News Posted 04/22/10

MILESTONE Announces Jay Yu as Vice President of Technology

Dateline: Fremont, CA
April 22nd, 2010

Executive Summary:

With Milestone Technologies, Inc.’s recent acquisition of Invisible IT, Inc., Jay Yu was named Vice President of Technology. Applying his approach of turning real business requirements into working technology solutions, Jay Yu leads the highly-experienced technical and engineering teams at MILESTONE.

When discussing technology trends, he commented that “Our customers see immediate and profound value when they invest in technology that facilitates business communication anywhere, anytime. The majority of MILESTONE’s technology efforts this year will involve working with partners like Cisco, Apple, and others to maximize that value to our customers.” Jay has served in positions including Director of Worldwide Technical Support and Director of Operations before he co-founded Invisible IT.

The Story:

In late January 2010, Milestone Technologies, Inc. (MILESTONE), the Fremont, California-based IT service firm, acquired Invisible IT, Inc. (Invisible IT). Most recently located in Mountain View, California, Invisible IT brings a results-focused, highly experienced team offering strengths in the Cisco Collaboration business space among other complex IT offerings and a broad array of Professional and Managed Services.

MILESTONE is excited about the talented, technical and engineering experience Invisible IT brings to their combined service offering. Leading this team on the technology side is Vice President of Technology Jay Yu.

As the Vice President of Technology, Jay is responsible for identifying new technologies, determining what client business problems they solve, how to integrate them into our existing solutions offering, and working with engineers, sales, marketing, and operations to ensure successful execution in all areas.

Jay Yu holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Stanford University and holds various certifications with Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, VMware, and others. With almost two decades of IT management experience, Jay has worked with many of the San Francisco bay area’s leading companies. As one of the co-founders of Invisible IT, Jay was a key team member contributing in various technical and operations management roles.

Upon starting the company in 2002, Invisible IT served primarily mid-sized commercial companies. Invisible IT immediately differentiated itself by delivering total solutions to clients as opposed to just selling hardware and software. Much of their competition did not take the time to understand the customers’ real business challenges and turning those challenges into working IT requirements. As Jay says, “We approached the client asking, ‘What are your major challenges as a company?’ and ‘How could business requirements change in the next two years?’ in order to maximize a customer’s success.” Jay illustrated his customer service perspective through a completed client project.

A Santa Clara, California-based client had a private network connection with their remote office in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The connection was saturated to its limit making communication painfully slow. The client thought the answer was to purchase more bandwidth. Once Invisible IT assessed the problem, the true root cause was uncovered and addressed without having to buy additional (and very expensive) private circuits. In the meantime, the client manufacturing team optimized the data being sent to Dubai, reducing data requirements even further. In the short run, Invisible IT didn’t sell any equipment. In the long run, they gained the client’s confidence and trust . . . something that paid off down the road. Later, the client called on Invisible IT to help open a Costa Rica office where Invisible IT also recommended efficiencies beyond the scope of the project.

CEO/Founder Prem Chand commented that “Jay and the Invisible IT team mesh well with the MILESTONE culture. No matter what type of service MILESTONE offers, each client challenge is assessed not only providing an optimized service, but also understanding the client pain and focusing on continuous improvement though recommendations.”

Cisco recognized this strength in business and communication by naming Invisible IT Cisco Unified Communications Partner of the Year, West.

Despite Jay’s technology role, his approach is truly focused around customer service. Jay explains that all of his job experiences – including work as varied as cook, construction worker, retail salesman, and bartender – have one theme in common — “Identify what customers want and get them what they need.”

Before co-founding Invisible IT in 2002, Jay served as Director of Worldwide Technical Support at Plumtree Software, where he managed a team of Customer Support Engineers providing technical product support for a suite of corporate portal software products to over 180 customers and 125 partners worldwide. Previously, he designed and implemented 24x7 operations for highly complex, business-critical e-business infrastructures for Global Computing & Networking where he was the Director of Operations.

Jay is also active on the Board of Trustees of the Cancer Prevention Institute of California. They are dedicated to preventing cancer and reducing its burden where it cannot yet be prevented.