Rajendiran Neelakantan

Public Cloud Foundation Design, Architecture, Build and Governance

• Experience in successfully leading several transformation projects, working in complex, fast paced environments with team distributed across multiple delivery locations.
• Managed the overall Cloud migration program scope and maintain its continuous alignment with strategic business objectives; and resolve conflicts to enhance effectiveness in reaching business results or strategic goals.
• Provided architectural leadership and guidance to technical teams to deliver robust, highly scalable and cost-effective solutions.
• Partnered closely with technical stakeholders to implement security, operational, compliance and privacy-related controls as part of cloud blueprints.
• Define projects/programs; assign managers to initiate and manage all aspects of migration program like CI/CD, cloud architectural principles, different methods of migration and cloud technologies.
• Ensure effective and engaged program team by providing ongoing guidance and mentorship, to ensure attainment of full program objectives.
• Build credibility and relationships, and maintain communication with stakeholders at multiple levels, including those external to the organization.
• Secure budget and timeline; determine and coordinate the sharing of resources among the constituent projects/program to the overall benefit of the program.
• Lead and facilitate periodic status and risk discussions with program stakeholders; evaluate and discuss program results and lessons learned throughout the program lifecycle.
  

Key Achievements

• Automating several processes reduced the overall migration time by 20%.
• Implementing FinOps, cloud governance, and best practices resulted in cost savings of up to USD 3M.

Public Cloud Migration

• Managing and guiding the applications migrate to new Public cloud under Optimization, Modernization and Self-Migrate strategies.
• Facilitate extensive analysis of cloud technology requirements and help with estimations and technical assumptions for the entire migration effort.
• Interfaced directly with customers, stakeholders and end-users regarding capability architectures, requirements use cases and stories to derive, develop and decompose next-cycle updates and specifications.
• Collaborated with development and operations teams to develop practical automation solutions and custom modules.
• Provided solution designs to meet system strategies, capabilities and technologies and to respond to current and future business requirements.
• Setting up weekly touch-point and daily standup calls to track the progress and resolve any roadblocks or open RAIDs for the applications.
• Follow AGILE methodology for self-migrating applications.

Key Achievements

• Maintained migration delivery rate of over 90% of intake.

Public Cloud Security NIST 800-53 Security Framework Adoption and Palo Alto Implementation

• Maintained compliance with cybersecurity regulations and measures and tracked, assessed, integrated and reported on modernization and migration processes.
• Developed and documented system security authorization boundaries for cloud-based solutions and client applications within cloud service.
• Assessment of the current security control Matrix and thereby recommending new controls based on the gap analysis.
• Provided remediation for Vulnerabilities on cloud foundation based on the different templates for the framework defined by Azure security center.
• Developed security metrics and technical analysis to give insight into performance and trends.
• Created policies and procedures for emerging security technologies.
• Worked with business partners to balance requirements, security and risk reduction.
• Reviewed existing systems and made recommendations for improvements.
• Identified, analyzed and resolved infrastructure vulnerabilities and application deployment issues.
• Worked with cloud architect to generate assessments and develop and implement actionable recommendations based on results and reviews.
• Analyzed network security and current infrastructure, assessing areas in need of improvement.
• Lead and facilitated the complete end-to-end design and implementation of Palo Alto solutions in the Azure Cloud.

Key Achievements

• By adopting the NIST 800-53 Security Framework and swiftly implementing the TSA framework, targeted cyber attacks in the Energy and Utilities domain were reduced, thereby avoiding damages of up to USD 3.3Mper week.

Directory Services Cloud-Based Solutions - DevOps

• Process Development for Active Directory Extension: I spearheaded the development process by meticulously understanding dependencies for extending Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud.
  
• Legacy Domain Remediation and Cloud Transition: I identified applications and infrastructure components tied to the legacy domain and skillfully remediated them, ensuring a smooth transition toward the Greenfield domain or the cloud.
  
• Eliminating Back-End Synchronization: A critical task involved eliminating back-end synchronization between the legacy and current Active Directory domains, enhancing efficiency and data consistency.
  
• Complex Issue Resolution During Implementation: I provided invaluable support during implementation by resolving intricate issues faced by the IT team throughout development, deployment, and ongoing maintenance.
  
• Deploying Radiant Logic Virtual Directory: As a leader, I orchestrated the deployment of the highly available Radiant Logic Virtual Directory as an enterprise solution. This strategic move replaced decades’ worth of Oracle Enterprise Directory legacy debt, resulting in a more robust and secure directory infrastructure.
  

Key Achievements:

• High Migration Delivery Rate: Our meticulous approach ensured minimal impact on user experience and performance, resulting in a migration delivery rate exceeding 95% for the 450 business applications we received.
  

Active Directory Sustainability Project

• Consolidating Active Directory Infrastructure: I led the migration of on-premises Active Directory infrastructure from multiple forests and domains to a single forest and domain. This strategic move simplifies management, reduces administrative overhead, and enhances security.
  
• Hybrid Infrastructure with Azure AD Connect: Leveraging Azure AD Connect, I established a hybrid infrastructure that seamlessly integrates both legacy on-premises and cloud applications with Active Directory. This ensures smooth authentication processes across environments.
  
• Enhancing Security with a Single Identity Provider (IDP): A significant milestone was achieved by creating a single Identity Provider (IDP). This consolidation not only reduces complexity but also strengthens security measures.
  

Key Achievements:

• Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains:
  The successful migration led to substantial savings:$400,000 USD in operations costs.
  A significant 40% reduction in Active Directory (AD) support tickets.
  

VDI Migration Project

• Project Ownership and Management: I assumed overall ownership of the project, overseeing its execution and ensuring alignment with objectives.
  
