Cloud Surfing

Find Me On Scoop.It

Hey everyone!  I've been trying to use this blog as a place to curate content across the web on cloud computing but as you can see I've been a little lax in my posting.

I recently discovered a content curation tool called "Scoop.it" that makes it easy to share good content.

You can check out my Scoop.it page here:

http://www.scoop.it/t/cloudsurfing

This is what it looks like...

Cool right?  You can even make your own!

 

Amazon and the Enterprise...

Amazon went down again last week and the companies that use them said, "We're down again due to this Amazon outage..."

I don't know about you but the old adage, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." comes to mind.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/amazon-ec2-outage/

Is It Time To Abandon Cloud Computing?

I thought that this was a great article about the realities of cloud.

I WOULD argue that spending a lot of money on redundant systems that "can't go down" needs to go hand in hand with Operational Procedures that include triple checking safeguards before making critical changes.

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2011/05/16/daily22-Is-it-time-to-abandon-cloud-computing.html

 

Verizon Supports Women in Engineering at Tufts

As a female Mechanical Engineer who graduated from Tufts and is now part of the Verizon family this article DEFINITELY got my attention.

GREAT NEWS!

http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2011/verizon-foundation-awards.html

 

Comparison of VCloud Express to Dedicated Servers

This is an interesting Whitepaper on the cost comparison of VCloudExpress to owning in house equipment.

I'd say that while maintenance, electricity, personnel, etc. ARE factored in, the robustness of the Terremark Data Centers is probably not.

http://www.ideasinternational.com/PDFs/Costs-Replacing-Servers-with-Public-Clouds.pdf

 

About Me

My name is Meredith Knowles. 

You can read my resume here.  For more personal info? Read on.

I live in the Boston area - where I was born, raised and educated (Tufts.)  After college I worked for a small engineering company in Western Massachusetts.  I really enjoyed it and got to travel a lot which I loved.

After a couple of years I was recruited by one of our clients to come work for them in San Diego, CA.  They were launching a new product and I hoped that it would be the beginning of a HUGE opportunity for me.

San Diego was GORGEOUS.  The weather was beautiful, the people were friendly and the beaches were fantastic.  I took up running and ran several half marathons.

Unfortunately the company I was working for ran into several setbacks and I began to realize that they were not going to be as successful as I had hoped.  I also realized that San Diego WAS beautiful but that I wanted to be back in Boston.

I had spent much of my 4 years in the business world writing programs that interfaced with our machinery so that people could look at a laptop and understand what was happening with the machinery.  I decided that computer engineering and networking was more interesting to me than the mechanical engineering work I had been doing so I applied at, and was hired by AT&T to assist their Global Account teams sell networking services to Fortune 100 companies in the Boston area.

I LOVED it.  Frame Relay and ATM were still new and companies were using them to transform their business operations.  After 6 months I had learned more than most of the sales executives and was moved into a direct sales role.  I was very successful because I was able to answer the client's questions and move the sale forward without the need for several "follow up" meetings with the sales engineers.

At the beginning of the dot.com era I accepted a position as a Sales Engineer in AT&T's commercial markets office.  It was incredibly exciting.  I supported companies that became incredibly successful like Akamai and companies that faded into obscurity.  One of my clients decided that they needed a more technical sales executive and requested that I be assigned to their account as the sales rep.

So I moved back into a sales role.  Although I enjoyed being an SE, I enjoy being a direct sales rep more.  I like the day to day relationship and continuity that I have as a direct rep - and I like the ownership.

Over the next few years the telecom market changed and became very commercialized.  I continued to be successful but wanted to do something that enabled business to transform itself into something more efficient - something like Frame Relay and the internet had been.

Cloud computing was a terrific opportunity.  Although virtualization has enabled companies to collapse their IT infrastructure into something much more efficient, they still need to purchase, deploy and manage their infrastructure for peak loads.  Cloud computing eliminates that.  It gives companies the flexibility to design for steady state loads and leverage cloud federation and bursting for app dev, marketing pushes, seasonal peaks, etc.

Additionally, it gives small companies access to best in class infrastructure and policies at a price point they could never afford if they had to build it themselves.

Finally, as a telecom provider I was always asked to help companies price out a DR environment.  This environment ALWAYS ended up being too expensive.  Cloud computing gives companies the ability to have that DR environment available for a very low monthly fee.

This gives them the ability to have redundancy, resiliency and scalability for a fraction of the cost of deploying their own data center - while AT THE SAME time having access to technical resources that they could not recruit and retain OR afford.

All of these things convinced me to leave AT&T after more than a decade and accept a position with Terremark. (Who was promptly acquired my Verizon - more on that as it develops.)

In my new role I am leveraging the relationships that I made over 12 years at AT&T to bring the concept of cloud computing to Fortune 500 companies - as well as reaching out to contacts across New England to introduce cloud computing to new logos - and Startups.

I'm reconnecting with old friends, meeting new people and really enjoying myself. 

Right now I'm very interested in Cloud Computing, Social Media (thus the blog/Twitter thing) and Digital Marketing.  This blog is my attempt to curate some of the interesting articles I see in one place.  I AM hoping to add some original content at some point...

