Micheal Di Paolo

Define, develop, manage and operate a complex set of customer facing and internal communications technology services. Set the vision and direction of the communications services section, select and implement all communications technology processes and hire, train, develop and retain the communications technology team. Drive the continuous improvement and effective cost management of the communication technology services to achieve positive staff and student communications technology experiences and overall customer satisfaction.

Global responsibility for directing all efforts to successfully architect, design, implement and support all corporate network and telephony infrastructure services and messaging applications.  This included LAN, WAN, Wireless, Telephony, Contact Center, Firewall, Remote Access, Unified Messaging, Email (Exchange), Directory Services (AD, DNS, WINS), File and Print Services, and Mobile Messaging Applications (Blackberry, Active Sync).  Direct, mentor and provide fiscal, strategic, operational and technical leadership to a team of up to 20 Engineers and Project Managers.  Manage capital budgets up to $15M and operating budgets up to $8M.  Plan, track and monitor all aspects of projects, ensuring adherence to scope, schedule and budget.  Interact with Executive and Senior Management, lines of business, and partner with other IT organizations to analyze business requirements and develop strategies to implement new solutions to support corporate goals.  Establish and enhance relationships with vendors and strategic partners, including contract negotiations, Service Level Agreements and ongoing maintenance and support for all infrastructure and application services. 

• Managed all aspects for delivering a Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and call routing solution as part of an enterprise CRM rollout.  A single-instance CRM and CTI solution hosted in a corporate datacenter delivered to approximately 700 contact center agents worldwide leveraging Avaya Interaction Center and Citrix XenApp.
• Oversaw the migration to a global MPLS WAN solution from an Internet-based VPN to enable QoS for traffic engineering and prioritization of critical and real-time applications, while increasing overall network capacity, reducing latency at key sites globally, and resulting in projected savings of $1M annually.
• Directed the delivery of a global Instant Messaging platform (Microsoft Office Communicator) for approximately 5000 users with integrated calendar services, and desktop audio and video conferencing.
• Implemented new processes that reduced operations ticket queue by 73% within 6 months.  Increased Mean-Time-To-Resolve (MTTR) within SLA by 80%.
• Collaborated with global infrastructure teams to identify current problems and future growth opportunities and led the development of a Convergence strategy to address business requirements.  This program deployed a global MPLS VPN with QoS for WAN and VoIP services, updated all LAN equipment to support QoS and PoE, and refreshed all telephony infrastructures and deployed IPT / VoIP services.
• Developed vendor partnership and sourcing strategy that introduced new world-class partners and suppliers for improved service delivery, account management, streamlined provisioning, and volume discounting.

About Citrix Systems, Inc.

Global leader and the most trusted name in Application Delivery Infrastructure.  More than 215,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost.  Citrix customers include 100 percent of the Fortune 100 companies and 99 percent of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers.  Citrix has approximately 8,000 partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2007 was $1.4 billion.

Founded innovative technology solutions provider specializing in network design and engineering, carrier solutions, systems integration and telecom expense reduction & management solutions.  Oversee all projects, ensuring adherence to goals and objectives, standards and profit/loss.  Provide fiscal, strategic, operational and technical leadership to coordinate sales, marketing and engineering initiatives, manage channel partner and carrier relationships, evaluation of product/solution offerings, and ensure services and solutions meet and exceed customer requirements and expectations.

• Developed business plan, strategic vision, sales & marketing strategy and key alliances & partnerships with more than 30 global telecommunications providers, value added resellers and system integrators. 
• Developed architecture for connectivity and network infrastructure for hosting and distribution of streaming video content over 2.5G / 3G cellular networks.
• Conceptualized architecture and migration strategy for new broadband satellite communications WAN in support of government contract that doubled network connectivity and reduced expenses $45K annually.

About Apollo Technology Solutions, Inc.

Innovative technology solutions provider that specializes in telecom expense reduction & management solutions, vendor management & provisioning of carrier (telecom) services and network design and engineering.

Promoted rapidly to provide strategic and tactical leadership ensuring successful architecture, design, engineering, optimization and support of global WAN throughout Asia Pacific/China, Europe, Caribbean and Latin America.  Accountable for directing all efforts to successfully manage, expand, optimize and support WAN infrastructure to optimally support growth strategies.  Introduce new technical and operational infrastructure into the group, resulting in increasing efficiency/customer service, and reducing costs.  Plan, track and monitor all aspects of projects, ensuring adherence to scope and budget. Manage risk assessment, issue resolution and change management initiatives.  Direct, schedule and mentor a team of up to 8 Engineers and budgets of up to $35M.  Interface extensively with Executive Management to analyze and implement new solutions to increase efficiency.  Establish and enhance relationships with vendors and partners, including contract negotiations and ongoing maintenance and support.

• Led a team of 8 Engineers to plan, architect and implement a strategy to successfully migrate more than 200 offices from ATM, Frame Relay and Dedicated Point-to-Point connectivity to IP-VPN.  Directed the successful migration of 15 offices. Solution is recognized for potentially achieving more than $2.5M in yearly savings.
• Directed the redesign of AP WAN backbone strategy, resulting in expanding network services, improving performance and reducing overall yearly expenses by more than $2.1M.
• Developed the architecture for VoIP solution (SIP & H.323), reducing voice communication yearly costs by more than $1.9M.

Selected Awards & Recognitions

• Selected as member of Global Architecture Team to design and implement strategies for key technologies, including Application Deployment, Multimedia Services, Network Tools, QoS, Performance and Tuning.
• Recognized for instituting strategic partnerships with vendors to enhance network support during outages to minimize downtime (MTTR).
• Recipient of 2 Lucent CIO Sharp Awards for High Performance Behaviors, 2 Lucent GROWS Awards for Y2K Team Participation, 3 Lucent CIO Sharp Awards for Recognition as a Valuable Team Player, and 5 Lucent Ovations Recognitions for Leadership and High Performance.

About Lucent Technologies, Inc.

Trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users.  A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry.  With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry.