Kevin Kakkad

➢ Under Account ‘The British Automobile Association’

Industry: Automotive Services, Roadside Assistance, and Insurance. The AA is a well-known organization providing roadside assistance, insurance, and other motoring services in the UK.

• Reduced critical incident resolution time by 30% through proactive ServiceNow management, coupled with 25% cost savings achieved by optimizing VM sizing and ensuring 99.99% VM availability via ASR configurations, directly contributing to business continuity and reduced operational overhead in the existing Azure cloud environment.
• Managed and executed an end-to-end migration project, transitioning around 240+ on-premises servers to Azure Cloud from VMware. Conducted thorough dependency discovery of applications and databases, replicated data to temporary storage, and utilized Azure Migrate for seamless cutovers. Proactively adjusted VM sizes for increased efficiency, contributing to a 20% reduction in cloud operational costs, and ensuring enhanced resource utilization post-migration.
• Manage and troubleshoot VMware vSphere environments (vCenter, ESXi 7.0/8.0)
• Perform VM provisioning, migration (vMotion/Storage vMotion), and resource optimization
• Work on ESXi patching, upgrades, and host profile management.
• Maintained close communication with clients throughout project life cycles for accurate progress reporting and prompt issue resolution.
• Managed a comprehensive Windows Server ecosystem (2012-2022), overseeing DHCP, Hyper-V, and Failover Clustering to support enterprise applications.
• Streamlined onboarding for trainee engineers by providing direct guidance on patching, Windows Server administration, Azure DevOps, and related technical tasks, accelerating their productivity within the team.

• Deployed highly available production Kubernetes clusters (AKS) on Azure, ensuring seamless scalability and 99.9% application uptime for critical customer-facing services.
• Optimized AKS cluster resource utilization through efficient pod scheduling, autoscaling configurations, and right-sizing, resulting in a 15% reduction in Azure compute costs while maintaining performance.
• Architected and implemented secure, high-performance cloud network solutions using Azure Virtual Networks, VPNs, and ExpressRoute, improving data transfer speeds by 30%, and ensuring robust connectivity, which is essential for critical hybrid cloud operations.
• Accelerated infrastructure provisioning by 30% and reduced deployment errors through the design and implementation of highly available, scalable Azure architectures via Terraform, and automated CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps, significantly improving time-to-market for new features.
• Implemented and updated DNS server configurations and host entries based on customer requirements, resolving connectivity issues, and enhancing overall system reliability and user experience.
• Configured and managed Azure DevOps Landing Zone components, including management groups, policies, and role-based access control (RBAC).
• Deployed network components such as Network Security Group, Route Table, Virtual Network, Subnets, Peering, and Gateway using Terraform.

• Under Account ‘Centrica British Gas’ UK & Ireland

Industry: Energy and Home Services. British Gas is a major energy and home services provider in the UK.

• Undertaken operations include active incident management, change management (ServiceNow), problem management, CMDB, storage addition/expansion, OS upgradation, and server patching troubleshooting (SCCM, Azure DevOps).
• Recommended strategic upgrades that reduced infrastructure costs monthly by £3,000 while meeting evolving application demands.
• Managed Azure AD with over 12,000, created and assigned IAM users, and configured Azure resources like Network Security Groups, Route Tables, and Virtual Networks.
• Orchestrated and automated patch deployment for Windows servers using Azure DevOps Pipelines, reducing manual effort by 50%, and accelerating critical security updates.
• Strengthened security posture and compliance by meticulously configuring IAM roles and permissions, reducing unauthorized access risks by 20%, and ensuring adherence to least-privilege principles for sensitive customer data.
• Created and maintained technical knowledge articles, including system configurations, procedures, troubleshooting guides, and performance reports.
• Automated the deployment of virtual machines, storage accounts, virtual networks, and other resources in bulk using the Azure PowerShell module.