My name is Robert Joseph Rein, and I am an IT Professional with over 35 years of both work and life experiences. I started in the computer field quite innocently. My Dad purchased an APPLE PLUS computer when I was 16. I sat in front of that computer for hours, and discovered I had a talent with it. I wrote silly programs and basically learned about the excitement of creating something! With no background in advanced math skills, I created exploding screens and interactive games.
Realizing my talent with programming, I knew my path. I looked-for entry-level jobs in computer technology and started out in the Data Entry field. In high school, I was required to take a typing class, and I was the fastest typing student in the class. This allowed me to do very well with Data Entry. While performing my tasks at Data Entry, I took advantage of the on-the-job training opportunities to learn more about real time business computers.
This led to my first computer operator job with a direct marketing company. At the time IBM was the most successful vendor in business computing. As I performed my operations duties, I learned about the basics, I/O, disk operating systems, segmenting memory, monitoring system performance etc. I was enamored.
I learned about a technical school called CHUBB institute of Technology. This school was tough and if you got an 80% or below, you failed! So, I accepted the challenge and began 6 months of intensive computer programming skills. It was so intensive; I dreamed about programming while sleeping at night during this time. After the 6 months, I graduated with a 3.5 average, and I became serious about finding my first job as a computer professional!
At the time I had an apartment in a house where I occupied the top floor. While vacuuming my carpets, I got a knock at the door. It was Edward Bradbury, owner and proprietor of Viking Termite and Pest Control downstairs. Apparently, I caused his circuit breakers to trip while vacuuming. While discussing this dilemma he asked me about who I was and what I did. I explained to him that I had just completed training at Chubb Institute. Well, he hired me and tasked me with installing his first computer system, that he was already investigating. We came up with a company that specialized in Pest Control software, and we purchased the total package! Server, software and terminals. So, as the computer field was like this back then I became “the man” and was in charge of a one-person department. After keying in all his manual records into the server and after 1.5 months, we got the server up and running and his business was no longer just paper operations! After 3.5 years, the software company we worked with went out of business, and not just Viking Termite and Pest Control became stuck, about 12 competing companies that purchased the same product were also stuck. Grabbing the opportunity to assist, I became a consultant for these 13 companies, and we chose another platform to switch to. As a subject matter expert on the old software, I was able to export data from the old systems and provide the data to the new company which sped up the transition. Performing these duties allowed me to purchase a wedding ring for my new fiancé and we got married!
During this consulting period, I had left Viking and started a new job with Dover General Hospital in New Jersey as an Operations Manager. This was my first my first job as a manager. The hospital had purchased software from a company called Shared Medical Systems and had purchased computers from a now defunct company called Digital Corporation. I learned VAX/VMS on my own by simply reading their manuals. Tasked with moving from an online hospital system to the new computers, I established a new computer operations department using people from the data entry pool, which went away because their new system became real time. Knowing that hospitals were not cash cows, I established a rotating 4 days on 4 days off 12-hour shift schedule that allowed us to cover operations for 22 hours per day with just 3 operators.
After getting married, my wife and I purchased a home in South Jersey, 3 hours away from the hospital. I found work with a glass manufacture in Millville New Jersey called Arc International. I started as a computer programmer on Digital VAX/VMS systems in a new 4GL programming language called SQL. After learning quite quickly basic SQL statements, I began to learn the computer language called “C”. We wrote programs in SQL embedding C code within the programs. Knowing VAX/VMS and after the systems administrator left the company, I was promoted to a systems administrator. As Digital Corporation went out of business, we transitioned our systems from VAX/VMS to Hewlett Packard HP-UX operating systems. The transition for me from VAX/VMS to Unix was amazing. As a systems administrator I had wrote multiple scripts in DCL (system script language for VAX/VMS) in order to automate daily administrator tasks. While converting my first automated script from DCL to Unix I wanted to test my new skills and my first script in Unix. With VAX/VMS you would start your script and then wait. Usually this is when I would go get coffee when I was waiting for my DCL script to complete. Well after initiating my first Unix script I pressed return, reached for my coffee cup and it returned to the prompt! No way, I must have done something wrong…NO…it ran in 1 second and was successful! I was convinced. Unix is a great operating system, because there was very little overhead in its operations. However, you had to be careful because you could shoot yourself in the foot if you were not careful, I learned this in the worst way by the way!
