About
About This Blog
This blog is focused on providing content useful to medium and small businesses (roughly defined as between 10 and 500 employees or 10 and 500 computers) centered around creating, managing, and evolving reliable systems. I think of a system as being a set of technology, people and processes that work together to provide a service. Frequently, the technology is the main focus of reliability but I believe that process makes the biggest difference. If you have great people and processes, you can have a highly reliable service even with basic technology. The most advanced technology can – and often does – fall prey to people and process problems.
Much of the content is geared to individuals trying to make substantial improvements in how well their organization can deliver results while growing, but even folks in larger organizations that have well established, successful practices will get value out of the more conceptual content that focuses on the people and process aspects more than software and hardware.
About Kendall Miller
I’ve been designing, creating, and deploying information systems (hardware, software, and networks) since 1993. I’ve focused on translating large, sophisticated enterprise systems into affordable, workable solutions for smaller environments.
Prior to joining eSymmetrix, I served as Chief Information Officer for Benelogic, LLC. As CIO, I oversaw the development of the IT infrastructure and product development of a Software as a Service (SaaS) benefits administration system that serves hundreds of mid sized and large employers across the United States. I started working during the initial startup of the company in 2000 and left at the end of 2007 with the company experiencing sustained profitability with over 15 million in annual revenue from technology services.
I have also provided product development and consulting services to several enterprise customers with a focus on creating infrastructure software and large distributed architectures. I often think back to my time at John Deere where I was privileged to work with a number of incredible professionals in an environment that was fantastic for taking someone just out of college and explaining how business use IT, and more importantly how IT needs to serve the business. Many of my core beliefs on reliability and customer service come from John Deere. I haven’t met another company that works as hard to put the customer first or maintain quality over time, two things I really treasure.
I was fortunately enough to get a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign during the time just before and leading up to the introduction of the web browser and the subsequent takeoff of the Internet. Sometimes, timing is everything.
About eSymmetrix
My partner Jay Cincotta originally founded eSymmetrix in 2000. He and I had worked together for several years while I was at John Deere. I was ready to try newer, bigger things and John Deere was momentarily going through a non-Microsoft phase. While starting eSymmetrix, Jay landed a great client that became Benelogic. I joined eSymmetrix in April of 2000 working on contract with Benelogic, eventually joining Benelogic full time at the end of that year.
Last year, with Benelogic out of its startup phase I was looking for new opportunities to do what I love – build great systems. Jay and I decided to reform eSymmetrix around a central concept that has run through the work he and I did together at John Deere and I continued at Benelogic – making highly reliable systems that deliver time after time for users. Instead of working within just one company at a time, or having to take on the bulk software development work in addition to the work in our specialty we’ve focused our practice on partnering with a few development shops that are outstanding at contract software development and supplement our talents in infrastructure, processes, and management.
We work with your existing software development, IT Operations, and support teams to help you deliver for your customers every time, every where. You can check out our marketing web site for more information about what we do for our clients and any current career opportunities, or feel free to drop me a line.
