Jeffrey Wilhelm | Envision Technology Advisors, chief technology officer
Envision Technology Advisors Chief Technology Officer Jeffrey Wilhelm knew what he wanted to be in fifth grade, when he made his first computer out of spare parts his dad brought home from work. “I figured it out and made it work.”
Originally from Connecticut, he migrated to Rhode Island in 2000 to attend the University of Rhode Island, majoring in management information systems. “It was a good option, because it was a 50-50 mix of technology and business,” said Wilhelm.
After graduation, Wilhelm started his career in 2003 running IT at MarketModels Inc., which later became AccuData Integrated Marketing of North Kingstown, working in data infrastructure and data analytics. “In the era before big data, I found it interesting to take data and try to make sense of it.” He started getting more and more into infrastructure as a means to an end, he said.
Envision CEO Todd Knapp approached Wilhelm in 2010 and invited him to come on board as a director of engineering and project management at the company. After a year, Wilhelm became chief technology officer. Envision was founded in 1998 and provides technology solutions, including cloud services, desktop and data-center virtualization network, infrastructure consulting and website development. Wilhelm built the engineering group into a tiered support- and project-engineering organization, helping to increase employee efficiency by 30 percent.
“When you do consulting, it ends up being whatever the customer needs,” said Wilhelm. “And if you understand holistically the software side, development side, the data side, the business side and the infrastructure side – which are really the major components to any environment, other than the people of course – if you can understand all those and speak holistically about them, then I think you give better value to the customer for that experience. And I found that those varied experiences in those generalized areas [are] very beneficial.”
One of Wilhelm’s most notable contributions at Envision includes the creation of the InFlight Cloud Platform, which launched in 2013 in Providence.
The InFlight platform is “a combination of technologies, some of which are commercially available that we integrated to provide what we think is a unique solution,” said Wilhelm. It runs out of two data centers, the New England location in Providence and the center in Chicago, which serves both as a replication site for disaster recovery and business continuity and as a primary site for customers who have workloads in the Midwest.
Primary features of the InFlight technology include self-service provisioning, hybrid flash storage and the choice of hyperlocality of the cloud.
“Not everyone likes having a data cloud,” said Wilhelm. “We consider ourselves as having the option of high-touch, hyper local but still with all the features the big guys provide. If you need help migrating your workloads to the clouds for efficiency, we can do the whole thing and manage it for you so you can focus on running your business. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a place to put things, that’s totally fine as well. We have customers in both of those groups, so it depends on their needs and business climate and what sort of constraints they’re operating in. … We took the time to understand what’s happening behind the scenes.”
Wilhelm is also very active in his community. He is a Year Up mentor, chairman of the North Kingstown Town Council’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and an active member of the Tech Collective. His main challenge?
“There are never enough hours in a day,” he said.
Jeremy Girard, director of marketing at Envision, noted that “Jeff is one of those people who has his finger on the pulse of technology.
“He’s done a wonderful job with keeping Envision on the cutting edge, both on the technology we use to do our jobs and what we use to bring to our clients. He’s a great person to have on your team,” he said.