After several years as a systems administrator and having prior operation management experience, I was hired as the Operations Manager. I led a team of 5 operations personnel where we were responsible for main frame operations and the distribution and operations of user’s PCs. During this time the computer field was maturing from a Data Processing mentality to more of an all-around responsibility for information. Thus, the conversion from Data Processing to Information Systems. If you remember when I was talking about Viking, I mentioned I was “the man”, well I went through a conversion also, to the concept of being part of a Team, humbling myself to just being another COG in the wheel! That was refreshing, because even today it is about teamwork, not individual heroes. Finally, the concept of “Project Management” was implemented and we experienced more project success’s than failures!
Arc International purchased a company called Mikasa. They went from being just a manufacture of glass products to also a Retail glass company selling glassware nationwide! At this time, I was promoted to Director of North American IT Operations. My responsibilities were to oversee all IT operations for Arc International and Mikasa. We integrated the data centers in both companies into one single datacenter. Along with operations, I was also given my first budget to manage and operate from. I stayed and enjoyed a long career with Arc International for 17 years!
After leaving Arc International, I went to work for a strictly on-line company that specialized in retail software that provided data to management for on-line, in store and phone ordering merchandise that revealed individual user purchasing, browsing and verbal inquiry patterns. The name was Crossview International. While there I worked remotely and for the first time discovered the benefits of Virtual Machines, becoming certified in VMWARE, managing their VMware environments. During my tenure there we were able to turn infrastructure liabilities into a profit center for the company, utilizing AWS environments for our customer UAT and development environments. Unfortunately, this company was purchased by a competitor, and that ended my employment with them.
I then started as a contractor with United Health Care, and within a week I was hired as a full-time employee. Starting out for the first year and a half, I was a team leader for their IT division of Optum, building new servers for multiple UHG departments, managing a team of 5 infrastructure engineers. From there I was moved to their IAAS department writing code for their in-house cloud system, developing IAAS code for building new servers for both day 1 and day 2 operations. Having a need for a new IT Manager in their LINUX server department, I moved into a new position as an IT manager supervising 17 Linux Infrastructure Engineers. I ended my career with UHG as a Principal Infrastructure and Operations Engineer, designing new infrastructure environments with high availability for 24/7 open enrollment usage.
After UHG, I was hired at Delta Air Lines working with their subsidiary called Endeavor Air Lines, based in Minneapolis, MN. as a Senior Architect. When I first started with them, I noticed a very bad environment of mixed Production, Staging, UAT and Development environments all mixed together in the same subnet. Realizing the danger of this, for the first year I worked on separating these environments into their own secure subnets, where neither environment did not speak with each other for the purposes of security. The airline system they used was 35 years old, and in desperate need of upgrading, so I was part of a team to upgrade their software from 35-year-old technology to a new system called Next Generation. I provide inter-relationship diagrams between every server and every component of the airline software environments. Working with airline SME’s I developed a system to automate their procedures for their monthly patching of their servers from a very lengthy process of signing on to each system manually to automating their tasks in touch free environment cutting their patching time down by 75%. Finally, Delta decided to move their legacy datacenter environments to the AWS Cloud, and one of my final tasks was to work with a team as their primary architect to move the Endeavor datacenter involving 700 servers into the AWS cloud.
After leaving Delta, I began to work for my last employer Winnebago Industries. I was hired to assist their very busy infrastructure department with managing their Azure Cloud environment by cutting down unnecessary usage and streamlining costs. Initially, I worked with their D365, which is an ERP platform that Winnebago used, I was tasked with immediately cutting the billing from Azure as the D365 Development environment was the costliest. I discovered systems that were not under reservations, all disks were of type Premium SSDs, systems that were never used and oversized. After my recommendations I was authorized to put systems under 3-year reservations, I lowered all disks from Premium SSDs at an average of 40.00 per month to Standard HDD’s (this is a development environment) saving considerable money per drive. I then began to take the Azure recommendations of the oversized systems and downgrading them to smaller more appropriate sizes. Finally, I implemented a new decommissioning system, to properly remove all components of servers (DNS, SSMS, BACKUPS, FIREWALLS) and then began to decommission unused servers. I automated all manual Azure portal tasks from instantiating new servers to decommissioning servers, with all tasks in-between. Finally, designed, developed and managed their new Azure Virtual Desktop environments.
Well, if you made it through all of the above, and did not fall asleep there you have my experience. In my opinion I am a jack of all trades, and an expert in none. However, with my wealth of experience, I can assist your organization with multiple IT needs either in a consulting role, management role or hands on! I enjoy it all!
I hope to hear from you, and I am excited to assist you and your organization with your IT needs.
Have a GREAT DAY!
Robert J. Rein
612-999-0698