Mike Theis | Infrastructure CTO

Leadership that stays technical

How Mike creates leverage

Mike works across architecture, delivery, and operations so decisions survive contact with production.

Architect With Context

Designs around real operational constraints, not slide-deck assumptions.

Lead Through Delivery

Stays in the trenches from blueprint to production stabilization.

Raise Team Throughput

Builds aligned teams that ship faster without sacrificing reliability.

25+

Years in technology

Across enterprise infrastructure, cloud, networks, storage, security, and operations.

16

Years in leadership

Leading projects, operations, technical teams, and cross-provider delivery.

250+

Projects at IPForge

Managed from initial definition through completion across a large customer portfolio.

$4M+

Documented savings

Attributed in Mike's resume to completed IPForge programs and architecture decisions.

Ways to work with Mike

Bring in senior infrastructure leadership where the stakes are highest

Advisory and delivery support can focus on a single decision, a program that needs direction, or the full path from architecture to handoff.

Infrastructure Strategy

Turn business constraints, technical debt, and platform risk into a practical target state and sequenced roadmap.

Modernization Architecture

Refresh cloud, data center, storage, network, identity, and operations architecture without losing sight of service continuity.

Migration Leadership

Lead discovery, dependency mapping, migration-wave planning, execution governance, and post-cutover stabilization.

Risk & Resilience Reviews

Assess core systems, data center design, policies, disaster recovery, and next-day business-continuance readiness.

Program Recovery

Clarify ownership, surface blocked decisions, align providers, and rebuild a delivery path around measurable technical outcomes.

Operational Handoff

Build the standards, documentation, monitoring, training, and ownership boundaries teams need to run what was delivered.

When to call Mike

The environment is complex. The next move still needs to be clear.

A modernization program is stuck

Inherited platforms, unclear dependencies, or provider boundaries are slowing decisions and delivery.

A migration has little margin for error

Critical applications, multiple sites, or tightly coupled systems require disciplined discovery, sequencing, and stabilization.

Cost and reliability are in tension

The organization needs architecture choices grounded in lifecycle cost, resilience, operational effort, and real constraints.

Risk or recovery readiness is uncertain

Leadership needs a direct assessment of critical systems, failure modes, remediation priorities, and ownership.

An artifact-driven operating rhythm

Fast clarity first, then disciplined execution

The work moves from evidence to decisions to delivery, with concrete artifacts that keep teams, providers, and leaders aligned.

01

Discover & Bound

Map the environment, business constraints, dependencies, stakeholders, and highest-consequence risks.

Typical artifacts: current-state map, risk register, dependency inventory, success measures.
02

Decide & Sequence

Define the target architecture and turn tradeoffs into a delivery sequence the organization can execute.

Typical artifacts: architecture decisions, target state, cost model, migration waves.
03

Deliver & Govern

Keep engineering, vendors, testing, and business owners moving through visible decisions and measurable checkpoints.

Typical artifacts: execution backlog, decision log, test evidence, risk and status cadence.
04

Stabilize & Transfer

Fortify the delivered system, clarify ownership, and give operating teams what they need to sustain it.

Typical artifacts: monitoring baseline, runbooks, standards, cross-training, handoff plan.

Capabilities

Broad infrastructure depth, organized around outcomes

Mike's resume spans the systems beneath enterprise applications and the operating disciplines needed to keep those systems dependable.

Cloud & Platform Modernization

Choose, design, and migrate to the right public, private, or virtualized platform for the workload and operating model.

AWSAzureGCPOpenStackVMware

Data Centers & Networks

Design and improve multi-site environments, routing, switching, load balancing, and the physical infrastructure beneath them.

CiscoAristaF5NSXMulti-site

Storage & Data Platforms

Build reliable foundations for applications and data across distributed storage, enterprise arrays, databases, and filesystems.

CEPHEMC/DellNFSOracleMSSQL

Security & Risk

Assess risk across data, network, endpoint, application, identity, policy, and physical infrastructure layers.

Zero TrustIAMRisk AssessmentPolicy

Automation & Delivery

Standardize repeatable delivery and infrastructure change while improving visibility across engineering and operations.

AnsibleTerraformJenkinsGitLabAzure DevOps

Resilience & Operations

Strengthen monitoring, disaster recovery, business continuity, lifecycle management, and production ownership.

