Brett B. Schwab

A hands-on IT executive with extensive experience in datacenter management, design, server operations, administration, ERP and programming, and analog and VoIP telecommunications for multi-state and worldwide operations and call centers.  Excellent contract negotiator and vendor management skills, project planning and budgeting, team leadership and management, and strategic planning and forecasting experience.  Report to senior management on project status, budgeting, forecasting and strategic planning for evolving business initiatives, disaster recovery and business continuity.  Microsoft certified, Cisco trained, with more than twelve years of IT experience working for startups, turnarounds, and established companies; building on a lifetime career in information technology, software development and telecommunications.

V.P. of IT  -  Ultra·PRO Corporation

2011 - 2012

Privately held parent company providing manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of archival safe-storage products for sports and gaming collectibles, photo and photo finishing, and products to store and protect multi-media.  Worldwide operations, 400+ employees with revenues exceeding $50M annually.

Manage and support a team of IT professionals responsible for network management, strategic planning, and daily operations in support of the companies various business units including manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, and finance.  Report to the CFO and manage a staff of five to six  direct reports.  Provide M&A due diligence, network design and business continuity planning and management.

Duties

• Support daily operations of the consolidated datacenter for five distinct business units.
• Direct a staff of five to six direct reports, vendors and consultants; programmers, EDI Administrators, Network Administrators, Helpdesk personnel, and telecommunications.
• Control contract negotiations for telecom and data services providers.
• Administer consolidated budget for five distinct business units including three year forecast by division. 
• Provide datacenter and server design optimization while reducing cost and increasing availability including disaster recovery and business continuity readiness.
• Author network documentation of critical systems and infrastructure for disaster recovery and business continuity.
• Arbitrate hiring, firing, and annual reviews for IT staff; including training and performance evaluations.
• Direct ERP and EDI programs in relation to manufacturing, distribution, sales, and finance.
• Control software licensing of ERP, server, and productivity software for five divisions within an integrated central datacenter.

 Accomplishments

• Reduced EDI Chargebacks by $18,000 a month by identifying resource weaknesses and through talent acquisition.
• Negotiated new copiers and lease agreements increasing production rates and reducing costs with Ricoh Americas.
• Designed and built a second datacenter while coordinating an office move in Minnesota, including multiple MPLS cirsuits and telephone PRI lines.
• Installed a new Mitel phone system for two disparate divisions in Minnesota and integrated VoIP connection back to Los Angeles.
• Managed the consolidation of 11 websites, including three B2B and two B2C sites, to improve management and reduce costs.
• Authored a comprehensive disaster recovery plan and managed the implementation.

ECIO  -  VIP Tone, Inc.

2009 to 2010

Telecommunications company providing VoIP solutions and network management services to a wide range of mid-sized companies throughout California with annual sales of 100 million.

Present network design and datacenter design recommendations as an independent consultant to third party customers to build fault tolerant networks and datacenters with redundant resources and business continuity in conjunction with premise based VoIP telephony.  Report to the President of VoIP services with dotted line reporting to the CEO.

     Duties

• Author IP schemas for single or multiple networks including remote WAN locations.
• Design Network infrastructures to insure fault tolerance, redundancy, and load balancing within datacenters.
• Provide datacenter and server design optimization while reducing cost and increasing availability including disaster recovery and business continuity readiness.
• Author network documentation of critical systems and infrastructure for disaster recovery and business continuity.
• Collaborate with sales on customer presentations and concept delivery.

Director of Information Technology   -   Storm Industries, Inc.

2006 to 2009

Privately held parent of two manufacturing companies, one construction company, a property management company, and three investment companies with offices around the world, 300 employees, and annual sales of $50M.

Manage Consolidated IT, IS, and telecommunications for five company divisions, with an annual budget of $1.9M. Perform network infrastructure design for load balancing, failover, and business continuity. Report to the CFO and manage six direct and six indirect reports. Advise on strategic IT alignment with evolving business initiatives and telecommunication design including two distinct call centers. Ensure security for networks and data, including ID/IS, anti-virus, and anti-spyware.

     Duties

• Administer consolidated annual IT budget of 1.5 million to 1.9 million dollars.
• Direct a staff of six direct reports and 24 vendors and consultants; programmers, SQL DBA, Network Administrators, Helpdesk personnel, and telecommunications.
• Support worldwide operations and remote branch offices in Valencia, Portland, Houston, Cleveland, Australia, Denmark, and India.
• Control software licensing of ERP, server, and productivity software for four divisions within an integrated central datacenter.
• Manage telecommunications for seven sites worldwide including two separate call centers in five locations.
• Control contract negotiations for telecom providers and data services.
• Arbitrate hiring, firing, and annual reviews for IT staff; including training and performance evaluations.