I love reading, traveling, snowboarding, running, Twitter and the beach.  I hate the cold (can someone please remind me why I left San Diego again?)

Thanks for reading.

Meredith

 

Meredith Knowles

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY:

• Top performing IT Sales Executive with 13 years experience, known for New Logo Acquisition, Fortune 500 Account Penetration and Existing Client Revenue Expansion. 
• A highly technical sales executive who leverages expertise in Cloud Computing, Security Services and Managed Network Services to advance solutions at every level of the customer’s organization.  
• Responsible for delivering over $1.5M/year in new recurring revenue. 
• Previously an Account Manager with responsibility for a $70M revenue stream.

EDUCATION:

Tufts University, College of Engineering. Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Boston University, College of Engineering. Graduate work in Computer Engineering.

RELEVANT WORK AND EDUCATION EXPERIENCE:

2010-present    District Sales Manager, Terremark. Boston, MA

Responsibilities:

• New logo acquisition
• Penetrate a target list of Fortune 500 Companies
• Develop relationships with existing clients

2005-2010        Senior Account Executive, AT&T. Boston, MA

Accomplishments:

• Identified, Negotiated and Closed a $6M Cloud Computing contract with EMC.
• Identified, Negotiated and Closed a $500,000 Security Consulting Engagement at Starwood.
• Identified and Designed the solution for a $100M contract with Staples to support 2000 locations.
• Identified and Designed the solution for a $66M contract with EMC to support Content Delivery.
• Identified and Provided Engineering Support for a $10M Wireless Sale to EMC to support wireless applications.
• Identified, Negotiated and Closed a $1M contract for network management in China.
• Managed a $10M network deployment project at Staples Distribution Centers.
• Identified, Negotiated and Closed a $15M contract for the Macgregor Group for hosted application management.
• Identified, Negotiated and Closed a $1.5M contract with EMC for hosted application management.

Responsibilities:

• Uncover new opportunities and expand into new areas of the business.
• Develop strategic relationships with C-level executives and key decision makers across the organization.
• Negotiate Contracts and commitments.
• Run weekly customer meetings to discuss upcoming projects, provide support and ensure a positive customer experience.
• Manage a team of 15 direct and indirect support resources to ensure customer satisfaction.

2001-2005        Sales Engineer, AT&T. Boston, MA

Accomplishments:

• Designed, Proposed and Architected a $15M network at Iron Mountain.
• Contributed to Sales Center Revenue Growth over 110% 2 years in a row.
• Presented AT&T’s Security Services Portfolio to thousands of customers at 5 Roadshow events.

Responsibilities:

• Advising customers on IT Best Practices.
• Drafting Statements of Work for custom projects.
• Demonstrating Technical Expertise to build credibility for future engagements.
• Building Relationships within the customer organization.
• Manage direct and indirect resources to provide a positive customer experience.
• Provide Customer Feedback to Product Management.

1998-2001        Account Representative, AT&T. Boston, MA

Accomplishments:

• Re-signing 5 of 5 customers to 3 year contracts at an average commitment 10% greater than their previous commitment.
• Identified and Closed a $2M/yr network back from a competitor in Asia at Reebok.
• Identified, Negotiated and Closed a $10M, 25 site international implementation for Picturetel.

Responsibilities:

• Managing AT&T resources to provide a positive client experience.
• Advising customers on IT Best Practices.
• Fostering relationships at every level of the customer organization to build credibility and uncover new opportunities.

1996-1998        Product Manager, Advanced Cryo Magnetics, Inc.  San Diego, CA.

Accomplishments:

• Successfully Managed 4 International Implementation Projects worth over $12M including international shipping of 50+ tons of equipment and scheduling and managing multiple vendors onsite.
• Completed a product re-design to use 75% less energy and have twice the capacity of the previous system.

1995-1996        Product Engineer, Process Systems Intl, Westborough, MA.

Accomplishments:

• Became the Engineering Lead on our most profitable product after only 3 months in title.
• Was chosen by our #1 customer to be their single point of contact including orders, support and training.
• Improved product performance 10% by making process improvements after traveling to 15 existing system installations to observe how the systems function in the field. (locations included Poland, Hungary, Germany)

1994-1995        Field Service Engineer, Process Systems Intl, Westborough, MA.

Accomplishments:

• Deployed more than 6 $1M+ cryogenic systems to 4 countries in 12 months, including the Czech Republic, S. Korea, the UK and US.
• Saved over $100k/yr in overtime costs by writing software to automate the test process for new systems – eliminating the need for manual intervention after hours.

 

Terremark's VCloud Express Competes with EC2

Two new articles I found interesting... The first is about Terremark's new VCloud Express pricing model - that the price has been lowered to compete with EC2.

http://huanliu.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/terremark-announces-new-lower-price-2/

The second is a benchmark analysis of several cloud providers and Terremark scores top marks.

http://us-east.ec2.cloudharmony.net/b/2010/06/disk-io-benchmarking-in-cloud.html

 

Cloud APIs are Useless

Interesting argument...  Not sure I agree with it...

http://www.networkcomputing.com/virtualization/standardized-cloud-apis-are-useless.php

 

5 Wordpress Plugins that are No Brainers

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/03/16/5-bestwordpress-plugins-that-are-no-brainers/?isalt=0