/* Joseph Goyette */
A Professional History
Present to Past
Harris CareTracker [http://www.harriscaretracker.com/] / [https://www.caretracker.com]
Time Line: March 2015 until the present day
Title: Manager, Hosting Operations
Summary: ...
On December 24th, 2014 (yes, Christmas Eve day), Optum sold the CareTracker product and all of its technology and personnel to Harris Computer Corporation. The employees remained part of Optum until March 1, 2015 when the acquisition was finalized.
My actual job title now more aptly reflects the overall responsibilities of my position. I am responsible for everything associated with hosting a 7x24x365, cloud-based, medical practice management & EMR application.
Major projects I planned and managed during the course of the past 18 months:
- Lead & Managed the Mergers & Acquisition process(es) for the Harris CareTracker business unit
- Rationalization of all software & hardware assets, licensing & maintenance
- Coordination of all user laptops & application software
- Migration of all corporate data assets (documentation, contracts, source code, etc.) from Optum to Harris CareTracker
- Coordinated build out of the new Harris CareTracker office and in-office server room in a different Providence location
- Migration of all employees to the new Harris CareTracker office
- Relocation of the Harris CareTracker Development & QA computing environments (servers, networking, storage) from the old Optum office to the new office server room
- Buildout of a new disaster recovery data center for our live CareTracker application
-- Old disaster recovery location was within an Optum data center in Aurora, Colorado.
-- Optum sold us which meant our disaster recovery infrastructure had to be relocated someplace else
- Planned & executed the relocation of the disaster recovery infrastructure to a new location in Pennsylvania.
- Migration of server infrastructure from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012
- Migration of Oracle databases from version 10g to version 12c
- Migration of Oracle database servers from Windows Server 2003 to Oracle Linux.
Presently, I am working on a HITRUST certification project for the company.
Optum [http://www.optum.com/]
Time Line: May 2010 => March 2015
Title: Data Center Manager
Summary: ...
Optum CareTracker is a family of cloud-based products and services that simplify administration of physician practices and improve care by enabling physicians to spend more time with patients. Today, more than 10,000 healthcare providers use CareTracker nationwide.
I left Nuance after a year for a couple of reasons...
1- Professionally, my role had changed from a senior leader working directly for the co-ceos of a dynamic, growing small company to just another cog in a large corporate machine.
2- Financially, I was spending $150-$200 per week in fuel in addition to wear and tear on my vehicle. I drive a large Ford F-350 diesel pickup truck.. at $4+ per gallon, 12 miles/gallon, 100+ miles of traffic each day the $$$ adds up quick.
2- Personally, I was spending 3-4 hours per day commuting to/from my home and the Nuance office location in Burlington, MA. My kids were young still and I was missing out on a lot of activities, especially after school sports.
Anyway, I needed a change for many reasons and this opportunity presented itself. Initially, the company I joined was named Ingenix. Ingenix had acquired the product, CareTracker, that I was hired to work on a few years prior to me joining Ingenix. Ingenix, in turn had been acquired by United Health Care. Two years into my term at Ingenix, the name was changed to simply Optum. Optum is the HealthCare IT sub-company of United HealthCare.
The Optum office is located in Providence, RI and is only 16 miles or so from where I live. My daily commute to/from work changed from and angst-ridden, road-rage filled 3-4 hour event to a quite pleasant, predictable 30 minute commute each way. Quite a lifestyle change in the positive direction. I was able to spend a lot more time with my family,including being able to coach both baseball and hockey teams.
Great... so what did you do here at Optum, Joe ? :)
At Optum, my title was 'Data Center Manager' which was a bit misleading. Yes, I managed the Data Centers - Production, Disaster Recovery, DEV/QA. However, I was also responsible for all of the 7x24x365 aspects associated with operating those data centers, such as:
-Infrastructure Project Planning & Project Management
-Capacity Planning & Availability Reporting
-Event Management & Issue Tracking
-Change Management
-Vendor Management
-Security & Compliance
The infrastructure was comprised of 100+ physical and virtual servers, multiple Oracle databases, EMC and Network appliance storage devices & Cisco and F5 networking devices.
