Wesley Phillips

Wesley Phillips is a Principal Systems Engineer at General Dynamics, Information Technology, Headquarters and Intelligence Division.  Upon leaving the U.S. Military after serving for the Gulf War, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, he received his B.S. in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix and his A.S in Computer Programming from Gulf Coast State College. After military service, Wesley settled in Florida and began working for General Dynamics as an Associate LAN Administrator. After 19 years, and a promotion or two, he transferred from the Central Florida region to the Washington DC area to more closely support the relocation of General Dynamics’ primary and secondary data centers., after 19 years he transferred from the Central Florida region to the Washington DC area to more closely support the relocation of the General Dynamics’ primary and secondary data centers. Wesley learned early, the simplest way to get something done was to build something to do it for him.  His life’s mission?  To design himself out of a job.  To design and create complex infrastructures where each independent system is so tightly integrated and automated that they sustain themselves and the infrastructure, as a whole.  To only ever have to interact with the core infrastructure when it absolutely requires outside input or help; sort of like Wesley’s daughter who’s currently in college. For the past six years, Wesley has used his years of experience in Information Technology as a systems engineer doing design, implementation, and operations to take the role of Principal Technical Manager and Engineer for the Microsoft Skype for Business infrastructure.  That infrastructure now supports over 22,000 customers, out of two data centers, across 105 physical locations.  Everything provided by the integration of over 56 separate infrastructure objects acting together.  Since inception and deployment, the unified communications program has resulted in a cost savings of over $2.5 million dollars for General Dynamics.  Over the 2015 calendar year, the Skype for Business infrastructure serviced: 10.9 million calls totaling 31 million minutes, hosted over 110,000 conferences totaling 5.1 million minutes, and processed over 34.4 million Instant Messages. Wesley has certifications from numerous organizations, such as: VMware, Microsoft, Sonus, CompTIA, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. Competencies: Microsoft Skype for Business and Lync Server Enterprise, systems integration, automation, Python, PowerShell, virtualization (VMware, Microsoft, KVM, OpenStack, and Docker), Infrastructure and Platform as a Service, both vertical and horizontal scaling.   In addition to being an avid reader, a not-so-handy handyman, and a professional Google’er; Wesley is also a very ‘enthusiastic’ fan of the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference (SEC) in college football.  He currently resides in the Washington DC area with his wife Beth and their dog Lily.  He can be contacted at Wesley (at) wesleyphillips (dot) com.

Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Skype for Business, VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat KVM, Openstack, Gluster, Ceph, Distributed computing and storage, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Server (PaaS), Cryptography, Cryptocurrencies, Neuroscience, Reading