Blake Tyra

Current

• Sales Engineer at Parallels

Past

• Development Support at ModernGigabyte
• Commercial Sales Representative at OfficeMax

Education

• University of Kentucky

Recommended

7 people have recommended Blake

Connections

103 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

• My Blog
• My Company

Blake Tyra’s Summary

I know the following things:
- C, Java, Perl, PHP (Object-Oriented), Regular Expressions
- CSS, JavaScript, XHTML
- MySQL, PostgreSQL
- Cyrus-IMAP, PostFix, Sendmail
- Memcache (memcached + PECL/PHP5 client API)
- Asterisk using SIP/IAX & Polycom IP430s
- Parallels Desktop, Workstation, Server
- Parallels Virtuozzo, OpenVZ
- Microsoft IIS / Lighttpd / Apache httpd
- Windows, Linux, Mac

Using what I know, I sell appropriate solutions.
:-)

Blake Tyra’s Specialties:

jack-of-all-trades

Blake Tyra’s Experience

• Sales Engineer

  Parallels

  (Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

  January 2008 — Present (1 year 7 months)

  Sales Engineer
  (Aug '08 - Present):
  
  -- Support sales team to drive the sales of Parallels products and services and develop relationships with Customers from a technical perspective.
  
  -- Perform needs analysis for qualified sales opportunities. Create technical requirements documentation for the implementation and integration of the Parallels products in the customer environments.
  
  -- Attend customers and prospects meetings and respond to customers' technology-related questions, assess customers' needs, and make recommendations on the best product configuration/integration.
  
  -- Interface closely with Product Management and product engineering within Parallels and provide feedback on competitive trends, market shifts, and customers' needs to ensure that Parallels continues to produce products and services that match the changing market.
  
  
  
  Software Engineer
  (Jan '08 - Aug '08):
  
  -- Functioned as a Software Engineer performing core development on the (PHP-based) ModernBill business automation / billing platform
  
  -- Daily focuses included increasing the stability and scalability of ModernBill platform, identifying and addressing security concerns, etc.
  
  -- Developed integrations with various registrar, gateway, and panel APIs (eNom, PayFlowPro, PSiGate, Sage Gateway, etc.)
  
  -- Worked closely with ModernBill professional services team to address custom development projects requested by customers
  
  -- Ancillary duties included maintenance of company HTTP, SVN, and PBX servers; as well as work on development-level support inquiries

• Development Support

  ModernGigabyte

  (Computer Software industry)

  October 2007 — January 2008 (4 months)

  -- Company was acquired by Parallels, Inc. in January 2008
  
  -- Provided support for the company's flagship product: ModernBill

• Commercial Sales Representative

  OfficeMax

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; OMX; Retail industry)

  October 2005 — October 2007 (2 years 1 month)

  -- Provided pre- and post-sale consultation / support to mid-sized commercial customers
  
  -- Developed relationships with current and potential vendors
  
  -- Coordinated customer orders between accounts managers, the customer, production teams, and third-party vendors
  
  -- Demonstrated “customer-first” thinking through making sure that customers needs and expectations were carefully understood and met
  
  -- Gained intricate understanding of business-to-business sales

Blake Tyra’s Education

• University of Kentucky

Additional Information

Blake Tyra’s Websites:

• My Blog
• My Company

Blake Tyra’s Interests:

alphabetizing things, asterisk pbx, databases, graphic design, journalism, marketing, optimizing, programming, sales, server administration, traveling, virtualization, web design, writing

Blake Tyra’s Groups:

•    Parallels Inc.
•    Hosting Industry
•    Cloud Computing
•    Parallels Virtualization Group
•    VDI User Group
•    Virtualization Solutions
•    Parallels Cloud Computing

Blake Tyra’s Honors:

Intel Excellence in Computer Science Award
-> Louisville Regional Science Fair, 2004

2nd Place - Computer Science Knowledge
-> Future Business Leaders of America, State Conference, 2004

1st Place - News Writing, 1st Place - Opinion Writing
-> Kentucky High School Journalism Association, 2006

Published Critique
-> The New Republic, 2006

Published Article
-> BlueGrassReport.org, 2006

Blake Tyra’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch