Meet the Sound Enterprises Staff
Jim Ballowe, President
Jim Ballowe founded Sound Enterprises to bring fortune 500 infrastructure to the SMB marketplace. By leveraging considerable experience in operations, network management, enterprise architecture, web services and security best practices, Jim has done everything in his power to help small and mid-market businesses thrive by keeping them ahead of the curve as well as their competition.
Prior to founding Sound Enterprises, Jim Ballowe held the role of Chief Infrastructure Architect at Enterpulse, an enterprise web portal consultancy based in Decatur, GA. During that tenure, Jim simultaneously managed the IT for up to 250 users and leveraged that IT staff to turn a profit by providing infrastructure consulting to Enterpulse clients. Jim was fortunate to have the opportunity to architect security, network infrastructure & portal solutions for entities such as Visa, Albertsons, Cox Communications, TBS, Hearst Interactive Media, Global Payments, Cingular, TMobile, The State of Florida and many similar entities with complex & robust infrastructure requirements.
Earlier experience managing staff, systems and process while at Lucent, Hewlett-Packard and Digital Equipment Corporation allowed Jim to witness firsthand how strategy should inform process, process should drive the business, and technology should serve to enable and/or accelerate achievement of those goals. While at DEC & HP, Jim led and worked on Premier support teams that managed WAN, LAN & Systems for large entities such as Ford, Alcoa and many others, providing both detailed technical expertise and an inherent sense of how to build good workflow for large-scale operations as well as the value of high signal-to-noise monitoring processes. This experience makes it possible for Jim to help small and mid-market clients build truly Sound Enterprises.
Greg Faulkner, Vice President of Development
Greg Faulkner has served as VP of Development since October 2005. Prior to joining the company, Greg spent 20 years with several companies specializing in application development. At Sound Enterprises, Greg has helped to grow the Web Presence side of the business from a side thought to an integral part of the business. Greg enjoys becoming part of the clients' team and building tools to help these businesses flourish.
Greg began his career working in computer operations at the corporate offices of Days Inn. He found his passion to be application development and moved on to Peachtree Software where he spent 5 years working on the company's core accounting software packages. He was the lead and majority developer of the First Accounting software package for Peachtree.
In his spare time during the late 1980's and early 1990's, Greg began developing a software package that helped fantasy baseball players manage their league. At this time, the fantasy sports industry was a small, fledgling. In 1993, he quit his job at Peachtree Software in order to start his own company and sell his fantasy software package called Spin Stats. From 1993 to 2001, Greg sold thousands of copies of the software, converting it to Windows in the mid-90's and later to the internet in the late 90's as well as converting it to football, basketball and hockey. During this period, he built a fantasy sports portal called The Owner's Box to house both sports information and the application system. He co-branded The Owner's Box and ran versions for USA Today, FOX Sports and STATS, Inc.
In 2001, he sold off his company and began working at TeamLink Sports where he built applications for Major League Baseball, the Southeastern Conference and dozens of college athletic departments. In 2003, he went to PlanetJam Media where he was part of the development of a "rewards" system for hundreds of radio-stations across the country. He also integrated a bracketing game for the college basketball tournament to be run on these radio station websites.
Greg currently resides in Lawrenceville with his wife Donna and two children, Camille and Henry. His interests include enjoying Camille in all of her music endeavors, watching Henry play baseball and football and gardening and traveling with his wife Donna. Recent trips include Italy, Denmark and Sweden with hopes to return to Italy someday.
Rusty Baughcum, Director of Managed Services
Rusty has over 20 years experience in the IT Industry. Rusty's IT career began in the USAF, where he served in the Gulf War and was responsible for building a World Wide Air Control System to manage flight operations. After leaving the USAF Rusty returned to Atlanta and continued his IT career with companies such as Alltel, Medaphis, Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, Bellsouth & Hewlett-Packard in almost every possible infrastructure support capacity.
Rusty has over 15 years experience managing large-scale Solaris, Linux and Microsoft solutions serving audiences in excess of 30M end-users who require 24x7 operational support. Beyond that, the work Rusty has done with Fortune 500 clients afforded him the opportunity to develop deep competency in designing, deploying and maintaining Highly Available Architecture with clustering technologies from Sun, HP, Microsoft, VMware and Veritas.
Taken in combination with Rusty's experience managing over $15M of managed services business for Fortune 500 clients at Compaq, these technical skills enable Rusty to facilitate exceptional support service delivery.