IT Operations and Strategy

The business of technology

I help mid-size businesses get their technology right - whether that means cleaning up years of quick fixes or building the foundation for what comes next. 20+ years of experience, proven practices, real results.

Jonathan Slaven - IT Strategy & Leadership Consultant
Background includes
Healthcare IT
Banking & Finance
Defense & DoD
Consumer Goods
HIPAA, SOX, HITRUST
Sound Familiar?

Most growing businesses hit a wall with technology.

🔥
Everything is held together with duct tape
Years of quick fixes, workarounds, and "we'll deal with that later" decisions have created a fragile mess that nobody fully understands.
🤷
You don't know what you're paying for
SaaS subscriptions, vendor contracts, and hardware costs have piled up without anyone tracking what's actually needed vs. what's just running on autopilot.
📈
Growth is exposing the cracks
What worked for 50 people doesn't work for 200, and certainly not 1,000. Your tools, processes, and infrastructure weren't built for where you're headed.
🎯
You need a strategy, not the latest trend
Every vendor has a shiny new "solution" for you. What you actually need is someone who knows which practices are proven, which tools are right for your size, and how to build something that lasts.
Results

Real problems. Proven solutions. Lasting results.

Every engagement is different, but the approach is the same: understand the business, find what's broken, fix it with sustainable practices, and leave things better than I found them. Here are a few examples.

Righting the Ship Enabling Growth Healthcare

Transforming IT for a nationwide healthcare organization

1,100+ users • Domestic & international operations • HIPAA-regulated

Walked into an organization where 1,100+ employees were using personal devices with no central IT governance, SaaS applications were scattered across departments with no oversight, and there was no standardized security posture. In two years, transformed the entire IT operation.

1,100+
Users migrated
$750
Saved per user/year
20+
SaaS apps governed
The Situation
  • Entire workforce on unmanaged personal devices (BYOD-only)
  • 20+ SaaS applications with no centralized governance - shadow IT everywhere
  • No standardized security or compliance posture in a HIPAA-regulated environment
  • Network bottlenecks at critical sites impacting field operations
  • No IT asset management - hardware and software spend untracked
What I Did
  • Migrated all 1,100 users from personal devices to fully compliant managed endpoints
  • Deployed 350 iPads and 300 iPhones to field clinicians for secure EMR access
  • Centralized SaaS governance across 20+ applications, eliminating shadow IT
  • Consolidated global communications tools, saving $750 per user annually
  • Upgraded network infrastructure at critical sites, eliminating productivity bottlenecks
  • Built a globally distributed team of 20 from the ground up
  • Implemented identity and access management with Okta
  • Established IT asset management practices, eliminating redundant purchases
The Outcome
  • Fully compliant device fleet meeting HIPAA and security standards
  • Significant annual cost savings through vendor consolidation and SaaS cleanup
  • Centralized IT governance with clear policies and processes
  • Field clinicians securely accessing medical records from managed mobile devices
  • High-performing support team operating across L1, L2, and L3 tiers
  • Foundation for HITRUST compliance in place
Righting the Ship Banking & Finance

Building IT operations for a $92B financial institution

350+ users • SOX-governed environment • Wholesale mortgage banking

Joined a financial institution that had no centralized service desk and needed structured IT operations in a heavily audited, SOX-governed environment. Built the service desk from scratch, then took on progressively larger operational responsibilities - achieving 99.9%+ uptime across all managed systems.

99.9%+
Uptime achieved
350+
Users supported
The Situation
  • No centralized service desk - support was fragmented and inconsistent
  • Strict SOX compliance requirements for change management and audit trails
  • Limited remote access capabilities for a workforce that needed flexibility
  • 300+ approved applications to support with no formal incident management
What I Did
  • Created the organization's first centralized service desk team
  • Implemented formal incident management with defined escalation procedures and SLAs
  • Designed and built server-based computing environment for internal and external access
  • Ensured strict SOX compliance across change management, access controls, and audit processes
  • Managed enterprise common services - all software used company-wide
The Outcome
  • 99.9%+ monthly uptime for all managed systems - exceeded targets consistently
  • Exceeded all service desk SLAs every month
  • Full SOX compliance maintained through every audit cycle
  • Improved remote access and business continuity capabilities
  • Structured, repeatable IT processes where none existed before
Enabling Growth Consumer Goods

Automating enterprise operations for a global manufacturer

Global operations • Enterprise ERP systems • AWS & Kubernetes

Within a large global enterprise, identified and eliminated operational bottlenecks through automation - turning processes that took weeks into hours and saving hundreds of work-hours annually on repetitive tasks.

Weeks→Hrs
Environment build time
100s
Hours saved annually
The Situation
  • Development environment builds took weeks, creating bottlenecks for engineering teams
  • Repetitive DBA tasks - password resets, patching - consumed significant manual effort
  • Critical enterprise platforms needed 24/7 support across complex tech stack
  • Limited visibility into production systems and performance
What I Did
  • Automated environment builds on internal cloud, reducing spin-up from weeks to hours
  • Automated repetitive DBA activities through Jenkins, saving hundreds of work-hours annually
  • Built production monitoring dashboards in Grafana for real-time visibility
  • Designed high availability architecture for critical management tools with RPO/RTO of minutes
  • Administered 15+ enterprise platforms spanning DevOps, middleware, and business intelligence
The Outcome
  • Developers unblocked - testing no longer delayed by shared environment constraints
  • Hundreds of hours reclaimed from manual processes each year
  • Real-time production monitoring where none existed before
  • High availability for critical database management tools
  • Stable, reliable enterprise platform operations supporting global business