Essam Abdelazim

As a Sr. leader of Hybrid Mesh Firewall and Enterprise Solutions Engineering, I lead and manage a team of Strategic Security Customer Success specialists, and Hybrid Mesh Firewall engineers and architects. I operate within Canada/United States/Latin America and APAC (Australia, Japan, India and SouthEast Asia) territories. Under my leadership my team delivers technical adoption services for Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall, we support Enterprise, Public Sector, and Service Provider customers as they modernize their security architectures and unify their firewall strategy across data centers, cloud, and edge environments. My main focus is to drive our customers outcomes while levriging the power of our Cisco Security portfolio (Over 1$billion in value) to align the customer with present and future needs. Strong internal alignment with Cisco's technical sales, development, engineering, renewals, partners, and professional services, my team takes charge of post-sales technical conversations, architecture planning, best practices, integrations and delivery outcomes. Their aim is to educate customers on solutions and use cases while aligning Cisco's technology, AI and third party products with their unique business requirement. Growing Hybrid Mesh Firewall specifically and the security business as a whole while maintaining a happy customer is the end goal. Delivering Impactful growth to the business via operational planning and cutting edge technology adoption here in the U.S and globally is what I strive for.

As a Sr. leader of Enterprise Solutions Engineering, I lead and manage the team for West, Central U.S./Canada and APAC (Australia, Japan, India and SouthEast Asia) territories. From an Enterprise Operation perspective, I work on growing our security Enterprise business within the U.S and globally. I Initiate and execute operational improvements for internal business units and clients to accommodate the company growth and changing landscape. I collaborate with my colleagues in the executive leadership to provide a cohesive unit for our acquired multi layered security businesses we oversee today. In this collaboration, we plan and design new products to fill in the gap in our portfolio. With that, I also establish the support approach needed to provide the foundation for successful delivery and long term retention. Working and collaborating directly with Product Management, Engineering, Dev, Sales and Customer Success in every aspect of these new products to drive the business growth in the right direction.

As a leader of the Solutions Engineering team for Select and Enterprise accounts, I lead the Sr. Customer Success Engineering team for West, Central U.S./Canada and APAC (Australia, Japan, India and South East Asia) territories. In this leadership role I balance providing technical direction for Cisco/Duo products, cross-functional leadership, and people management. On the client front I Work with my technical team on Identifying our clients security solution needs, applying problem solving, leading, and consulting our clients on creating and executing their organizations strategies. As part of the leadership group in Customer Success, I collaborate with the leadership team to help build and develop our CS programs around Duo Care offerings. Focus on creating and improving our processes around operations and team management. Growing our West, Central U.S. and APJC engineering group to better position our team in serving our clients and accommodate our rapid growth. On the product front, I assist my team through their interactions with our clients in Identifying unique problems and unlock opportunities through our secure integration points via our 2FA/MFA and Zero trust product suit. This approach results in new features and helps improve existing ones in collaboration with Duo and Cisco Product Engineering Teams. The goal is to enable our clients and partners to realize the full potential of our Zero Trust approach.

As a Sr Solution Architect i am focused on formulating solid vision, strategy, goals, and requirements collaboratively with customers and partners to ensure a well-defined opportunity with the right approach to execute on it. Delivering solutions across a wide spectrum of technologies/systems validated/qualified and non-validated/corporate within BioMarin. I lead and manage our mobile development team and our Enterprise Managed Services support team. I also architect, build, deploy, secure, and support Enterprise solutions in the cloud and on-prem for our internal business units. Employing technical knowledge and experience to understand business challenges and opportunities I drive new and innovative approaches to deliver the needed requirements. Bridging the gap between business and technology to develop the right solutions to address the immediate and future needs is part of my focus. Leading project teams comprised of customers, partners, and peers from project inception through the hand off to operations as a technical subject matter expert and consultant. I organize and lead technical requirements gathering, solution design sessions, partners management and other technical resources needed for the process of designing the final architecture of the solution. Provide technical assistance to end users as a component of managing escalated tier 3 Enterprise system support.

