CN Rail – Next Generation Data Center program

(Consultant through Arista Networks) 

 

Rogers Communications – 12 million subscribers (32 % market share) $20 billion Annual Revenue 

 

Situation: Rogers Communications initiated a nationwide infrastructure modernization effort to transform its legacy

data centers into a next-generation, scalable platform to support wireless, wireline, and enterprise services. The program involved redesigning network architecture, migrating critical systems, and enhancing operational resiliency. 

 

Task: As the Program Manager, I was responsible for leading the multi-phase data center transformation across several facilities, ensuring minimal customer disruption, strict regulatory compliance, and alignment with Rogers’ long-term digital strategy. 

 

Action:

  • Developed and executed a comprehensive program roadmap, coordinating network, server, storage, and facilities teams across multiple sites. 
  • Instituted a stage/gate governance model with clear tollgates, risk thresholds, executive scorecards, and escalation paths. 
  • Orchestrated over 70 major cutover events involving thousands of workloads and network devices, with detailed rollback plans and validation protocols. 
  • Collaborated with 60+ internal and vendor teams, aligning engineering, security, IT ops, compliance, and business units through weekly checkpoints and dashboards. 
  • Integrated change control, configuration management, and real-time monitoring to support resilience during live migrations. 

 

Result:

  • Delivered all phases of the transformation on time and within budget, modernizing two national data centers and migrating over 3,500 servers and endpoints. 
  • Achieved 30% reduction in operational incidents, implemented strategic corporate IP mobility between data centers, and 40% improvement in network performance. 
  • Maintained >99.9% uptime throughout the program with zero critical outages. 
  • Received formal recognition from Rogers’ senior leadership for program execution excellence, stakeholder engagement, and operational impact. 
  • Recognized by Rogers Management for excellence in project stakeholder and change management.