RESUME SUMMARY:
o Samir Arora is an Exceptional IT senior executive offers more than 20 years of successful Infrastructure engineering, Operations management, Information Security, Business Applications and Professional Service management experience for Fortune companies.
o Core Strengths: Strong analytical skills; Results-oriented; experienced Director, expert in working with teams and building strategic relations; Service Delivery Management; Business Development ;Creative in ideas and execution, especially in finding solutions under pressure ; aligning IT organizations with business objectives ;Strategic Planning and implementation.
o Key Competencies: Global IT Infrastructure Management ; ERP/CRM/Application Management ; Project /Program Management ; Enterprise Architecture Management; Outsourcing ,Offshoring Management ;Data Center ,ITIL and Business Processes Management ; Information Security , Compliance Management ;Global Professional Services Management ; Vendor & Contract Management.
WORK EXPERIENCE:
IT Director. Cadence Design Systems. 1999 - 2008. San Jose, CA
Managed and directed the corporate IT department of a $1.6B design and services organization reporting directly to the CIO. Responsible for IT strategy and implementation, Delivery Management, and external and internal IT services. | Lead the IT services initiative, including crafting the IT’s mission and vision statements aligned with corporate statements as well as Professional Services tool kit and other services methodology implementation. | Had responsibilities for SAP (4.6,4.7 , ECC 5.0) Implementation, Web Application Management, Data Centers management , Infrastructure Management; Enterprise Architecture Management, span project management and service development, staff mentoring and motivation, Budgeting, strategic technology planning and solutions, Information Security &Compliance Management, client relations/relationship management and Outsourcing/ off shoring Management | Developed and Assisted in corporate sales & Services campaigns including tradeshow participation, client relations development, new and existing client business development and retention programs (Select client list: Intel, Motorola, TI, PMC Sierra). | Assisted the CIO and CFO with CEO, board of directors’ presentations preparation, as well as provided other relevant executive communications support.
Key Accomplishments:
o Managed several large consulting projects related to Applications design & IT Infrastructure at high-tech organizations, with more than $3M of additional revenue recognition, providing project leadership to Cadence application specialists and field engineers. Assisted in responding to RFI, RFP for very large service proposals for Cadence Customers. Provisioned service rollout and business process optimization.
o Lead and Directed global $15 Million global SAP implementation project that included responsibility for the SAP FI/CO Full Life Cycle Implementation and Migration from Legacy Applications with Financial Accounting (FI) Customization, Configuration and Testing of General Ledger Accounting FI-New G/L, Accounts Payable FI-A/P, Accounts Receivable FI- A/R, Lock Box, Bank Accounting FI-BA, Treasury & Asset Accounting FI-AA including Order to Cash (SD, MM, PP and EDI modules of SAP 4.6) process encompassing customer and material data. Some of the ERP and data integration initiatives included integration with SAP General Ledger System (FI/CO version SAP 4.6), the SAP Business Information Warehouse, an Enterprise Data Warehouse, Global Integration Testing, Accounting Re-engineering, and End-User Reporting. Accelerated SAP Implementation Methodologies was used including, Change Management, Plans, Templates, Processes, and Procedures to effect positive change within the business organization.
o Initiated and managed the upgrade of SAP ERP environment to ECC 5.0, Implementation of SAP BW and migration from People soft to SAP HR consolidating the business application framework to SAP Platform. In addition, the scope included Web Portal initiatives for the Cadence B2B Business and IT areas. Lead efforts to implement and stabilize the customer relationship management (CRM) system worldwide ,managing initial installation of application infrastructure in headquarters of organization increasing sales, problem tracking and customer satisfaction
o Provided direction, leadership and management for the Portfolio Management Office guiding multi-site Business Solutions Analysts, Architecture, Data Management, Developers, Testers, Project Managers and Business Intelligence teams delivering large-complex Internet and e-Commerce (B2C, B2B), as well as hardware and software enterprise wide projects (SOA, ERP, CRM, Web Services, Release Engineering, Open Source Strategy, Grid Computing, Sox Compliance, Information security Assurance, Exchange Infrastructure, Datacenter redesign, Network Convergence, VOIP Implementation and Call Centers).Most of the Projects have been global in scope with the largest budget exceeding $30 million.
o Extensive involvement with business development and sales teams in managing and fostering customer relationships and identifying strategic new lines of business and business opportunities. Developed business and marketing plan, with particular focus on budget and productivity goals. Negotiated lease, contracts, and licenses for the internal business clients as well as for external Clients. Negotiate, Co-wrote legal contracts for the consultants, staff, vendors and clients.
o Linux Consulting practice: Leverage IT expertise to assist Customer Support and Cadence customers with Linux system configuration guidance and troubleshooting, improve customer design and time-to-market timelines
o Successful negotiations with third party contracts/Software Vendors that resulted in the removal of over $2 Million in liability. Developed strong relationships with vendors, service providers, and VARs including Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, IBM, Red Hat, Business Objects, BEA, SAP, and Oracle. Managed key Indian partner relationships, local business and corporate relationship
o External Client Partnerships (Motorola, Intel, AMD, TI, Sun etc.) – Worked with key customer account teams to provide IT services that influence revenue opportunities and improve customer relationships. Networked to attract new clients and maintained relationships with existing clients from Hi-tech organizations.
