Executive Profile

VP Information Technology | CTO | Director of Technology
Dynamic technology leader with 16+ years IT industry experience applying proven best practices and tools to develop systems that support strategic IT goals and corporate vision. Expertise in building and/or revitalizing organizational infrastructure, products, technologies, processes, measurement systems and corporate strategies to optimize results. Talent for conveying intricacies of system functionality and impacts on business imperatives to non-technical people. Hands on leader, motivator and mentor for cross-functional teams. Decisive, solutions-focused and results-oriented.

Professional Experience

Vice President, Enterprise Technology
Confidential, Hoboken NJ 2005 - Present

An Internet marketing services company for the education industry. Portfolio Company of Halyard Capital.
Senior/Executive Management team member with full P & L responsibility for technology initiatives, infrastructure and operations at EducationDynamics' companies: GoalQuest, a Microsoft and Linux/PHP open source shop, Educational Directories Unlimited, a Linux/PHP open source shop, eLearners.com, a Microsoft .NET shop, WorldClass Strategy, a Microsoft .NET and ColdFusion shop and Education Connection, a Microsoft. .NET shop. Lead corporate strategy, developing operating policies and procedures to meet corporate objectives. Serve as technology/business liaison to company, Board of Directors, partners, clients and investors.

Strategic Leadership

• Defined corporate and divisional IT policies/procedures. Reviewed and recommended all technology initiatives. Coordinated and set priorities for all major IT initiatives for all EDDY divisions.
• Established performance metrics for systems, development, QA and web administration teams. Defined standard SLA expectations of IT departments to internal/external clients. Rapidly grew and structured teams to meet IT needs of fast growing company. Set performance metrics for individuals for end of year bonus qualification.
• Led technology due diligence for Halyard Capital in new company acquisitions into EducationDynamics.

IT Architecture/R & D

Led long-range planning/R & D for platform, software, hardware and technology services. Evaluated new technologies and best practices, ensuring they met budget, business priorities/constraints and strategic vision.
Architected platform consolidation and integration of all IT infrastructures for EducationDynamics' divisions. Introduced Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for integration between EDDY divisions. Deployed corporate solutions on .NET (C# and VB.NET) and LAMP architectures.
Recommended adoption and implemented technologies to increase efficiencies including CRM, project management, groupware, bug tracking, VPN access, website applications, database replication, IP telephony, BI and finance/accounting. Coordinated multiple vendor selection processes and due diligence for new technologies.
Directed build-out of 4 office locations and new IT infrastructure. Led IT infrastructure move to state-of-the-art data center and new offices. Relocated and upgraded servers, data, voice, backup and redundancy infrastructure.
Implemented multi-site IP telephony system to improve employee communications. Cut telecom budget 30%.
John P. Trchala Resume Page 2

Operations Management

• Developed and maintained $5M IT budget, ensuring consistency of capital/operational spending with aggregate budget. Reviewed and approved all major divisional IT capital expenditures.
• Consolidated 5 data centers into 1 primary and 1 disaster recovery data center. Consolidated enterprise services including email, Active Directory, CRM, financial systems, unified communications, etc.
• Chaired monthly Technology Steering Committee meetings, which consisted of technology leadership from all divisions.
• Drove the technology growth and technology culture change for a company that grew from $5M in annual revenue to $250M+ in annual revenue in 4 years.
• Directed personnel activities and set priorities for staff of 30 IT professionals. Interviewed and grew staff 100% in year 1 and 50% in year 2. Created and led company HR training for technology areas of interest.
• Negotiated all IT contracts with consultants, outside contractors, software vendors and service providers.

Practice Director/ Senior Portal Architect
Confidential, Bedminster NJ 2002 - 2005

Technology consulting firm specializing in architecture, development and implementation of enterprise technology solutions for Global 1000 companies and major private companies. Recognized as a leader in enterprise portals.
Established successful Enterprise Portal Practice with numerous reference-able clients. Full P & L responsibility for practice, continuous revenue growth and stability. Met with Fortune 1000 clients to sell company vision/services. Wrote proposals for client projects, best practices, white papers, guidelines, methodologies for portal deployments.
Recruited, trained and supervised staff of 12 full time consultants (infrastructure professionals/developers) and numerous subcontractors. Managed full project lifecycles using Entology's project management methodology. Led product management for existing/prospective customers and requirements gathering to development and deployment of 14 other portlet suites and utilities running on Plumtree, IBM Websphere and BEA WebLogic.

• Architected portal projects for developers and implementers on .NET (C#) and UNIX/J2EE platforms.
• Developed portlets, frameworks and additional portal components on .NET (C# and VB.NET) and UNIX/J2EE platforms.
• Led development of product that enabled administrators to capture statistics for portal usage, consisting of Windows Service written in C#, web-based query tool, desktop reporting application and suite of 70 portlets running against a Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle database.

East Region Area Technical Manager
Confidential, San Francisco CA 1999 - 2002

Leading enterprise web software provider delivering unified, collaborative and context-based user experiences for internal information workers or customers/partners across extended enterprise.
Started as Senior Applications Consultant leading professional teams through full implementation cycle of portal projects using Plumtree's Corporate Portal. Promoted to lead Professional Services team coordinating multiple simultaneous enterprise projects. Served as security expert for Plumtree Software and senior engineering resource for major technical issues. Supported sales team utilizing the Sandler system for negotiations/sales. Drafted technical guarantees in legal contracts. Mentored developers and technical resources in web services creation. Presented to Clevel executives, senior management, user groups and conferences.

• Organized business plan and helped establish California-based Plumtree Solution Center, a strategic business unit that competitively positioned Plumtree Software in enterprise portal market, offering pre-packaged integration into enterprise class applications for quick/easy deployment and immediate ROI to customers.
• Key contributor in creation of 24x7 worldwide customer support department. Helped create infrastructure/CRM for San Francisco, UK and Australia teams to provide round-the-clock customer support and track incidents. Trained new support engineers and mentored on severe issues.

Manager of Information Systems
Confidential, Suffern NY 1995 - 1999

Large, independent full service investment management firm in NY metropolitan area.
Oversaw daily operations for company's IT infrastructure including 15 servers, 70 workstations and WAN connecting 4 geographically dispersed sites. Led a team of IT professionals and contractors to support growing IT needs.
Outsourced real time market data equipment through Fidelity Investments. Prepared technology proposals for management. Created/managed IT budget. Coordinated projects with 3rd party vendors.

• Designed, deployed and maintained network architecture: SQL servers for monthly statements, NT file servers for applications including Advent Financial Reporting Software, Novell servers for file/print services, UNIX servers for mail/web services and IIS web servers for live weekday radio broadcasts to 10 radio stations and Internet audio/video feeds.
• Developed custom applications including CRM, reporting application, multiple web site presences and an inventory management system.
• Led Y2K analysis with reporting to NASD and SEC.

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Technology Skills

Languages: ASP.NET. VB.NET. C#. SQL. Visual Basic. ASP/COM. Java/J2EE. XML/XSL. C++. Java Script. Perl. HTML.
Databases: Microsoft Access, SQL Server 2000/2005/2008. Oracle 8i+. Sybase SQL Anywhere.
Enterprise Application Platforms: Plumtree Corporate Portal (BEA Aqualogic) 3.2- 6.0, Plumtree Content Server, Plumtree Collaboration Server, Plumtree Studio Server. Verity Search Engine. SAP R/3. Microsoft Exchange/OWA. Lotus Notes. Siebel 99/2000. MicroStrategy 7i. Microsoft IIS, Microsoft Application Center, Microsoft Project Server. Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Great Plains, Apache Tomcat/Web Server. BEA WebLogic. Netegrity SiteMinder. Documentum. Veritas. Telligent Community Server.
Operating Systems: Windows NT 3.51/4.0 (Enterprise Server and Workstation), Windows 2000/2003/2008 Server, Windows XP. UNIX (Solaris, AIX, IRIX). Linux, Novell Netware 3.x-5.0.
Networking: TCP/IP, DHCP, RF Communication, Routers, Firewalls, Gateways, Switches, LDAP/Microsoft Active Directory, IP Telephony, VPN, Load Balancing, GFI Network Monitoring, Microsoft Operations Manager.
Related Experience: Taxonomy building. Bar codes and data collection devices. Distributed systems. High Availability Architectures. Object modeling. Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). CRM. Social Networking Applications. SEO. Telecommunications planning. Enterprise security. QA Methodologies. Multi-platform environments.