One of the major projects I managed and oversaw was the establishment of a disaster recovery data center in Aurora, Colorado. This disaster recovery site was setup as a like-for-like copy of our primary data center.
Nuance Communications [http://www.nuance.com/]
Time Line: May 2009 => May 2010
Title: Software As A Service Architect
Summary: ...
Nuance Communications purchased eScription, the company I was working for, in May of 2009.
eScription's medical transcription products competed directly with Nuance's products. eScription was winning a lot of business from Nuance customers and was also growing rapidly. Nuance is also a company that grows by acquisition. As such, Nuance acquired eScription to both eliminate its competition and grow its business :)
Nuance is a very large company with many large data centers and operations teams. As you might expect, over the course of the year following eScription's acquisition, many of the responsibilities of myself and my team members were transitioned over the existing Nuance teams.
I stayed on with Nuance for a year in an Architect/Consultant role. I managed larger projects involving the eScription product, consulted with vendors and customers regarding RFP's as well as running the overall yearly capacity planning and budgeting processes. Lastly, I was also involved in the transition of services and responsibilities over to Nuance.
eScription [http://www.escription.com/]
Time Line: 2002 => 2009
Title: Manager, Systems Administration
Summary: ...
eScription, the pioneer in Computer-Aided-Medical-Transcription
After having most of the summer of 2002 to myself due to having been laid off from my prior company, FairMarket, I received a call form an engineering manager at a company called eScription.
As with FairMarket, I learned that eScription was a small startup company that was looking for someone to join them to help them build out their hosting infrastructure for a medical transcription product and service that was beginning to gain steam.
I had no job and my unemployment benefits were about to run out so I said "What the hell why not ?" to myself and took a shot. And, I am so glad that I did !!!
I was hired as the 12th employee and first dedicated systems person. For the first few weeks I worked there, I had to sit at a small table in the reception area as they had used up all of the space in their current office. Luckily, new office space was being readied and was moved into a few weeks later :)
This company was another case study in explosive growth. However, I'd call it explosive, but controlled & managed, growth. This company was very well managed and being a part of this company improved my management skills a hundred times over. Prior to this company, I'd never worked for a company that actually planned for growth and managed to that growth. Goals were agreed upon and set, projects to achieve those goals were planned and staffed, budgets were forecast in alignment with projects and growth. Leadership was held accountable for accomplishing those set goals.
Wow - what an eye opener. When you see what's possible with great leadership and strong management your view of the corporate world really changes.
To that end...
Over the 7 years time that I worked for eScription...
- Member of the senior leadership team and reported directly to the two co-ceos.
- Built out a team of 20 systems, network and database administrators, including two managers.
- Managed an annual budget of $4 million dollars - including capital, personnel and other expenses.
- Introduced best-of-breed infrastructure and operations practices to transform a closet of old, overheating, duct-taped servers into a highly available enterprise class hosting platform spanning multiple data centers and comprised of nearly 1,000 servers.
- Built out and supported a corporate network for 200 users.
In May of 2009, eScription was sold to Nuance Communications, out main competitor, for nearly $400 million.
FairMarket [www.fairmarket.com]
Time Line: 1999 => 2002
Title: Director, Technical Operations & IT
Summary:
Fairmarket was an application service provider that offered private-label, hosted auction services enabling companies and internet portals to auction off excess inventory. In March of 2000, Fair-Market went public.
I had thought my experiences at The Monster Board were out there but were nothing compared to the ride at FairMarket.
A former VP of Marketing at The Monster Board reached out to me about a position at a new startup company she was working at called FairMarket. The company was looking for someone to help them build out their platform to support online, private-label auction sites. I had already been bitten by the internet bug and jumped at the opportunity.
FairMarket was a company that was birthed and died as part of the internet boom. over the course of 3 years, the company went from nothing, to IPO star, to nothing ...
