Jason O’Brien
Indianapolis, IN 46234 Phone 317-687-4994 Cell: 317-941-0310 E-Mail: Jason@courseload.com
EXECUTIVE PROFILE
Information Technology – Infrastructure Architecture – Software Development – Strategic Planning
Proven, result oriented professional, focused on building highly efficient and reliable IT assets. Strong team orientation, focused on staff
mentoring, coaching, and development. Technical, with deep operational knowledge in the practice of developing highly available IT
resources. Experienced in creating and consistently operating IT and Software as a Service businesses under budget, and exceeding SLA
and revenue targets.
Business Skills
Software as a Service Business Development
• Created tools for sales force to quickly estimate hosting costs for customers, including estimates for consumption, and projecting for
multi-year deals.
• Split service offerings into three separate products: Silver (entry level), Gold (SLA/large scale), Custom (SLA+, dedicated hardware),
driving profit margins from 50% to over 80% while still consistently beating our competitors in price and quality.
• Iterative competitive analysis strategy targeting competitors’ weaknesses and exploiting their lack of flexibility to offer a superior
product to customers.
IT Policy/Management
• Formalized IT policy standardizing hardware, usage, procurement, and support SLA’s.
• Implemented and tested Disaster Recovery Plan
• Consolidated duplicate systems and processes within the businesses IT needs.
• Grew IT organization from 1 staff member to 10 creating organizational structure for scale, motivating team to perform at a high level
with attention to detail, service, and quality.
Technical Skills
Infrastructure Architecture
• Well versed in highly available systems design.
• Expert in Microsoft technologies: AD, SQL, IIS, etc.
• Hardware and administration of enterprise class storage solutions, EMC CX & AX series SAN, NetApp SAN.
• Hardware based load balancing HA configuration and design, Alteon AD3, F5 Big IP.
Education
Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, Bachelor of Science: Major Technical Theater, Minor Computer Science
MCSE Since 2000
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer - Windows 2003 (MCSE)
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator - Windows 2003 (MCSA)
Professional Experience
Courseload: Indianapolis, IN (Nov 10 – Present)
CTO
• Managed Courseload product roadmap for version 1.3 to 2.0 transition.
• Recruited development team, combining full time resources with key contractor resources.
• Fully refactored technology stack focusing on high availability, performance, and platform flexibility and openness.
ANGEL Learning / Blackboard: Indianapolis, IN (Feb 06 – Oct 10)
Director of IT Services
• Managed ANGEL Hosted Services business during 3 year 80-100% growth year over year while maintaining performance,
stability and profitability.
• Served as definitive subject matter expert on systems design for ANGEL implementations, including being a key speaker at
the ANGEL User Conference.
• Created budget, and operating cost models to insure efficiency. Also created pricing for customers to protect margins while
staying competitive.
• Built high performing infrastructure team that later became the model for the entire services organization.
• Key member of the Go to Market team coordinating the ANGEL product release.
Manager of IT
• Redesigned infrastructure build, by simplifying, eliminating single points of failure, and implementing monitoring and logging
for proactive alerting and trending of systems utilization.
• Hired key staff to support growth.
• Coordinated and managed RFP process for second datacenter service provider and Sungard DR contract.
• Identified partnership opportunities with key vendors creating better pricing, and roadmaps to facilitate more informed
decisions on the timing of procurement of assets.
• Acted as SQL DBA identifying bottlenecks in product design.
Bank One: Chicago, IL (Apr 00 – Feb 06)
Vice President of Shared Application Services / IT Architect Consulting
• Acted as Key Technical Resource in creating Microsoft Windows 2003 Best Practices and Standards document for Bank
One Commercial Banking.
• Coordinated and managed resources during CKC / Proposal Wizard integration project. The first Siteminder / XML / cross
platform integration for the Customer Knowledge Center.
• Acted as architecture lead in Aprimo .NET / Security analysis project. Worked with various staff including Business Owners,
Info Security, Infrastructure, DBA, & Network to determine if bringing an externally hosted system ‘in house’ to enhance
business functionality was a viable option.
• Completely redesigned architecture for Bank One Policy Site to leverage .NET 1.1 / Windows 2003 / XML Web Service
technologies, increasing stability, performance, and scalability.
• Restructured Bank One – Highgate Domain to better utilize Windows 2003 Active Directory. Created better site
management, meaningful OU’s for users & computers, more efficient replication topologies, and less complex group policy
application at Domain, Site, and OU level.
Asst. Vice President of Document, Imaging, and Workflow / Networking Architect
• Designed and configured Windows 2003 server web cluster using IIS 6.0, ASPX, XML Web Service Servers and
Application Center 2000 Sp2 to do replication of files, folders, security, IIS settings, PIA, and GAC. This was the first
Microsoft Web Service environment using Windows Server 2003 implemented in the Bank.
2
• Upgraded VMWare GSX 1.0/Windows 2000 Server environment to GSX 3.0/Windows 2003 environment to increase
performance and overall stability.
• Implemented SMS 2003 / Install Shield / Microsoft Operations Manager / HFNetChk Pro to better administer and
proactively identify and eliminate performance, security, and configuration issues.
• Maintained, Upgraded, and Administered over 170 NT/2000/2003 Servers in three locations.
• Acted as project lead on Proposal Wizard consolidation project. Created Business Case, Researched, Coordinated, and
Implemented an expandable web environment using hardware based High Availability clustering technologies.
• Coordinated efforts between Treasury Management Systems and Bank One’s Info Security to analyze the overall risks
involved with, and secure all Filenet Web Applications and Infrastructure. Created first complete ‘all green’ ESM
environment with 100% compliance to architecture standards and INFOsec documentation in the commercial bank.
• Implemented VMWare GSX 1.0 Server for non-resource intensive application servers.
WestWood College: Woodridge, IL (Jan 03 – Feb 06)
Evening Professor
3