Sree Sundaram is a principal at Zuniga Consulting Services, an IT consulting firm based in Morton Grove, IL.

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Sree Sundaram Introduction: Sree Sundaram is a principal at Zuniga Consulting Services, an IT consulting firm based in Morton Grove, IL. He is currently engaged at a major insurance firm in developing fault tolerant architectural strategies for the billing division. He is also currently consulting with numerous other firms in various domains to develop their medium and long term IT strategy. He has developed a unique skill that helps companies identify areas of IT services that can be outsourced to be more cost-effective while retaining mission-critical services on shore. Sree has solid experience in understanding the needs of both middle and top level management and has the ability to communicate at both levels. He is fundamentally aware that the transactional and short-term needs of middle level management are different from the long-term vision of top-level management. He has successfully dealt with such issues by providing an architectural framework that meets both the short term and long term needs without incurring significant rework. He has about 17 years of experience in conceiving, architecting and developing solutions to client business needs in various industries. He has in-depth knowledge of insurance, pharmaceutical, and waste management industries. He has experience with all major kinds of IS technology such as Distributed Systems Development, Internet Development, Groupware & Messaging, Client-Server, etc. His expertise in various environments enables him to present a right solution that is custom tailored to the situation at hand. He holds a Ph.D. in the management of Information Systems from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition, he holds a Master's in Applied Science (Civil Engineering) from the University of Windsor, Canada. In the recent past, Sree has been closely aligned with such industries as Insurance and Financial Services, Waste Management/Disposal and Pharmaceuticals. He understands the needs of these industries well and has the ability to leverage his knowledge to envision breakthrough solutions. Professional Summary: Sree has extensive experience strategizing and leading IT projects for multi-billion dollar enterprises. His is skilled at bringing concepts hatched during ideation to implementation realty while ensuring that the business and technical feasibilities are met at all stages of the software lifecycle. His strong foundation in the lifecycle of a software development began from programming in the mainframe environment and has since progressed through client-server and Internet technologies. Sree keeps himself abreast of latest IS technologies by researching and presenting articles for publication to major IS journals. In addition, he regularly attends conferences organized by both industry and academic groups. Sree started Zuniga Consulting Services in March 2002 with intent of providing advanced IT expertise to enterprises. He specializes in providing consultation that is unencumbered by dogmas and rigid strategies typically adopted by major consulting firms. This approach has led him to provide a unique perspective in each of his engagements. This correlates well with his belief that there is no one solution fits all when dealing with complex IT issues. Earlier, Sree Sundaram was a manager (principal) at Diamondcluster International where he was a part of the technical architecture competency. At Diamondcluster, one of Srees major achievements was to serve as a chief architect for a major B2C initiative for one of the nations premier specialty video and music retailers. He envisioned an IT strategy that helped the company progress from a Brick and Mortar to a Click and Mortar business entity. In addition, he authored several points of view on Telematics, Distributed Systems and other such topics of current interest. Before Diamondcluster, Sree was a Manager of Open Systems at Blackwell Consulting Services. During his stint at Blackwell, he was responsible for the direction and strategy of the Open Systems group, which was primarily composed of Sr. Architects who were well versed with all aspects of Internet/E-Commerce technologies. While at Blackwell, he regularly presented workshops on object-oriented technology to the National Institute of Health, US Navy, etc. Recent Significant Project Experiences: At the Billing division of a major Midwest-based insurance firm, Sree is currently involved with a few quality initiatives that have positive ramification for the entire enterprise. He is a core member of two Six-Sigma projects that aim to improve the process flow of critical payment processes in the Billing division. He is also a critically contributing member of an industry wide study that benchmarks the management and execution of Electronic Payment Systems. The benchmarking study is being conducted jointly with the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC.) In addition to quality initiatives, Sree is directly involved in optimizing and tuning their mission-critical billing application. As the business requirements for this application changes, Sree is helping to develop a robust framework that can keep pace with such dynamic requirements while being aligned with the technology direction adopted by the enterprise. He has articulated the concept of a service-oriented architecture to this division that ensures that other areas (both external and internal) pay for the cost and development of enterprise wide service offerings. By reusing the framework, it is broadly estimated that the enterprise would save over 60% in new IT development costs for the immediate future. This strategy also ensured that the application foundations were abreast with emerging technologies developed by the industry. In a recent engagement, Sree assumed the role of a chief application architect in developing a B2C web presence of a major retail entertainment vendor. He was responsible for architecting and designing an e-commerce site that is designed to withstand 2000 concurrent shoppers (35000 user sessions). He was a key facilitator in client strategy sessions that were conducted to enable the client to integrate their brick and mortar business with Internet presence. Furthermore, this project was widely publicized as one of the first to integrate single sign-on feature with Microsoft Passport and Messenger services. During an engagement in the insurance industry, he re-engineered the business process of soliciting and managing new business for the small industries sector of a major insurance firm. In this stint, he used emerging Internet technology to design a portal solution that allowed on-line transactions, client account management, etc. securely over the Internet. This resulted in significantly reducing the cycle time (over 40%) of soliciting, order taking, and servicing new client accounts. In the process, he significantly over hauled the enterprise architecture of this company and kept it in pace with current advances in Internet technology. Sree conceived and developed an asset management initiative for a multi-billion dollar waste management firm. The firm had grown through acquisitions and takeovers and consequently lacked a usable asset management system. In consultations with the client, he helped them track and account for all of the firms assets across the United States. By properly accounting and tracking assets, he helped the clients reduce 20% of their annual capital expenditure on procuring new assets. He set the vision for a seamless enterprise wide architecture that was more in-line with the client needs. Sree led a major corporate communication initiative at a global multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical firm located in the Midwest region. In the past, the firm had grown primarily through acquisitions resulting in disparate communication systems. Sree conceived and implemented the idea of integrating disparate messaging systems to send out corporate communications to the company's employees all around the world.

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Technology Strategy Programming Application Development Information Systems

application development, information systems, programming, technology strategy