I was the 10th employee hired and the first dedicated systems person. I was responsible for building, growing and scaling out the computing infrastructure in support of FairMarket software-as-a-service (SAAS) private-label online auction services. The SAAS infrastructure consisted of hundreds of servers supporting 7x24x365 online auctions for thousands of customers and millions of users.
Additionally, I built and managed a team of twelve systems and network administrators.
My team was also responsible for the build out and ongoing support of the internal corporate networks and systems. Desktops, laptops, phones, development & QA networks, Exchange email, active directory etc. At its height, we supported about 250 users on the internal corporate network.
In 2001, I traveled to the UK to perform due diligence on some potential data center locations in the UK. In early 2002, I once again traveled to the UK but this time I went there to build out a FairMarket auction services platform based in the UK. FairMarket had a couple of UK-based customers that were asking for locally-hosted services both for improved performance and security reasons.
As far as the ride goes... we grew at an extremely fast pace. It seemed like we were always running out of office space or power :) Finally, we moved into a floor and a half of brand new, custom built office complete with the requisite internet startup items... ping pong table, dart board, foosball, kitchens... DOOM tournaments on the local LAN...
In March of 2000, FairMarket went public. I was actually at NASDAQ with several other FairMarket employees and opened the floor the morning the company went public under the FAIM symbol. The stock opened at $17 and ended the day at over $40. Woot ! I'm going to be a millionaire I thought !!!
But... isn't there always a BUT ? Now that FairMarket was a public company, the shareholders wanted return on their investments... like most companies that we public during the internet boom... we didn't last long after that... eBay was our main competition and we were having trouble turning a profit on the services we were selling. In the end, competing with eBay wasn't a winning proposition. And, as was also typical, the only people that got rich were the venture capitalists and folks that could sell shares as part of or shortly after the IPO. All employees had to wait six months before being able to sell any of their stock options and by then the stock had dropped to just a few dollars.
Within a year after the IPO, the founder and CEO was replaced by the board. Slowly, most of the original management team was also replaced. Layoffs of employees occurred several times. It all ended when the last major layoff consisted of the entire senior engineering team (including myself and 8 of the other 10 original engineering members) and most of the remaining employees.
The ending sucked but I wouldn't exchange this experience for the world. It was an eye-opening experience and I made some very good life long friends as well.
Obtech [www.obtech.com]
Time Line: 1998 => 1999
Title: Oracle Technical Consultant
Summary: ...
As luck would have it, the VP of Engineering that had hired me at the Monster Board reached out to me a short while after she had been replaced by the regime (see below Monster history for details). Her husband was looking for an Oracle technical consultant at small company called Obtech. Obtect was a local company backed by NEC. Obtect provided Oracle-based software solutions and consulting services focused on the supply chain and manufacturing industries.
The pace of this job was definitely slower than that of the Monster Board but it was a welcome slow-down :) I learned a lot about consulting, developing and designing technical proposals and solutions and generally how to function in a "billable hours" environment.
Ironically, about six months into this position, I was asked by the Monster Board to come back and provide some consulting for them. The consultants that had ousted the original full-time crew had failed miserably and were themselves replaced. I had a lot of knowledge about how their systems worked which they needed. It was odd going back but it was both worthwhile and quite cathartic :)
Going back to the Monster reignited my interest and passion for internet applications...
Monster.com / The Monster Board [www.monster.com]
Time Line: 1997 => 1998
Title: Multiple titles... Jack-Of-All-Trades, Database Administrator, Database Operations Manager, Webmaster, Systems Administrator
Summary:
What an experience !!!
For the first 8 years of my profession career all I had been exposed to in the corporate world was what it's like to work for an established, enormous company like Digital. The Monster Board couldn't have been more different. At Digital, I worked in a large, multi-floor facility complete with security desks, internal data centers and cafeterias. The Monster Board office was just crummy, low-class office space in Framingham center. In fact, it occupied the second floor of a downtown office building, above a Chinese food restaurant and several convenience-type stores. Talk about a contrast in environments ! I loved it though. Everyone there was energized and eager to figure where this new thing called the world wide web could take us.