o Designed and managed the Cadence hosted engineering applications platform infrastructure to facilitate the design services (ASP Model) offering to semiconductor companies. The infrastructure is designed for providing EDA CAD hosted services, and design augmentation to companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 clients.
o Directed, re-engineered and implementation of primary data center, failover center, and enterprise network infrastructure on a $10M budget. Held full leadership and decision-making responsibility for complete network design and server / SAN/NAS design to consolidate 800TB of Storage environment across multiple locations worldwide. Financially accountable for $10M Capital and $5M Expense budgets annually while keeping the 2007 budget running at 75% of 2006. This resulted from removing high-cost expenses in the infrastructure via contract negotiations, Virtualization, Grid Computing and server consolidation, defining more refined and measurable performance metrics.
o Developed and implemented Linux Support Strategy for Cadence. Directed a team of System Administrators that designed, configured, installed and supported thousands of Linux /UNIX/Windows based servers and Desktops globally for Cadence engineering organization. Responsibilities included budgets, Platform standardization, Operating system profiling, Imaging standardization and technical training.
o Provided technical physical infrastructure architecture implementing DMZ, Firewall and back office integration. office designing and implementing components including Enterprise Security Management Developed logical security application architecture utilizing iPlanet technologies, LDAP, IBM Web Sphere, BEA Web Logic and Single Sign on Solution based on Entrust GetAccess. Experience with security management, Wireless hardening, DRM, IDS, IPS and auditing required for external and internal network security. Implemented virtual private network ("VPN") and voice over IP ("VoIP") infrastructure. The newly created infrastructure replaced an obsolete and costly frame relay design saving the organization over $2M dollars in the first year alone on a newly negotiated three year telecommunications contract with AT&T.
o Leadership and direction in the redesign of IT process infrastructure’ in order to support highly available computing environment and align with the ITIL “IT Service Management Framework”. Current focus includes Incident, Problem, Change, Availability, Knowledge, Service Level,’ Enterprise Architecture, Event Monitoring, Disaster Recovery and Project Management processes as well as ‘organizational impacts, leadership strategy and Employee trainings.''
o Drove the initiative to significantly reduce IT development and data management costs resulting in the negotiation of an Outsourced contract with Indian firms that shifted development and data maintenance to an off-shore facility. This resulted in the creation of a 50 person team producing a cost savings of more than 50% of internal IT and data management labor expense (reduction from $15M to around $7M). Built India Support center capabilities to convert from a model of onsite resource deployment to onshore/offshore facilities. Developed and implemented strategies to expand business from Cadence internal only to include external customer projects
Management Consultant. Rapidigm/Fujitsu Consulting 1997-1999, Seattle WA.
o Business Development for Rapidigm consulting across North West U.S Locations generating around $1.5M additional revenue. Involved in the pre-sales/contract process and develop and presented customer business solutions and make technical presentations. Partner with Operation Managers and Account Managers in the hand-off of deals and took ownership of managing the project delivery process.
o Significantly increased productivity by 15% and reduced the duplication of source code development by 20% through the creation and implementation of new Software configuration management application. Oversaw the consolidation of the UNIX environment from 1000 systems to 100 systems, including migrating all applications from Workstations to HP servers and retiring all old workstations.
o Lead the Implementation of Oracle 10.7 ERP financial application replacing legacy in-house application stack. Implemented the Oracle financials, manufacturing, and distribution applications. This project included the Oracle database and applications installation, functional setups, and technical administration. Intranet-based software was then written to extend the functionality of the core applications including the use of reporting and order-management tools
o Client partner for IT with Engineering groups, fostering improved communication and service delivery.
Senior Systems Manager. Schlumberger. 1991-1997. Muscat, Oman (MEA)
Schlumberger is the leading oilfield services provider trusted to deliver superior results and improved E&P performance for oil and gas companies around the world with worldwide revenues exceeding $23billion(FY07) and over 80,000 employees across 80 countries worldwide
o Provided technical services to a number of high-level clients, including Shell PDO, Triton Energy, and ONGC India. The infrastructure consists of high performance and highly scalable Sun Solaris /Vax-VMS/ Windows Systems for extensive computing environment.
o Formed service and consulting organization, consisting of 20+ Engineers, spread across seven locations, generating $4M revenue annually, focusing on Oil &Gas, Banking and Services sector.
o Developed managed security service offering, such as Enterprise Security review, building local incident response teams, penetration testing and active IT service monitoring.
o As Technical Consulting Manager, proposed, negotiated, won and executed a $2.8M project for Oman Telecommunications. Implemented a secure and fault tolerant, tier-1 ISP, infrastructure delivering, highly available, advanced Internet services. Initiated and won technical consulting project, worth $1.5M, for designing Secure Messaging Platform, integrated WAN solution and directory enabled network architecture for Oman armed forces.
o Managed 3 countries IT dep’t at Schlumberger Oman, Schlumberger India, and Pakistan
Senior Customer Support Engineer. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), 1987 –1991. New Delhi, India.
EDUCATION:
o M.S. Electronics & Communications, Jiwaji University, India, 1986.
o B.S. Electronics & Physics , Jiwaji University ,India , 1984
AWARDS:
o CEO Award - Cadence Design Systems - 2000.
o Best Contributor - Schlumberger - 1995.
o Best Engineer – Digital Equipment Corporation - 1988.