I manage and lead a team of engineers that are geared toward interacting directly with our clients and fulfill their technical needs and technology requirements. I am also a member and a senior resource for the Global Cyber Security Team that is responsible for all thing security for ATG clients. I assist and guide our clients by evaluating their existing IT environment, business processes, and hardware requirements. Through a thorough assessment I get involved in recommending technology based solutions that meets the client's needs, and transform their business to the next technology that will accommodate their future growth. I also spearhead many projects that range from providing full network and security assessments, to deploying total and complex IT solutions, including post project support. This is some of the technologies that I touch on daily bases: VMWare, Microsoft products, Cisco Networking, Cicso VOIP, Sonicwall, Symantec, trend micro, Axcient, AVAYA VOIP, Meraki, Open-Mesh, Apple OSX, Linux and Unix.

AT SSCS I carried the role of Senior Network and Systems Engineer were i got to contribute to the general IT department planning and data center management and administration. I maintained the company’s internal technology operation and designed and implemented the development environment for the software development team. I designed and planned fault tolerant systems and network implementations utilizing a wide range of technologies such as VMware, SQL and Hadoop. Utilized and implemented a mixed operating system environment using Open Source and Windows. Administered and implemented network equipment such as “Cisco, Dell, and HP switches” and storage devices such as “SANs and drive arrays”. Finally, authoring local security policies to ensure data integrity and security this include data confidentiality and reliability.

At Person i consulted and provided technical recommendations in regards of new technology solutions to be brought to their existing network and system implementations. I helped in identifying any bottle necks existed in the present system and assisted in the technical design and implementation for the needed technologies to eliminate the bottle necks impact. Another consulting role i assumed within the organization involved visiting different school districts which were Person's direct customers to assist through the needed upgrades and configurations on systems and network level to optimize their ability to access Person servers. Before exiting the organization I helped with establishing a new division within Person that would be the front facing technical front to Person's customers (School Districts IT Divisions).

At TTI I was the IT manager for the knowledge management team for the Defense Language Institute (DLI). I provided technical and consulting expertise. I have been at the forefront of Knowledge Management (KM) efforts since inception in 2005 at the DOD and as a KM Manager and Sr Technical lead I delegated and prioritized all projects and resources under my leadership. I Managed cross-functional team of 10+ responsible for delivering organization-wide targeted solutions for Strategic Platforms and internal software development. I played a pivotal role meeting with officials to gather, analyze and delineate the best solutions and requirements for all KM projects. Prepared and documented knowledge management structure focused on content, and records management for the CIO of the Defense Language Institute (DLI) and delivered multiple projects of estimated total budget of 48 Million+ in total. From a technical perspective, I was also responsible for performing complex engineering analysis, design tasks, prepare SOP’s, TRS’s and SDD’s. I was also involved in developing and presenting network strategy, documentation and schematics. I interfaced with multiple major suppliers and service providers and provided periodic reporting of network performance, utilization and outstanding issues to CIO leadership. I performed as the functional Software Subject Matter Expert for SharePoint and similar Learning Management System/Web Content publishing systems and processes. I also lead the software development team in the creation and engineering of different Internal Enterprise Systems that allowed military personnel CONUS and OCONUS to access pertinent, language specific information.

General business planning in regards of technology and systems. Maintained the company technology operation and competitiveness. Being the decision maker for all things technology I made decisions related to vendor management, purchases and implementation along with pin pointing any new developments in the IT field that we would consider internally and for our clients. Also, being a Sr Technical resource, i am an escalation point for the engineering team. worked with our product team on planning and strategizing both short and long-term features and technical roadmaps. Finally, ensuring data security in every aspect such as “confidentiality, reliability, proprietary information, and intellectual property”.