• Timely and Budget-Conscious Delivery: My responsibility was to guarantee the successful delivery of the project within the stipulated timeframe and budget constraints.
  
• Collaboration Across Teams: I facilitated coordination among Infosys, the client’s internal teams, and third-party stakeholders for activities related to VDI upgrades.
  
• User Readiness and Scheduling: I worked closely with business units to prepare end users and efficiently schedule migration activities.
  
• Effective Communication and Progress Tracking: Managing end user communication and migration schedules was crucial, alongside tracking project progress, resolving issues, and providing status reports to stakeholders.
  

Key Achievements:

• Additionally, we streamlined the process by automating numerous manual tasks, resulting in a total cost savings of $280,000.

Microsoft Foundation Project

• Engineering Leadership for System Transitions: I provided leadership to a team of engineers, guiding them through the process of defining, designing, building, testing, and implementing critical transitions: Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, AD 2003 to AD 2008 and Office 2007 to Office 2013
• These transitions impacted 30,000 Field and Home Office users.
  Comprehensive Oversight and Validation: My role extended to overseeing the entire implementation lifecycle, including: Implementations, Deployments, Testing and Observing system initiation
• This meticulous approach allowed us to validate the performance of the Active Directory Upgrades and the integration with NM Learn Vest.
  

Technology Rationalization Project

• Define packaging process and standards.
• Design and review of tools, templates and checklists.
• Review requirement gathering.
• Deployment planning and scheduling.
• Team management and overall project delivery.
• Customer interaction and stakeholder management.
• Coordinate with business users for UAT (User Acceptance Testing).
• Reporting daily, weekly and monthly status.
• Maintain stable, secure, and up-to-date services on end-user devices.
• Distribute and maintain agreed software packages on all such devices.
• Provide life cycle management for computers and other mutually agreed devices.

Infrastructure maintenance and Support for TI Managed Services (TIMS). Incident, Change, Problem and Datacenter Management

• Microsoft Windows Server support lead for 20+ team members.
• Change Management Lead and Change implementation.
• Managing, Maintaining and Administering Windows 2003 and 2008 Servers.
• Basic administration of Citrix Presentation server 4.5, VMware ESX 4.1.0.
• Coordination with DC 2015 team for various activities, including: Successful completion of Citrix upgrade. Ongoing OpNet agent installation on 1000 servers. FQDN validation. VC data store migration. Storage migration from CLARiiON to VMAX.
• Vendor coordination, including: Coordination with Microsoft for windows server’s critical issues. HP for physical server’s hardware issues. BMC for any critical issues/updates.
• Resolve Windows server issues through incident tickets.
• Windows Patching using WSUS server.
• Monitoring server performance through BMC PORTAL.
• Managing and installing VeriSign certification.
• Monitoring physical servers through HP System Management tools.
• Played a major role in CSS to F5 load balancer migration.
• Coordination with Network team for firewall configuration and DNS configuration.
• Handling new engagement process.
• End to End decommission process for servers.
• Hardware and software inventory management.
• Projects SharePoint Maintenance.
• Experience in Lotus Notes client.
• Customer coordination for NAS migration and other ad-hoc activities.
• Mentoring L1, L2 and change management team.
• Weekly updates to onsite and offshore management.

Hardware and Software Refresh Program

• Lead Banking Store Refresh Program, RDM, Network Refresh, VoIP rollout and other new initiatives.
• Escalation point for issues faced by the Support Desk during NOI.
• Offered technical leadership to junior personnel and other team leaders, providing expertise on Hardware Refresh Program.
• Fostered strong relationship between technology team and managers to align efforts.
• Led technology governance efforts, planning upgrades, hardware refreshes and software updates.
• Recommended technology upgrades to improve client security.
• Installed system updates to address vulnerabilities and reduce security issues.

PST Archival and Exchange Migration

• Collaborated with a team to create a comprehensive migration planning and strategy.
• Reviewed internal systems and organized training plans to address areas in need of improvement.
• Conducted thorough reviews of operations to devise and deploy improvement strategies.
• Liaised with customers, management, and sales team to better understand customer needs and recommend appropriate solutions.

Monitoring Windows 2000 Servers and Windows Clients

• Designed proactive preventive maintenance schedules to prevent unnecessary downtime and hardware faults.
• Established network specifications and analyzed workflow, access, information and security requirements.
• Installed important security and functionality patches to maintain optimal protections against intrusion and system reliability.
• Implemented corrective plans of action for network availability and latency.
• Served as subject matter expert on proposed technology purchases.
• Completed reports detailing network and systems performance and downtime issues.

Application Maintenance and Support

• Installation and commissioning of Intel servers, PCs, peripherals, networking equipment.
• State Government Finance Software Implementation and Support Management.

System Administrator

• Worked with stakeholders to determine implementation and integration of system-oriented projects.
• Identified software issues and handled troubleshooting to resolve quickly.
• Assisted employees with resolving network problems at remote locations.
• Analyzed security logs to determine and alleviate network threats.
• Implemented security measures and software to maintain network integrity.
• Proposed technical feasibility solutions for new system designs and suggested options for performance improvement of technical components.
• Streamlined troubleshooting processes to improve system support and enhance communication between support team and end-users.
• Suggested system updates or changes after conduct in-depth technical reviews.
• Negotiated with vendors, outsources and contractors to secure contracts and set SLAs.

Automation of Stock Inventory

• Worked with software development and testing team members to design and develop robust solutions to meet client requirements for functionality, scalability, and performance.
• Reviewed project specifications and designed technology solutions that met or exceeded performance expectations.