     Accomplishments

• Established ITSC with upper management and divisional presidents and controllers.
• Implemented hosted VoIP solution to bring all divisions under a unified communication platform while maintaining independent divisional operational parameters.
• M&A; oversaw the successful acquisitions and integrations of competitive and complementary companies into the Storm portfolio of business units using both trusted domains and assimilation.
• Redesigned the infrastructure to build in redundancy failover and eliminated single points of failure while load balancing network traffic and server availability increasing data access uptime to 99.999%.
• Spearheaded the migration of Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.
• Coordinated the rollout of Microsoft Office 2007 through four companies including training all employees in 10 days.
• Professionally re-racked all servers, switches, routers and firewalls including cable management to comply with OSHA requirements and seismic stability requirements for California.
• Developed co-location replication schema for business continuity.
• Installed 30 kilowatt standby generator for datacenter continuity increasing datacenter uptime to 99.999%.
• Reduced annual IT consulting expenses by $150,000 by strengthening the IT department personnel.

Manager, Information Technologies   -   TelASIC Communications, Inc.

2002 to 2006

A startup company of 120 people, spun off from Raytheon, to develop a commercial application for use in the cellular communications industry with initial seed money over $85,000,000.

I was brought in to develop the network infrastructure, telecommunications, IT department personnel, policies and procedures necessary to be ISO Certified and Sarbanes Oxley compliant.  Reported to the VP of Operations and managed three IT personnel responsible for 19 Windows servers, 20 Linux servers, nine Sun Solaris servers, 50 Ultra 10 workstations for more than 80 engineers including daily operations. Directed staff programming projects in Perl, Java, Visual Basic, Access, SQL, HTML, and DHTML. Oversaw $490K budget for development of network infrastructure, telecommunications and IT department personnel. Ensured DoD compliance and network security.

     Duties

• Administer annual budget of $450,000 to $600,000 for IT and Telecommunications.
• Implement a premise based 3COM VoIP telecommunications spanning two locations in California.
• Arbitrate hiring, firing, reviews and disciplinary action when necessary for IT staff; including training and performance evaluations.
• Influence IT staff on programming projects in Perl, Java, Visual Basic, Access, SQL, HTML and DHTML to support .Net programmers during development, consistent with company guidelines and development methodologies.
• Steer network and telecom security in compliance with Department of Defense (DOD) requirements.

     Accomplishments

• Fabricated the network infrastructure to provide scalability and redundancy increasing to three integrated networks and increasing network uptime to 99.996%.
• Originated remote location point to point T1 connectivity for site and data replication as well as VoIP.
• Renegotiated telephone and data services saving the company over $35,000 a year in operating cost.
• Developed and implemented alternative to HVAC over-standard charges saving the company approximately $290,000 dollars a year in operating costs.
• Migrated from Exchange 2000 Standard to Exchange 2003 Enterprise edition providing additional email capacity.

MIS Manager  -  Davids & Royston Bulb Co., Inc.

1999 to 2002

 A third generation wholesale flower bulb distribution company with international presence distributing to retail companies like Armstrong Garden Centers, Home Depot, Payless Garden Center and local nurseries.

Developed strategic IT, IS and telecommunications plan and oversaw new systems deployment and life-cycle management. Reported to VP of Operations and managed six direct reports with annual budget of $680K. Oversaw mixed mode network of Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 98 operating systems. Forecasted database requirements with responsibility for development of cost-effective solutions, database architecture design, data modeling, and new database requirement integration. Managed network security and planned, implemented, and maintained network infrastructure. Interfaced with vendors for hardware, software, and telecommunications negotiations, purchasing, and support.

     Duties

• Control backups, disaster recovery and business continuity readiness.
• Author code revisions and customizations to ERP solution to increase efficiency and business intelligence.
• Write and modify reports and forms in Crystal Reports for management and production.
• Supervise 86 projects by prioritizing and delegating key sub-functions.

     Accomplishments

• Spearheaded transition from UNIX to Windows NT and conversion from Basic Four to MAS 90. Expertly managed the migration in under 75 days to meet Y2K compliance deadline.
• Designed disaster recovery plan including redundant drives, tape backup and scripts; and, managed disaster recovery drills for the IT staff.
• Developed an automated sales reporting system using ODBC, VBA, and Excel to aid the sales management team with seasonal orders saving the company hundreds of man-hours each year, increasing sales cycle efficiency 23% and overall sales by $200,000 the first year.

• Gates College – MCP, MCSE
• University of Phoenix – Active BS degree in Business Management
• El Camino College – Associate degree in Computer Information Systems

• Microsoft Certified Professional MCP                                        Certified
• Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer MCSE                             Certified
• Cisco Certified CCNA                                                               Trained 
• Dale Carnegie – Effective Speaking and Human Relations            Completed
• Great Plains Software – Certified Implementation Specialist         Certified

• BCMIX - Business Continuity Management Information Exchange
• EVC Leaders - Economic Value Creation Leaders Group
• IT Executive Roundtable - LinkedIn
• CIO Forum LinkedIn