System / Network Architectures

 Finance / Budgeting

 Implementation of Standards and Best Practices

 Vendor Evaluation / Management

 Reducing Problem Resolution Times

 Problem / Change Management

Outstanding corporate and project management abilities. Proven ability to spec out extremely large IT projects from planning and budgeting to staffing and delivering on time and on budget.

Seasoned staff manager and developer. Successfully hires, directs and motivates highly technical individuals and teams to produce optimum results in pursuit of organizational goals. Experienced managing a large staff of highly skilled engineers and technicians.

Experienced in environments of rapid expansion, reorganization and turnaround challenges performing gap analyses and technology assessments formulating strategic plans and implementing key business processes.

Proven record of designing, developing and implementing inventive, cost-effective profit and revenue growth strategies bearing full P&L accountability. Positive impact to the bottom-line through effective budget development, execution and vendor management.

TECHNICAL STRENGTHS

• In-depth knowledge of networking and systems supported by a strong foundation in management of IT organizations.

• Networking Technologies: Routers, TCP/IP, Network, Analyzers, and E-commerce technology.

• Operating Platforms: UNIX, Windows, Solaris, Linux, NT, Oracle, Sybase, Cisco, HPUX and IRIX.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Knowlagent – Alpharetta, Georgia 2008 - present

 Director of Customer Interaction Center, IT & Data Center Operations

Responsible for all IT, Support and Data Center Operations in a combined SaaS / Premise environment. Duties include managing typical IT operations including infrastructure, firewalls, computing resources and phones. Responsible for the front-line support of customers reporting software problems and negotiating with Engineering for resolution software defects. Also responsible for the installation and upgrade of software for both premise and hosted (SaaS) systems as well as monitoring of SaaS systems (0% downtime recorded).

SUM Global Technology, LLC – Atlanta, Georgia 2007 - 2007

 Director of Operations

Responsible for the day-to-day operations of a software consulting firm. Duties included scheduling of resources, training of personnel to meet future engagement needs, insuring adherence to established project / development processes, assisting Sales in “cracking” new accounts, establishment and enforcement of corporate policies, and management of tools necessary to insure the accurate and timely billing of the customer base.

Alliance Systems - Atlanta, Georgia 2006 to 2007

 Witness Practice Manager

Managed the Witness line of business in order to help Alliance make inroads with Witness customers as an alternative vendor of computer hardware, servers and professional services. Utilized established contacts and networking skills to arrange contact with key customers and the Witness Sales organization to facilitate the introduction and utilization of Alliance to meet customer hardware requirements. Coordinated the development of customized quotes in response to specific hardware / environment / software situations. Served as the Alliance “champion” within Witness.

Witness Systems - Atlanta, Georgia 2002 to 2006

 Customer Interaction Center Director

Recruited to improve the productivity and resolve morale problems within the CIC. Reduced the open ticket count within the call center from a one product center with over 500 tickets to a 15 product center with approximately 375 tickets by establishing standard processes and empowering the technical staff. Currently run a 50-person organization via four managers and a technical documentation specialist. Established engagement processes and escalation paths / triggers to insure the prompt resolution of customer problems. Serve as the interface with Engineering determining the resolution priority of code-related customer issues.

Departmental Responsibilities and Accomplishments:

• Customer retention rate of over 98%.

• Profitability of the organization currently running at 87%.

• Budget preparation and administration for the most profitable organization within the company.

• Established departmental metrics for measuring the effectiveness of the organization and developed achievable goals for constantly improving the service level provided to the customer base.

• Published Troubleshooting Guides and self-help articles to enable customer self-help.

• Consistently groomed employees for advancement to other roles within the company.

• Developed a high impact, loyal, highly motivated organization via careful screening of new employees and effective management of individuals.

this.com - Fort Lauderdale, Florida 1999 to 2001

 VP of Technology

Managed all aspects of technology for this “filtered” ISP which removes pornography, hate, violence, and bomb-making from Internet content in an effort to make the Internet safe for children and families. Responsible for all design, architecture, security, support and capacity planning of dialup Internet service, flash powered greeting card web site, and school filtering program.

• Directed architecture and development of a massively scalable, artificial intelligence based, filtering solution targeted at providing fault-tolerant filtering for large school systems or entire states which examines web pages on-the-fly to determine if they are pornographic, hate-oriented, weapons-oriented etc.

Bellsouth 1990 to 1999

 Director of Systems Operations

 BellSouth.net - Atlanta, Georgia (1994 to 1999)

Promoted to this position as co-founder of BellSouth.net to develop the business plan, present the concept and 5-year financials to senior corporate officers, and work in-depth with Legal and Regulatory. Held complete responsibility for budget development and administration, hiring of qualified / exceptional personnel, and key business / policy decisions. Built a staff of 80 engineers and technicians across 5 departments.

Technology Utilized: Operations included 24X7 monitoring, Tivoli process monitoring, HP OpenView CiscoWorks, High Availability (HA) software, Veritas, volume management, Data Warehousing, SecureID, and firewall administration.

Departmental Responsibilities:

• Systems Operations: all customer-facing services including DNS, authentication, News, eMail, accounting, member services, registration, and the BellSouth.net web page.

• Backoffice Operations: all backoffice systems including Livelink, Peoplesoft, Remedy, HP OpenView, Tivoli and off-hours operations. This organization was also responsible for Disaster Recovery with a focus on inter-site DR as well as survivability of the primary data center located in Atlanta.

• Web Operations: all customer Web Hosting including shared, dedicated, and customized solutions running on Sun and NT platforms.

• Database Operations: insure the integrity and optimization of all databases deployed throughout the enterprise including Master Customer Database (MCDB), Livelink db, Peoplesoft db, Remedy db, and databases specific to Web Hosting customers.

• Telecom Operations: oversee internal network, PBX, IVR, ACD, all Data Center activity throughout the BellSouth nine state region, Atlanta MAN, local / long distance telephone service and calling cards, building wiring and cabling, backup and archiving of critical data, and all circuits used in Data Centers or required by Web Hosting customers.

• Host / Network Security: responsible for all systems utilized in support of Bellsouth’s Internet offering across nine-state region and for over 300 Unix servers geographically dispersed throughout southeast US. Included development / implementation of Network & System Security policies, SecureID and Firewall support. Served as a key member of the BellSouth corporate security steering committee responsible for data / system / network security across all BellSouth companies.

• QA, and IT: assigned to spearhead organizational turnaround for these departments resulting in the definition of organizational metrics and the launch of significant improvement plans to make these departments more proactive and effective.

Major Contributions:

• Secured funding and corporate approval for the BellSouth.net project

• Played key role in the planning, design and successful launch of BellSouth.net Internet services

• Instrumental in building service from scratch, eventually building it to over 750,000 dialup customers, and over 5,000 business customers, and 10,000 web hosted customers

• Built the Network Operations Center and negotiated with external vendors to provide Help Desk services

• Designed, built, deployed, and operated systems required to provide the service to end customers

• Promoted to leadership position of the largest organization within the company, comprised mostly of highly technical engineers

• Key member of Steering Committee integral in the development of business strategies regarding corporate-wide security

• Reduced QA costs by over $1 million per month and improved IT desktop resolution times from 20 hours to less than 4

 Program Manager

 BellSouth Business Systems, Inc. - Birmingham, Alabama (1994 to 1995)

Responsible for the inception and development of BellSouth’s Internet offering.

• Worked closely with executive management, sales, marketing, legal, regulatory and customers to develop a state-of-the-art, flexible and scaleable product capable of meeting the needs of a wide range of customers

• Also, worked closely with state governments and key customers to address specific, non-standard requests for specialized capabilities

• Program successfully launched BellSouth.net.

 Account Executive

Bellsouth Inc. - Birmingham, Alabama (1990 – 1994)

Responsible for Federal government sales of data networking equipment and services. Primary area of focus was on wide area solutions including LAN, internetworking and router-based solutions.

• Consistently exceeded sales quota

Proteon, Inc. - Westboro, Massachusetts 1985 to 1990

 Field Operations Manager (1985 – 1990)

Primary focus included managing field engineers to perform router installation, maintenance and troubleshooting and customer support world-wide.

• Established and staffed software development group within Customer Service to address software bugs and to implement “quick” improvements to router code as demanded by Sales and customer requests.

• Held dotted-line control over Systems Engineers which included holding off-site meetings and team building sessions during sales meetings and major shows such as INTEROP.

• Consistently turned to as in-house resource with answers to LAN & internetworking questions / problems.

EDUCATION

Master of Business Administration Degree

Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts

Bachelor of Science Degree, Electrical Engineering cum laude

Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

• Member of the Sigma Epsilon Rho Honor Society

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