And, this was my first to exposure to a company that lived and died by the success or failure of a single application - not to mention that it was also an internet-based web application !
When I joined, the company was still called "The Monster Board". It wasn't re-branded as "Monster.com" and then again as simply "Monster" until many years later. I was hired initially as a database administrator. The Monster Board has recently purchased an Alpha Server Cluster running the Oracle database to replace an older and very costly to maintain Sun server. I had been exposed to Oracle and Alpha server clusters as part of my performance tuning and benchmarking work with SAP at Digital. All of their development was also being done on Alpha workstations running OSF/1. So, their was a natural fit.
However, based upon my background and the numerous other needs they had, I quickly became one of the technical leaders there. I was involved with overall web site administration, performance monitoring, on-call and off-hours support in addition to database administration responsibilities.
For a while, everything was great !!!
But, alas, all good things must come to an end.
Some time before I was hired, a company called TMP Worldwide has purchased "The Monster Board" from its founder, Jeff Taylor. Apparently, TMP Worldwide wasn't happy with the lack of return they were getting from their investment. In short order, TMP Worldwide had replaced the local GM with a VP of Sales from corporate in New York. Next, the VP of Engineering was replaced by a consultant... who then began replacing full-time employees with consultants from his own firm... At the end, things got so bad that the entire engineering team (full-time and consultants) were relocated to an office in Maynard, MA ... oddly enough - in the old "Mill" building that had formerly been occupied by Digital... anyway, it was comical. All of the engineers were setup in one large room, in rows of desks just like a school room. The consultant VP had an office at the head of the room. All full-time employees had desks on one-side of the room. All consultants were on the other side of the room... we weren't allowed to talk with the consultants because they were doing the important job of creating the next, greatest Monster Board. We were just there to keep the old one running until they could claim glory... needless to say, I left :)
Digital Equipment Corporation [www.digital.com]
Time Line: 1988 => 1997
Title: Principal Software Engineer
Summary:
Digital Equipment Corporation was where I started my professional career after I graduated from Northeastern University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.
I started out as part of a small software development team within Digital that provided software engineering services to other groups within the the larger corporation. One of our primary customers was the marketing group for the many systems management products that Digital marketed under the POLYCENTER name.
It was an interesting group because it exposed me to a lot more than just software development. It was during my time here that I learned about operating systems, networks, systems management, systems monitoring performance tuning, databases, testing and benchmarking. Coming out of college most of my knowledge was of programming languages and basic software development principles.
I was also traveling frequently since I became the technical support lead for the POLYCENTER systems management products at various trade shows, such as DECUS and DECworld, and other local Digital offices used for presenting products to customers. Additionally, I also participated in booth duty as a presenter/demonstrator of the products to customers.
During this early time at Digital, I taught myself the C programming language. At the same time, X-windows was just becoming a popular technology. I coupled my interest in card games with my zeal for learning new things to learn how to program with both C and X-windows. I developed an X-windows-based Black Jack game on my own time. This Black Jack game was subsequently used by Digital Marketing as a way of drawing customers into their booths during their Las Vegas trade shows. Later, I learned that a college professor had used my code and my Black Jack game as a computer science project for one his programming courses !
As time went on, our group shifted focus to other areas. One of the biggest areas was with supporting the effort to port the SAP R/3 application to the Digital OSF/1 and Alpha server platform.
Because I had used Unix in college, I became the primary U.S. technical support person for the SAP R/3 application on the Digital OSF/1 Alpha platform. I was responsible for performing installations at customer sites, training other Digital consultants, performance testing & benchmarking.
Another fun project I completed was the development of an SNMP agent for the SAP R/3 application. I designed & developed the first and only SNMP agent for monitoring the SAP R/3 application of the Digital OSF/1 Alpha platform. Learning about OIDs & MIBs was a bonus :)
Towards the end of my time at Digital, the world wide web was beginning to become popular. Naturally, I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame and became the webmaster, workgroup web administrator and internet technology goto person for my team.
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