Paul Ferris

Current

Managing Partner at Emerald Consulting Group
Contributing Editor at LXer.com

Past

Technical Architect / Technology Director at Rosetta
Ohio Linux Fest at 2007 Ohio Linux Fest (Chair)
Open Systems Team Lead / Systems Engineer at Westfield Insurance Group

Unix / Web Systems Engineer at Key Bank
Software Engineer at Telantis
Web Operations Systems Guru at American Greetings
Director of Technology for the Linux Channel at LinuxToday.com
Senior Systems Engineer at Borgware

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Recommended

12 people have recommended Paul

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Paul Ferris’s Summary

Distributed Systems Architect with enterprise experience spanning multiple industries. Extensive experience optimizing the management of large (hundreds to thousands) instance or installations of software and configurations. Web, J2EE application server and Unix/Linux subject matter expert. Creative problem solver with a strategic mind-set aimed at addressing the complex issues found in current multi-tier multi-environments development engagements. Author of Linux articles published in various on-line venues such as LinuxToday, NewsForge, LinuxJournal and most recently, LXer.com. Chair for Ohio LinuxFest 2007 (see http://ohiolinux.org, for more) and speaker at Ohio Linux Fest 2008.

Paul Ferris’s Specialties:

Engineering, Automation and Architecture. Recognized as a leader in the Linux Community.

Paul Ferris’s Experience

Managing Partner

Emerald Consulting Group

(Privately Held; Staffing and Recruiting industry)

October 2009 — Present (3 months)

Practice Lead for the Free / Open Source Solutions and Services Group.

We are committed to helping companies embrace and deploy solutions with Free and Open Source components. This involves a culture shift for a lot of organizations. To facilitate this shift we evaluate existing and emerging systems and recommend FOSS alternatives where they make sense in the overall equation of business need, requirements and capabilities.

Emerald will help plan the project, transform your enterprise and help fill any gaps in talent required -- all key components to a holistic solution for your organization.

Contact via phone: 440-922-9000 x 113
Email : pferris@emeraldresourcegroup.com
Contributing Editor

LXer.com

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Publishing industry)

September 2004 — Present (5 years 4 months)

I contribute content and help manage LXer.com from an editorial ethics standpoint. LXer.com is the primary news wire for the Linux, Free Software and Open Source movement. It is the largest (That I know of) published English news site that remains un-owned by commerical interests. The editors strive for as little commercial-tainted bias as possible.
Technical Architect / Technology Director

Rosetta

(Privately Held; Marketing and Advertising industry)

March 2007 — September 2009 (2 years 7 months)

Technical Architect in the Managed Services and Hosting division.

Team Technology Leader for the WebSphere Team. Creation and management of an enterprise-class e-commerce delivery team that is over 90% remotely managed. Supported Technologies include WebSphere, WebSphere Commerce, WebSphere Portal+WCM, Linux, AIX, Solaris and more. This team supports infrastructure for well-recognized customers selling hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue in total from their web properties.

Duties include recruiting and staffing, mentoring, cultural empowerment, resource load balancing, long term project consultation, SOW refinement and business development efforts.
Ohio Linux Fest

2007 Ohio Linux Fest (Chair)

(Information Technology and Services industry)

2006 — 2007 (1 year )

Executive oversight of the OLF event for 2007. Chaired the planning committees from early 2007 through event completion.
Open Systems Team Lead / Systems Engineer

Westfield Insurance Group

(Public Company; Insurance industry)

December 2004 — February 2007 (2 years 3 months)

Systems engineering / solutions architect role for tasks such as server specification, network design for high availability, load-balancing, best security practices and operating system hardening. Interface with developers, project managers and management for technical solutions. Direct administrative responsibility for enterprise class group of AIX and Linux servers (over 200 AIX and Linux instances). Lead Infrastructure engineer on company migration from BEA WebLogic to IBM WebSphere.
Unix / Web Systems Engineer

Key Bank

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; KEY; Information Technology and Services industry)

August 2002 — December 2004 (2 years 5 months)

Unix and Web Engineer. Systems support development activities. Lead engineer on prominent security initiatives. Created customized solutions for managing enterprise application servers and web servers. Interfaced with security and development teams to provide configuration consistency. Server instances in the hundreds to thousands range.
Software Engineer

Telantis

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Hardware industry)

February 2002 — August 2002 (7 months)

Telantis research was an Akron-based start-up formed to create a VOIP solution for small businesses. I was responsible for helping architect a Linux component for their R&D unit. My position at this company was more of a contractor type role, although I was paid as a perm. resource.
Web Operations Systems Guru

American Greetings

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Consumer Goods industry)

2001 — 2002 (1 year )

I was 1 of 4 members of the Web Operations team -- the team that kept American Greetings dot com web site up and running. It was (at that time) based upon a mix of Free Software and proprietary components running on a back-end of hundreds of Linux nodes.
Director of Technology for the Linux Channel

LinuxToday.com

(Publishing industry)

1999 — 2001 (2 years )

LinuxToday.com in 1998 through 2001 was my favorite Linux news site. By October of 1999 I was a major editorial contributor, adding typically 3-4 editorial items a month, all targeted to Open Source / Free Software concerns. When the site was bought from the site founders (Dave Whitinger and Dwight Johnson), I was hired by internet.com to manage the technical end in addition to my writing duties. I maintained this site and several other high-profile Linux news sites for internet.com (presently Jupiter Media). The job was more technical than journalism. I remained an editor up to approximately 3 months from the end of my term. The job opened many doors for me and greatly expanded my role and access to people in the Linux community.
Senior Systems Engineer

Borgware

(Information Technology and Services industry)

1996 — 1999 (3 years )