DRContinuityObservabilityHandoff

Selected work

Outcomes across modernization, migration, and risk

IPForge

Directed infrastructure strategy and delivery across a large portfolio, completing 250+ projects and documenting more than $4 million in savings.

OpenStackCEPHMigrationCost Control

NiSource

Helped lead modernization of a 3,000+ instance, multi-site environment through standards, architecture refresh, and provider execution alignment.

ModernizationStorageAD/DNSGovernance

CenturyLink

Led complex cloud and data center migration, risk, and continuity programs across multi-site enterprise and regulated environments.

AWS/Azure/GCPRiskData CentersDR

More scale from the record

500+

VMware workloads

Led migration into OpenStack while using Docker and LXC where they improved resource and cost efficiency.

27

Worldwide data centers

Led risk assessment and optimization work that included disaster recovery and next-day business continuity planning.

1,000+

Servers in an Azure study

Led architecture work for feasibility analysis and a multi-country, multi-region migration plan.

9,500

Accounts in a separation

Delivered messaging and identity migration work, including scripts that evaluated more than 35,000 accounts.

See Full Experience

Selected career timeline

A career built across strategy and execution

2018 - Present

Director of Infrastructure IPForge

Owns strategy, architecture planning, design, and delivery for customer portfolios and in-house data center technology.

2017 - 2018

Lead Architect NiSource

Identified, architected, and helped execute modernization across cloud, storage, identity, standards, tools, and operations.

2013 - 2017

Senior Lead Architect, Special Projects CenturyLink

Led high-complexity cloud migrations, data center programs, core-system risk assessments, and process optimization.

2007 - 2013

Director of Information Technology Allen, Wilson & Hughes

Led budgets, staff, enterprise security, infrastructure programs, virtualization, messaging, and disaster-recovery delivery.

2003 - 2013

Enterprise Engineering & Migration Selected engagements

Delivered data center, messaging, virtualization, security, and platform work for financial, healthcare, government, education, and insurance organizations.

Regulated and high-consequence environments

Experience where controls, continuity, and evidence matter

Mike's background includes federal and state systems, healthcare, financial services, insurance, audit work, and critical enterprise platforms.

Government & Public Sector

Federal Tier 0 and Tier 1 system assessment and remediation, plus infrastructure delivery across multiple Ohio state agencies.

Healthcare

Infrastructure, migration, disaster recovery, and security work for healthcare organizations and public-health environments.

Financial Services & Insurance

Platform, migration, audit, and infrastructure work for banking, automotive finance, and national insurance organizations.

Framework-Aware Delivery

Working knowledge of NIST Cybersecurity Framework, SOC, HIPAA, HITRUST, SOX, and PCI DSS practices and audit procedures.

AI & data infrastructure

AI and data capability, grounded in the systems beneath the workload

Mike's work in this area is infrastructure-first: the compute, storage, network, database, cloud, automation, and operations foundation that data-intensive systems depend on.

Model-Ready Physical Systems

Custom-built physical systems that run models up to Falcon 40B, described in Mike's resume as a roughly 100 GB model.

Storage & Database Foundations

Experience across CEPH, enterprise arrays, NFS, iSCSI, and database platforms including Oracle, MSSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and Progress.

Repeatable Operations

Cloud, automation, monitoring, security, and lifecycle experience to move beyond a one-off build toward an operable platform.

Engagement FAQ

What teams usually need to know

What kinds of problems are the best fit?

Infrastructure strategy, modernization, cloud or data center migrations, risk and resilience reviews, delivery recovery, and operational handoff.

Does Mike stay involved through delivery?

Yes. Mike's experience covers requirements, design, testing, implementation, stabilization, cross-training, and handoff - not architecture in isolation.

Does the work cover public and private cloud?

Yes. The resume documents architecture and engineering experience with AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenStack, OpenNebula, and multiple virtualization platforms.

Can Mike work in regulated environments?

Mike has delivered work across government, healthcare, finance, and insurance, with working knowledge of common security and audit frameworks.

How do we start?

Email or call with the environment, the decision or delivery challenge, and the outcome you need. Mike can then identify the most useful first step.

Where can I see the detailed technical history?

The full resume includes technologies, roles, project examples, and scope across more than two decades of enterprise work.

Open Mike's resume

Start a conversation

Need an operator who can architect and execute?

Mike is available for advisory and delivery leadership across infrastructure, platform, and data engineering programs.

Email Mike

I turn complex infrastructure into dependable, high-velocity systems.