Leadership Team

Pete Zarras - Founder and President
Pete is the chief catalyst behind CloudStrategies and plays a key role managing the day-to-day operations and growth of the firm. In addition to these responsibilities, he works directly with clients on assignments where bridging business and technical issues are essential to maximizing value. He brings nearly 20 years of hands-on experience solving technology challenges for some of the world's largest enterprises and fastest moving small businesses to the work he performs. Before founding CloudStrategies, Pete worked in sales / service roles for Microsoft Corporation in their NY Metro District, as well as several business and technology consulting firms.

Pete earned a dual track MBA / Technology Management degree from the University of Phoenix and has a BS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. Pete is very active in his local community and sits on the board of Morris Habitat for Humanity.

G.S. (Gil) Bautista, Jr. - Vice President of Sales
Gil has served over 25 years in both leadership and management roles in areas of marketing, sales, and consulting services.  He has successfully developed and executed global go-to-market strategies, structured and implemented various integrated solutions in the retail, wholesale distribution, manufacturing and financial services industry segments, and has deep experience in, and a successful track record of applying technology to optimize business processes. 

His career began with the IBM Corporation focused on retail, banking and finance companies.  He continued his career with Vertex Interactive leading a $30M software solutions division, and then on to Symbol Technologies/Motorola developing a global go-to-market strategy for automatic data collection and RFID technology. He served as the Global Managing Director at Microsoft responsible for the worldwide relationship with the General Electric Company.

John Alumbaugh - Director of Consulting Services
John oversees all services related client activities and is responsible for growing CloudStrategies consulting business.  In addition to helping clients migrate from legacy infrastructure into modern cloud infrastructure, John is responsible for setting consulting business strategy.

John is a US Navy Veteran with more than 20 years of IT infrastructure experience.  Prior to joining CloudStrategies, John worked at Hewlett Packard in a variety of professional services roles, most notably as the Practice Manager for the Great Lakes Microsoft Infrastructure Practices where he lead consulting teams focused on enterprise migrations to Microsoft platforms.  John lives outside of Indianapolis with his family, where he is active in his community.

Steve Jacobs - Consultant
Steve is responsible for client deployments, migrations, and support operations for CloudStrategies.

Steve has been working in Information Technology since the early 1990's.  While obtaining his second BA in Computer Science from Tulane University, Steve worked in a computer services business and at a Dow Jones Telerate office in New Orleans, LA.  Later, Steve handled the internal support duties  and programming responsibilities for Creative Data Research in Mandeville, LA.  For eleven years prior to joining CloudStrategies, Steve administered and maintained the technology infrastructure at ISS Group, a leading Microsoft Partner of manufacturing software solutions.

Steffo Mitakides - Territory Director/Western Region
Steffo Mitakides is a Cloud Computing and SaaS veteran.  He spent 6 years at Microsoft in the Unified Communications Group focusing on E-mail and Collaboration, most recently in the field as an SSP in NY Metro.

Now that he is back in his home town of San Jose, CA, Steffo is building CloudStrategies into a "go-to" delivery partner for Microsoft Online in the West.  Previous to Microsoft, Steffo spent time at WebEx/Cisco and Philips. Throughout his career, he has thrived in building new markets for emerging technologies.  He graduated from UCLA with an English Literature degree and from the Stanford Communications Program.  An indie music lover, Steffo brings the same energy and passion that he has for music to the Cloud Computing industry. Steffo is an avid tennis player and enjoys yoga, karaoke, strong espresso, music festivals, noodle soup and the World Champion San Francisco Giants.  He lives in downtown San Jose, CA.

Pat Keating - Account Executive
Armed with an MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson College, the leader in that discipline, Pat Keating has helped many Boston-based startups grow their new businesses. An adept technologist, Pat focuses on the business issues his clients face, providing them with a true advocate, fostering long-term close relationships based on responding to their needs and promoting their growth. Pat and his wife Julie live with their son outside Boston, MA.

Rose Reda - Marketing & Operations Manager
Rose oversees all Marketing as well as Operations activities for CloudStrategies. She brings a very strong and varied background to the company.

Her experience includes successfully executing Marketing, Innovation, Public Relations, Sales and Operations initiatives for companies including the ABC-TV Network, the Colgate-Palmolive Company, Passage Events where she was a Marketing Account Manager for the Starbucks Coffee Company account, and Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

She holds a BA degree in Communication from Rutgers, The State University of NJ.

Clayton Wilkins - Territory Sales Executive
Clayton has spent the past 12 years in the Information Technology industry working with SMB and Enterprise clients, focusing extensively on delivering solutions for product procurement, engineering network and data center projects, desktop deployment, and complete managed services.

Working within many industry verticals, Clayton brings significant experience with identifying business issues, technology needs, and market drivers. Equally comfortable communicating with and building relationships at both the executive and management level, as well as relating to technical personnel and staff, Clayton works closely with engineering teams to present, scope, design, propose, and deliver cloud-based data center and network solutions.