Jay A. Cohen

BACKGROUND

Successful IT Strategist with over 25 years of experience who is skilled at leading the development, deployment and support of robust technical solutions, systems administrations, and architectures across multiple industries and platforms to include, technology, financial, real estate, healthcare, government contracting and telecommunication services. Offering a unique combination of strategic technology vision, business acumen, and tactical leadership to consistently deliver to plan and bring value to the organization.

Lead System Administration – Over 25 years in system administration, leading teams and mentoring Jr. Administrators. Improving overall quality and performance through the use of shell scripting creating tools to monitor and check the health of the systems. Setting up SLA’s and team career path training programs.

Change Management Process (Human Side) –Working with end users to educate and help them understand new changes. Setting up a transparent process so that everyone should know exactly what is going on.

Enterprise Systems Innovation– track record for implementing cutting-edge solutions that solve business issues while controlling costs and risk; advanced knowledge in Cloud and virtualization architectures and Enterprise wide initiatives.

Cloud Architecture – Proven track record in designing / Implementing and Monitoring cloud technologies on both VMWare and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Technology Services Expertise-across multiple industries, and understand the various lines of business, system requirements, compliance and regulations. Strong technical background in infrastructure technologies and planning.

Project Management (PM) / Project Management Organization (PMO) –Solid foundation of project initiation, planning, budgeting, monitoring, configuration management, risk identification, verification, testing and remediation with a strong emphasis on coordination and reporting skills. Planned projects over 3 Million.

People Management-motivating leader who has built, developed and managed high-performing IT teams. Very strong interpersonal skills with an ability to develop strong partnership with stakeholders. Ability to with internal technical resources and cross organizational departments and business lines.

Business Analyst- Documentation and business requirement skills, advanced analysis skills across all integrated Oracle modules and partner interfaces. Ability to perform and document complex data analysis across multiple system platforms.

Software Development –Have a clear understand of software development and SLDC process. Working alongside and with development in object-oriented Java development and personal experience in Objective C and Swift development for iPhone applications.

Expertise in – Strategic IT planning; enterprise, data center, virtualization architectures; risk and cost controls; Harvesting relationships and customer management; change management; quality management; staff development and leadership; project management; solution testing, resource and management.

Accomplished Speaker – Presentation and Speaking skills. Have given lectures on black empowerment and, cloud computing and the benefits for small businesses.

Board of Directors – Mr. Cohen has been on the board of directors of BalletNova School of Dance in Arlington, Virginia, and Springfield Community Theatre.

Major Projects

  • Nextel Corporation, Herndon Virginia – Created Tier 3 Help Desk 
    Created Tier 3 Help Desk for the industry’s first Cellphone Connected Wireless Web Portal. Responsibilities included but was not limited to:

Managing a budget of over 10 Million annually, Staffing, Negotiating Service Level Agreements, Managed the staff in a 24×7 production environment. 

  • Coventry Healthcare, Rockville Maryland – Moved Primary Data Center from Rockville, Maryland to Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania

Project was to consolidate 3 data centers into one. In addition there was a technology refresh to upgrade the claims servers. The server refresh saved the company over 3.3 Million dollars. 

  • Fannie Mae, Herndon Virginia – Rehosted 3900 Servers in 12 months.

upgraded 3900 servers for the entire enterprises from SLES 10 to SLES 11. Interfaced with stakeholders across the entire enterprise working closely with IBM Professional Services to automate the upgrades to decrease the downtime and server build from 8 hours to 2 per server   

  • Fannie Mae, Reston Virginia – Technology refresh of Enterprise Class SAN server

Fannie Mae had moved their Enterprise SAN server from EMC to IBM which has many issues. Mr. Cohen worked on the team to move the Enterprise Server back to the EMC servers from IBM. 

  • CGI Group, Sterling Virginia – Installed Commvault backup for 6400 consultant laptops Nationwide

CGI is one of the largest consulting companies and had 6400 consultants in the US working on company laptops without anything getting back-up.  We rolled out Commvault Backup so every consultant laptop would be backed up once it connected to the internet. 

  • CGI Group, Sterling Virginia – Upgraded Active Directory Servers and Consolidated servers from overseas.

Consolidated servers in Germany and Poland and upgraded the AD servers in the US. All while working with the Canadian HQ to grant access to having the US team maintain their own network. 

  • Shadowbox Consulting Associates, Annandale Virginia – vCIO, Corporate Migration to the Cloud

Pending Projects

Leesburg, Florida – Migrating small manufacturing company to a cloud server and several virtual desktop interfaces. 

The Villages, Florida – Small retail franchise with several stores. Migrating to the cloud with two servers and several virtual desktop interfaces.

EXPERIENCE SNAPSHOT

INDUSTRY EXPERTISE

    • Financial
    • Real Estate
    • Healthcare
    • Telecommunications
    • Government Contracting

TECHNICAL SPECIALIZATIONS

    • Unix Systems Administration
    • Project Management
    • Cloud Services / Architecture
    • Infrastructure Management
    • iOS Development

MANAGEMENT HIGHLIGHTS

    • Large scale procurements
    • Large enterprise cost saving measures
    • Effective managent of large teams
    • Deployed a wide range of applications across multiple Platforms
    • Enterprise wide migrations
    • Over 25 years of experience working in Production Environments

Contact

Jay A. Cohen is a solutions-focused Senior Executive, Thought Leader, and Board Member with more than 25 years of success across the performing arts and information technology industries. Leveraging extensive experience enforcing technology-based solutions to achieve quality in performance, cost reduction, and budgeting, he is a valuable advisor for an organization seeking to streamline its roadmapping systems. His broad areas of expertise include project management, emerging technologies, expense management, and IT strategy.

Throughout his executive career, Jay has held leadership positions with JAYCO Cloud Computing Solutions LLC and several board of directors positions with non-profits and volunteer organizations like Toastmasters International.