Years professional experience
THOMAS SIMMONS
Atlanta,GA
Summary
Compliance is what we do because we must, security is what we do because we should. Over the years of building technology solutions, the evolution of technology and how it has made its way into every aspect of our lives means we must take security with an even more aggressive approach. We must challenge ourselves to examine what makes our business strong and profitable, and how we can secure that from those who would tear it down.
Overview
25
25
18
18
Years data center & infrastructure
12
12
Years cloud services & architecture
7
7
Years public sector compliance & engineering
Work History
Sr. Director
Appian
Atlanta, GA
03.2021 - Current
- Crafted operating policies and design review to ensure adherence to regulatory compliance for Public Sector PaaS service.
- Drove strategic improvements to enhance operational and organizational efficiencies.
- Formed & hired new compliance & engineering teams to drive organizational goals
Director of SaaS Architecture
VMware
Atlanta, GA
02.2014 - 03.2021
- Reduced compliance requirements for operations teams by 70%.
- Designed and implemented security control plane for public sector cloud services.
- Managed customer expectations and remediated issues salvaging business relationships.
- Achieved FedRAMP & DOD IL5 ATO and serviced as ISO for 2 FedRAMP offerings.
Director of Data Center Operations
AirWatch (VMware)
Atlanta, GA
06.2013 - 02.2014
- Formed Initial Information Security team
- Managed 15 data centers globally 12 cloud based & 3 Co-Lo facilities across 4 continents
- Developed business cost models and calculated ROI for C-Suite
- Managed Vendors for all Hardware and Data Center services, reducing costs by more that 27%
Sr. Systems Engineer
AirWatch (VMware)
Atlanta, GA
03.2010 - 06.2013
- Migrated hosting services from 100% physical to 90% virtualized infrastructure .
- Streamlined Internal IT support procedures through deployment of management systems.
- Drove projects to implement High Availability systems increasing uptime of SaaS service.
- Built Engineering teams to support both Corporate and SaaS Hosting systems.
Education
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MSSkills
- Disaster Recovery Strategies
- Building & Leading Technical Teams
- Creating Business Cases & ROI models
- Defining & Tracking of KPI
- Data Center Operations & Management
- Hybrid CLOUD Solution Design
- Project Design & Implementation
- Collaborative Team Communication
- Technology Needs Analysis
- Vendor Management
- NIST 800-53
- DOD IL4 & IL5 Authorization
- Experience with Compliance Frameworks (PCI/SOC2/FedRAMP/HITRUST/etc)
- Vulnerability Management
Certification
References available upon request.
Work Availability
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Quote
Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Timeline
Sr. Director
Appian
03.2021 - Current
Director of SaaS Architecture
VMware
02.2014 - 03.2021
Director of Data Center Operations
AirWatch (VMware)
06.2013 - 02.2014
Sr. Systems Engineer
AirWatch (VMware)
03.2010 - 06.2013
University of Southern Mississippi