Santhosh B R
Head Infrastructure
Bengaluru
Summary
A qualified IT Infrastructure Service Delivery professional with over 26 years of industry experience in cross-functional areas, which includes Datacenter Critical IT infrastructure, Cloud, Infrastructure management (Storage, Compute, Network), service delivery, service quality, audit assessments, compliance, configuration & release Management, Service Desk and Project/Program Management. 20 years of experience in Senior Management and leadership role Possess strong experience in managing regional & international teams. A result-driven leader with a unique capability to design and implement business objectives that meet service delivery. Managing heterogeneous production environment, Enterprise Compute, Network, Storages, Backup, Operating Systems, Clusters, File Systems, Databases, and Applications. Result-oriented operations executive with business acumen. Well-versed with ITIL processes like Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, and Asset Management. Offering strong leadership qualities and aptitude for strategic thinking, I bring solid foundation in business management principles and practices. Contributes quick learning ability and adaptability to new environments, ensuring effective operational oversight and decision-making. Ready to use and develop project management and financial analysis skills in Infrastructure Head role.
Overview
20
20
years of professional experience
25
25
years of post-secondary education
8
8
Certifications
Work History
Deputy General Manager Datacenter Operations
ICICI Bank
Hyderabad
04.2015 - 11.2023
- Responsible for Datacenter (DC/DR/Colo), Network and Network Security (including branches, ATM connectivity), Storage, Backup, Tools and IT Command center
- Spearheading a team of 600 + members at multiple locations and managing 1000 Rack Datacenter (primary and DR & NDR) Infrastructures (DC/Network/Security/Storage/Backup/ITCC/Tools) at Hyderabad and Jaipur
- Led the evaluation and implementation of Zero Trust Architecture with the Zscaler solution/Cisco ACI
- Strategically assessed and integrated multiple vendor firewalls across key zones, including corporate, internet, and datacenter/WAN firewalls
- Successfully executed the rollout of SD-WAN solutions across all branches in India and back-office operation locations
- Played a key role in rolling out Work from Home solutions during the pandemic, ensuring 30% of the bank's workforce could operate remotely within 5 working days, and achieving full operational capacity for the entire bank within 10 days
- This involved sourcing hardware across datacenter, configuring VPN and security policies, and implementing a scalable remote access solution
- Involved in core banking migration (designed and deployed IBM P9 systems along with DS8K)
- Leveraged NDR for log shipment to have max availability for Oracle DB
- Initiated Firewall Rule review and cleared thousands of rules which was either redundant or no longer in use
- Implementation NPM solution (Riverbed) for network performance monitoring along with end user experience, designing of monitoring dashboards etc
- Restructuring of switching infrastructure in DMZ and seamless migration of 3000+ network ports, 100+ uplink to new fabric
- Evaluated and implemented Cisco ACI solutions for the bank, optimizing datacenter automation and scalability
- Led the strategic transition of primary switching/routing vendors and replicated the same approach in SAN switch infrastructure
- Evaluated multiple co-location & Cloud service providers and formulated a strategy for the bank on the Datacenter landscape for the next five years
- Setup Near DR (NDR) infrastructure at the co-location service providers in 4 months during the pandemic
- This included Core banking going live from the NDR
- Initiated Industry recognition certification by uptime and TIA (Tier III certified) and TIA 942 Rated III for both DC and DR
- Spearheading a team of solution architects and consultants to assist internal customers with architecture guidance, consulting & delivery technologies
- Designed and executed the entire Datacenter for the next generation banking technology with 12Kva per rack holding a capacity of 200 Racks, which is Tier III architecture
- Implemented OCI, stor2rrd, and BNA/SANNAV for storage/switch performance monitoring
- Managing 385 heterogeneous storage (65PB at DC, DR & NDR)
- Responsible for 312TB of backup daily using Tapes, was instrumental in getting success ratio of Backup to 100%
- Instrumental in setup Internal IT Command Center with 30 people for Application and Infrastructure monitoring
- Setup ITIL Process and Tools (System Manager, Asset Manager, UCMDB)
- Rolled out UCMDB as part of Asset management and ITSM
- Responsible for Audit and compliance for Datacenter, Storage, Backup, Tools, and ITCC
- Instrumental in changing all single-phase PDU/TOB in DC/DR to Three-phase to have maximum capacity utilized
- Integrated all Tools (OEM, SCOM, OCI, OPNET, NNMi, Ops Manager) to Hp OMI (Single dashboard for Command center)
- Strategized Five-year Road map for ITCC and Datacenter
- Setup IT Command center/Service Desk for the bank with complete monitoring of Applications and infrastructure
- Successfully rolled out an additional expansion of 100 Racks Datacenter at DR location
- Rolled out the IT Collaboration portal (Atlassian confluence) as an internal documentation portal
- Re-Architected the Micro Focus ITSM tools (Service Manager), leveraged Asset manager for media management, Software Asset life-cycle management, and RMA
- Instrumental in bringing process change and setting up the ITSM tool as part of standard ITSM practice (Outage Management, Problem Management, Change management)
- Process improvements in DC operations
