Derek D. Gentry is a Senior Technology Consultant and Owner of Black Tie IT, a national technology consulting firm, specializing in Infrastructure Design and Implementation, Project Management and Mergers and Acquisitions. During his over 30 years of industry experience, he has held titles such as Senior Director of IT, Vice President of Technology and CTO. At all levels of his technology background, he has prided himself on his management skills specific to technology staff and his ability to effectively manage IT projects and resources; while focusing on productivity to accomplish success on-time and on-budget. Some of the key factors in his effectiveness are:

Ability to understand the details of the project and know what is needed to succeed.
Expertise in design and implementation to achieve maximum efficiency
Focus on the budget and ability to estimate at a greater detail due to experience
Industry knowledge in vendor selection and management
Team development with onsite and remote resources to ensure effectiveness
Formulation of strategic objectives in order to reach higher technology goals

As a Senior Technology Consultant, Derek has worked with many large organizations across the country. More recently he was contracted by Yahoo, Inc in Sunnyvale, California to investigate, architect and implement the active directory and exchange migration for over 83 global offices and 80,000 users. He developed a 6-month global migration plan to change users from the NT domain structure to active directory. Much time and care was taken in planning as most of the development and operations internal to Yahoo! were run on UNIX and java to stay true to the open-source nature of the company. He had to bring many organizational units together and drive the project through specific goal-driven objectives in order to complete the project on time. Through the Yahoo, Inc. project, Derek created a relationship with Quest Software, an active directory migration toolset, that ultimately resulted in an ongoing contract with them to manage active directory migrations at new client locations across the country.

Prior to the Yahoo, Inc. engagement, Derek was hired by CBS/Viacom to design and develop an online change-management system to track lease changes for their outdoor advertising business unit. Project Management skills were truly tested as many different business units and vendors had an opinion about the path that the development should follow. After many conversations with the project owners and staff, he was able to pull all the parties into a series of meetings to make sure that their opinions were heard and that the end result met all of their expectations. This workflow and documentation development ensured the company was adequately prepared for a comprehensive investigation of documentation and financials. The current documentation had yet to be managed electronically. Through the process of development, review, and documentation, he uncovered nearly $4.5M in lost revenue or overpaid rents spanning a period of 3+ years, enabled the company to recover 85% of the overpayments and increased process efficiency by 75%.

Before taking on the role of Senior Technology Consultant, Derek was the CTO of Realty DataTrust, a software development firm focused on enabling the apartment industry to prequalify potential renters thru online lead and resident pre-screening efforts. His duties ranged from the organization of a start-up company, development and structure of the technology roadmap for a 3-year period, and assistance in the creation of the Multi-Family Data Exchange (the new data standard for the apartment industry). As CTO, his focus was on the management of all aspects of company technology including website development, licensing, purchasing, and overseeing 15 full-time employees. Accomplishments include the development of the first online booking engine for the apartment industry and the back-end software responsible for the “check availability” feature being used by many multi-family housing communities online today.

Derek is the co-founder of the Arizona DotNetNuke Users group, made up of web development and project management professionals across the state. He is also an active Microsoft Certified Professional with a focus on Active Directory migrations and Exchange implementations. He is also a member of many technology networking groups that focus on small to medium-size business development and growth.