IT Manager - Sheraton Montazah, Alexandria, Egypt.September 2009 – July 2011

Job Roles:

•Supports the planning and implementation of all hotel systems.

•Ensures that all systems running within the hotel are maintained to a level that delivers the most efficient service for our customers and that they are in compliance with Starwood Hotels & Resorts standards of operation.

•Managing the department and planning its budget and IT Projects.

•Provide support to the users of Information Systems through direct interaction and through the identification and co-ordination of our ongoing training needs.                                      

•Managing the hotel’s systems: Example: Opera PMS, Micros POS, iScala (back office system) … etc

•Managing the hotel’s backup system.

oSymantec backup Exec 2010.

•Achieving Starwood Hotel Securities.

oMcAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (EPO).

•Achieving Starwood Hotel Policies.

oControlling and administrate user’s rights, accounts and passwords for each system.

•Improved SOX documentations

oCreating and modifying daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual technical and managerial reports.

•Technical support (systems troubleshooting)

oActive Directory 2003 – 2008, Oracle V8i – V9i - 10g – 11g ,  SQL Server 2005 – 2008,Windows server 2003 -2008 – 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2003 – 2007.

oServers installation, upgrade and maintenance.

•Planning, Managing and implementing the IT department budget.

oI have Prepared a forecast for the needs of the department, such as new machines “PCs ” for new users, replace old machines, systems upgrading as per Starwood IT policy schedule, contract renewing with vendors and supports, renewing license and buy new license… etc.   

I shared the responsibility of planning and implementing the IT department projects:

•Migration for Servers Racks and Electric Structures.

•Upgrading cables, switches and network hardware.

•Migration the backup system.

•Migration the purchasing and inventory system.

•Upgrading the back office system.

•Servers’ hardware upgrade.

•Opera PMS Upgrading.

All projects have been performed according to the modern project management methodologies and theories; the following are the details of one project as an example:  Opera PMS Upgrading from V4 to V5 – duration: 3 months

•Design

oCommunicating with the main vendor in Egypt and setting the time period for the project by analyzing the installation phases.

oBrainstorming with the Team members the Data Upgrading scenarios.

oDefining the risks and the mitigation plan for each.

oPreparing the testing environment.

•Plan

oFormulating the testing team and the Users Acceptance Testing (UAT) members to confirm the acceptance of the project.

oScheduling the tasks for Data Upgrading Scenarios implementation and assigning them to the appropriate team member.

oAdding relevant contingency to the risks in the schedule to avoid delay in the delivery

oScheduling the testing sessions for the Users Acceptance Testing

oAvoiding the shutdown phase by providing testing and training environment for V5 while maintaining V4 functionality in parallel to the testing phase

oSharing the plan with all stakeholders of the project.

•Implementation

oMaking sure of having more than one Full system backup

oTesting the restore procedure.

oVerifying the system storage and capacity.

oInstalling new services and reporting features.

oUpgrading the users rights for the new version.

oSupervising the training sessions given to the business users.

•Monitor and Control

oSupporting the team members by answering their technical questions and solving the problems they are facing.

oMaking sure that the project plan is applied and that the progress is compliant with the delivery date.

oAssessing continuously ad-hoc risks and mitigation.

oPerforming random testing on the Upgrading process, upgrading system backup and running reports daily to know the progress of the project.

•Evaluate

oCollecting feedback from business users about the stability of the system after the upgrade.

oCollecting logs and reports from the system to evaluate the system performance and stability.

oComparing the actual work done in the project and the planned schedule to improve the project process.

I have participated in setting the overall hotel’s annual budget planning and implementing for sales, revenues, finance and reservations for 2 years (2010 and 2011)

IT Deputy Manager – Sheraton MontazahSeptember 2006 – September 2009

I have assisted the IT Manager in his responsibilities (as detailed above), and have worked on his behalf in the tasks he delegated to me.

I have represented the IT Department in the Starwood’s IT Conference in Brussels Belgium, November ’07, discussing the new hotel’s policies, new systems, upgrading existing systems, Starwood’s future, leader ship sessions and how IT department is involved more in the hotel’s operations

I have participated in setting the overall hotel’s annual budget planning and implementing for sales, revenues, finance and reservations for the year 2009