Patrick Freeman

About Me

Hello and welcome to my professional site. After nearly three decades serving in almost every capacity in the support chain from help desk to fleet inventory/procurement to IT management I have found it challenging to write a resume that encompasses my wealth of experience as well as philosophies regarding IT.

IT Philosophy?

Yes. ITIL stands for Information Technology Information Library for those who don't know what that means. It is a set of best practices for delivering IT Services to your customers. Internal and External. ITIL is a fantastic method of building effective IT Departments from a role based perspective giving clear instruction and responsibilities to every member within your IT infrastructure. If you have ever looked at the number of roles it becomes quite clear that these best practices are developed for larger companies that have dozens if not more IT professionals from different disciplines on their staff.

According to recent statistics 59.9 million people are employed by small business in the United States. Not large fortune 500 companies. This means 99.9% of all companies in the US are small companies. This presents unique challenges for their technology needs. How do you apply ITIL to a support staff of only a handful of people? How many roles within the ITIL framework can you assign to one person? Is it necessary to have all roles fulfilled depending on the nature and scope of work of the small business. When does a small business change its support strategy as it grows? Consultancies are great but they are definitely geared towards long term support contracts through virtual help desk and other support mechanisms. Few have incentive to provide a growth plan on what to do when it makes more sense to bring IT services and support in house rather than extend support contracts.

In todays environment as more and more companies depend on cloud migrations for core services, it is even more critical to have someone that knows how to migrate data and services between classic on premise servers to their new homes in the cloud. And the work doesn't end there. You have to be able to support and teach these new infrastructures to your workforce. This also brings new security and business continuity challenges and concerns. The entire life cycle of not only the user experience but the data and systems themselves need to be maintained and updated as needed. It is an immense challenge as small businesses strive to compete and eventually grow into that Fortune 500 company.

This is where I excel. By knowing when, and how to bring in certain best practices I've been able to standardize and shrink IT budgets saving hundreds of thousands of dollars while bringing levels of internal support unparalleled by any consultancy. I should know because at one time I was that consultant. I've been able to secure data and services meeting the ever growing demand for cyber security satisfying legal requirements and beyond. By having an extensive base of core knowledge grown over nearly 30 years in technology and technology changes, what I don't know I can learn in a short amount of time. I can quickly assess, make judgements, and advise c-level teams with the information they need to make informed decisions that will lead to success. A house can only stand on a strong foundation and in todays world more and more small businesses stand on a mixture of technologies that require more complex understanding. I am that foundation builder. I not only bring top notch support and management of IT infrastructures and staff, I bring the knowledge and skillsets to grow and improve IT when the time is right.