- Implemented Automation solution using BMC Atrium Orchestrator (CLM) for infrastructure and backup Technology (100 Use-cases in the last 12 months)
- Tape management & movement was automated entirely from the native excel sheet to Tool
- This improved efficiency by 300%
- The solution was conceptualized and built in-house
- Integrated NOC, SOC and ServiceDesk along with Monitoring
- Achieved a PUE of 1.45 after implementing improvements; we could save INR 1,20,000 (monthly) on electricity consumption
- Implemented DCIM (Trellis) solution for power & cooling monitoring
- Achieved 99% asset accuracy for the inventories and built CI to Application Mapping
- Designing of solution of external cloud connectivity like Azure, AWS, office 365
Head Lab & Datacenter Operations
NetApp India
Bangalroe
08.2010 - 04.2015
- Responsible for IT Operations of Datacenter & Lab
- Leading a team of 20+, managing the 425 Rack Lab & Datacenter Infrastructures in Bangalore, responsible for the engineering Lab and Datacenter, which includes the Technology Group/Product Development Lab, BUILD & Configuration management system
- Designed and executed exclusive hardware Lab (15 KVa per Rack) for the next generation of NetApp Hardware and setup Datacenter 200 racks with 100 days and 8 Million USD
- Managed the Datacenter infrastructure without affecting the Core business, even during Lab Infrastructure migration and movement
- I Was able to handle the LAB & DC uptime to 99.9999% for the last four consecutive years
- Worked on Inventory/Power/Space optimization programs bringing value addition to the BU in terms of productivity and cost-effectiveness
- Responsible for managing the virtualized Lab datacenter with 3000 VM, which runs on a Flexpod solution
- Bringing the operation efficiency in the Technology group and the Lab could get the SLA for the SITE to 95% from 70%
- Process implementation for cost Reduction, Productivity, and quality
- Built the Knowledge base using the wiki
- Migrated the complete Dev
- Build environment from IBM HS21/HS22 chassis to flex pod solution and improved the infrastructure performance
- Brought efficiency in Lab operation through Lab optimization, Lab inventory usage, and the Lab Green initiative
- Strategize and execute Self Service tools for improving the operational efficiency of Operations
- Contributed to moving around 150 Racks of Gears from Bangalore to North Carolina
- Successfully rolled out a separate network for partners and 3rd party vendors to do product testing and develop localized languages for manageability products
- Architected the Playbook Tool for the engineering community for setting up Dev/QA environments
- Automated the installation of OS and ONTAP on Lab hardware
Manager Enterprise Server Operations APAC & EMEA
VeriSign Services INDIA PVT Ltd
Bangalroe
06.2003 - 08.2010
- IT Operational activities of APAC & EMEA (China, Switzerland, South Africa, London, Australia), including both strategic and operational
- Built VeriSign India by establishing a new facility & migrating multiple acquired companies to a single roof and moved
- Being part of the Core Project team setting up development offices in Bangalore and Beijing
- Also responsible for end-to-end delivery of the project from a Corp-IT standpoint
- Core member to establish the ODC (Partners) for VeriSign in India, implemented policies and procedures to improve IT operational performance by over 95%
- Re-engineered network infrastructures to improve security, performance & availability
- Instrumental in setting up the start-up companies and migration of VeriSign acquisitions & development partners and part of core members in divestitures (involved in three significant divestitures
- Core member to introduce Virtualization Technology and move 200+ Servers to the Technology from a legacy platform
- Setting up Regional Resolution server .COM and .NET (DNS) for India, was part of the team coordinating with the ISP and Data Centre team to build and transition the same
- Was one of the Key members of the M & A integration team from an IT standpoint, as part of the core responsibility involved in integrating the infrastructure for acquired entities and disintegrating networks for divested companies across APAC & EMEA
- Key contributor on the Technical Advisory Board/Change management for Hardware & Software for International
- Involved in Architecture Design and Implementation of various corporate IT and engineering initiatives
- Key member to work with the Global team to set up a Global Service Desk and NOC for VeriSign
- Integrated IT operations of dispersing teams to roll out 24x7 support using the sun model for APAC & EMEA
- Perform site surveys of VeriSign acquired companies and offshore partners
- Propose/Implement changes to bring the infrastructure under VeriSign network standards
Education
Bachelor of Science - Computer Maintenance
Bangalore University
Bangalore 06.1994 - 05.1997
Post Graduate Diploma - Computer Applications
Datapro
Bangalore 05.1996 - 10.1998
Post Graduate Diploma in Business Managment - IT And FInance
XIME
Bangalore 05.2006 - 05.2025
High School Diploma -
Amity University
Noida 07.2020 - 06.2021
Skills
Operations management
Project management
Leadership and team building
Troubleshooting expertise
Certification
Accredited Tier Specialist (ATS Uptime)
Timeline
High School Diploma -
Amity University
07.2020 - 06.2021
Deputy General Manager Datacenter Operations
ICICI Bank
04.2015 - 11.2023
Head Lab & Datacenter Operations
NetApp India
08.2010 - 04.2015
Post Graduate Diploma in Business Managment - IT And FInance
XIME
05.2006 - 05.2025
Manager Enterprise Server Operations APAC & EMEA
VeriSign Services INDIA PVT Ltd
06.2003 - 08.2010
Post Graduate Diploma - Computer Applications
Datapro
05.1996 - 10.1998
Bachelor of Science - Computer Maintenance
Bangalore University
06.1994 - 05.1997
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