Sean Trifero is the newly promoted director of engineering at Envision Technology Advisors, an IT consulting and services company in Pawtucket. Trifero has been with the company since 2008, when he joined in an engineering support role, and last year he was recognized for his career achievements in Tech Collective’s 2013 Tech10 Awards.
Trifero spoke with Providence Business News about his experience with Envision and his expectations going forward in his new role.
PBN: How has Envision changed since you started with the company in 2008?
TRIFERO: Envision has undergone a lot of organizational change over the course of my career here, although at the same time very little has changed in our approach and commitment to the customer. Some obvious changes like number of employees, office locations, what we work on daily, our product and vendor set – those seem like they can change on a monthly basis.
Behind the scenes we have departmentalized, which has made some processes simpler but in some cases introduced hurdles that we’ve had to overcome. Overall though many things remain the same – our unique culture and never ending quest to stay on the cutting edge, and our commitment to customer service. Those are the things that make Envision a special place, and keep our customers happy.
PBN: What are you most looking forward to in your new role as director of engineering?
TRIFERO: I am looking forward to increased control over the future direction of the department and being able to realize my personal growth vision. Experiencing all the engineering ranks over the course of my career has given me a unique perspective. This perspective will help me to define how each specific role in the department should work in the big picture.
PBN: Last year, Tech Collective named you one of the top 10 Rhode Island IT practitioners. How have you continued to challenge yourself in your career?
TRIFERO: It’s hard to believe that it’s only been five months since I was awarded that honor. In that short timeframe I’ve moved from a senior systems engineer to the director of engineering. That in itself is one of the most challenging things I have done in my career.
It’s always interesting how perspective changes based on role. While we’re all marching towards the same goal, the things that an employee on each rung of the ladder needs to consider are quite different. I am spending more time now on strategic activities, product development, and working with the senior team to ensure that there is a focus on the departmental goals and not just the day-to-day implementation of service delivery.
PBN: Which project currently underway at Envision are you most excited about?
TRIFERO: Currently a lot of my attention goes to inFlight, our hosted cloud offering. This unique collection of services is where I see IT moving in the next five years. What inFlight offers are cloud-based co-location in a few hybrid forms: virtual/physical server co-location, managed private cloud infrastructure in a truly software defined datacenter, managed replication targets, etc. This is all built on top of some of the most cutting-edge technology that is out there today.
The capabilities this is bringing to the early customers of the platform is exciting for us and for them, especially in terms of putting enterprise-grade and high-performance technology into the hands of companies who could otherwise not afford it, and ensuring that they have an easy portal through which to manage their virtual deployment.
PBN: How do you expect the needs of Envision’s clients will continue evolving as IT moves toward cloud-based and mobile technologies?
TRIFERO: A few years back, it was rare for a customer of ours to fully embrace the cloud. Now it’s rare to find customers not using various cloud services. Some of them are using cloud services and don’t even really know it. As the overall communication infrastructure continues to improve by ways of cheaper, faster and lower-latency internet service providers, you can expect a large amount of clients to continue their moves into the cloud.
In many cases, on-premise servers make less and less sense for the vast majority of businesses, especially when the total cost of ownership of that gear (hardware, software, maintenance, management, power, cooling, etc.) is considered. We pride ourselves on being business consultants focused on cloud evolution – we want to help our customers embrace the cloud so they can focus on running their businesses, and we want to leverage our expertise to help make that process as seamless as possible for them.
