CloudStrategies Newsletter: Volume 2 Issue 3 - May 2011

Pete Zarras - Founder and President
Pete is the chief catalyst behind CloudStrategies and plays a key role managing the day-to-day operations and growth of the firm. In addition to these responsibilities, he works directly with clients on assignments where bridging business and technical issues are essential to maximizing value. He brings nearly 20 years of hands-on experience solving technology challenges for some of the world's largest enterprises and fastest moving small businesses to the work he performs. Before founding CloudStrategies, Pete worked in sales / service roles for Microsoft Corporation in their NY Metro District, as well as several business and technology consulting firms.

Pete earned a dual track MBA / Technology Management degree from the University of Phoenix and has a BS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. Pete is very active in his local community and sits on the board of Morris Habitat for Humanity.

Rick Ferrari - Strategic Planning & Operations
Rick is a seasoned executive in the financial technology industry with more than twenty years of broad management experience in all aspects of software companies operating in the financial sector. Over the course of his career Rick has managed enterprise sales and marketing into the banking and capital markets community in Europe, Africa and the Americas.

He began his career in the City of London with British merchant banking group Schroders where he built up his experience in foreign exchange trading and project finance. Rick then went on to US software and services firm Comshare where he specialized in the sales of bureau-based mainframe software and services to the finance industry.

Following senior sales management roles with Misys and Infinity Financial Technology, Rick moved to the U.S. to become sales director for SunGard's trading and risk subsidiary, Infinity, before moving onto SunGard Corporate as a founding member of their new Global Account Management initiative.  Rick has also held senior roles at derivatives technology specialists Calypso Technology and Regional Managing Director at risk software firm FRSGlobal.

Doug Fraser - U.S. Microsoft Alliance Director/West Region Sales Director
Doug oversees CloudStrategies relationship and co-selling activities with Microsoft as well as working directly with strategic accounts in various geographies. In this role, he identifies opportunities for businesses of all sizes to leverage cloud computing and helps mobilize resources needed to deliver the solution. An Information Technology veteran with more than 10 years of experience, he's worked with a wide range of Enterprise and Mid-Market customers to solve burning problems from a software and services perspective. Prior to joining CloudStrategies, Doug held several senior sales positions at Microsoft where he managed alliance partner relationships and worked with clients in both the Midwest and New York Metro areas while consistently exceeding sales objectives.

Doug holds an MBA from Seattle University and completed his undergraduate studies at Arizona State University.

Stacy John Malcolm - East Region Sales Director
Stacy is focused on building Cloud Strategies sales capacity in the northeast, working with middle market and enterprise customers to leverage the value of cloud computing services.

Stacy joined CloudStrategies from Microsoft Corporation where he consistently over achieved in helping clients leverage Microsoft's Unified Collaboration solutions, including cloud services.

He has spent over 25 years in the communications and collaboration business.  Stacy brings to Cloud Strategies experience with both large established companies as well as startups with sales ranging from transactional opportunities to large account management.  Throughout his career, Stacy has worked extensively with Hosted services from companies such as Telera, Voxeo, PlaceWare (Acquired by Microsoft in 2003) and TrendMicro.  His experience with early adopters of the hosted services as well as his knowledge with startups going from private companies to public entities are invaluable to the Cloud Strategies team. 

His pastime is spent enjoying his family with his wife Lori of 25 years and their three great kids Josh 17, Danielle 12 and Zach 11. 

John Alumbaugh - Director of Consulting Services
John oversees all services related client activities and is responsible for growing CloudStrategies consulting business.  In addition to helping clients migrate from legacy infrastructure into modern cloud infrastructure, John is responsible for setting consulting business strategy. 

John is a US Navy Veteran with more than 20 years of IT infrastructure experience.  Prior to joining CloudStrategies, John worked at Hewlett Packard in a variety of professional services roles, most notably as the Practice Manager for the Great Lakes Microsoft Infrastructure Practices where he lead consulting teams focused on enterprise migrations to Microsoft platforms.  John lives outside of Indianapolis with his family, where he is active in his community. 

Steve Jacobs - Consultant
Steve is responsible for client deployments, migrations, and support operations for CloudStrategies.

Steve has been working in Information Technology since the early 1990's.  While obtaining his second BA in Computer Science from Tulane University, Steve worked in a computer services business and at a Dow Jones Telerate office in New Orleans, LA.  Later, Steve handled the internal support duties  and programming responsibilities for Creative Data Research in Mandeville, LA.  For eleven years prior to joining CloudStrategies, Steve administered and maintained the technology infrastructure at ISS Group, a leading Microsoft Partner of manufacturing software solutions.

Steffo Mitakides - Territory Director/Western Region
Steffo Mitakides is a Cloud Computing and SaaS veteran.  He spent 6 years at Microsoft in the Unified Communications Group focusing on E-mail and Collaboration, most recently in the field as an SSP in NY Metro. 

Now that he is back in his home town of San Jose, CA, Steffo is building CloudStrategies into a "go-to" delivery partner for Microsoft Online in the West.  Previous to Microsoft, Steffo spent time at WebEx/Cisco and Philips. Throughout his career, he has thrived in building new markets for emerging technologies.  He graduated from UCLA with an English Literature degree and from the Stanford Communications Program.  An indie music lover, Steffo brings the same energy and passion that he has for music to the Cloud Computing industry. Steffo is an avid tennis player and enjoys yoga, karaoke, strong espresso, music festivals, noodle soup and the World Champion San Francisco Giants.  He lives in downtown San Jose, CA.

Pat Keating - Account Executive
Armed with an MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson College, the leader in that discipline, Pat Keating has helped many Boston-based startups grow their new businesses.  An adept technologist, Pat focuses on the business issues his clients face, providing them with a true advocate, fostering long-term close relationships based on responding to their needs and promoting their growth.  Pat and his wife Julie live with their sons outside Boston, MA.

Rose Reda - Marketing & Operations Manager
Rose oversees all Marketing as well as Operations activities for CloudStrategies.  She brings a very strong and varied background to the company. 

Her experience includes successfully executing Marketing, Innovation, Public Relations, Sales and Operations initiatives for companies including the ABC-TV Network, the Colgate-Palmolive Company, Passage Events where she was a Marketing Account Manager for the Starbucks Coffee Company account, and  Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

She holds a BA degree in Communication from Rutgers, The State University of NJ.

Clayton Wilkins - Territory Sales Executive
Clayton has spent the past 12 years in the Information Technology industry working with SMB and Enterprise clients, focusing extensively on delivering solutions for product procurement, engineering network and data center projects, desktop deployment, and complete managed services. 

Working within many industry verticals, Clayton brings significant experience with identifying business issues, technology needs, and market drivers.  Equally comfortable communicating with and building relationships at both the executive and management level, as well as relating to technical personnel and staff, Clayton works closely with engineering teams to present, scope, design, propose, and deliver cloud-based data center and network solutions.