About Clark Networks

Hi. My name is Shawn Clark and I am the owner and founder of Clark Networks. Since about 1990 I have been fascinated with Information Technology and how it can be leveraged to accomplish significant business goals. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area during the early 1990s it was amazing to see the beginnings of how the Internet and IP technology and the new software applications which take advantage of this powerful network were developing.

At the time I was a few years out of college with a freshly minted Mechanical Engineering degree and worked in the commercial insurance industry. The companies I worked for included names such as Factory Mutual Engineering, Rollins Burdick and Hunter, Rollins Hudig Hall, Minet Insurance Services, ABD Insurance and Financial Services, and Aon Corporation (yes – the name on the front of Manchester United Football Club’s jersey). One might ask what an Engineering degree is used for in the insurance world. Well let me tell you – I have had the privilege of reviewing the business processes, testing of property and life safety systems, and reporting on individual facility manufacturing and processes to the overall global operations of many types of industries. Everything from animal rendering plants (ugh) to the most sophisticated integrated circuit manufacturing facilities of companies like Intel, AMD, and National Semiconductor.

I can still remember giving presentations and writing white papers on “what is the internet and how it will affect your business.” It seems like only yesterday. Some of the first IT projects I implemented were simple dial-up email in these major brokerage houses. It was a break through at the time and helped with global communications – which was needed due to the global operations of some of our customers and the “insurance products” that a business required. In addition, I developed the first public and intranet web sites for these companies.

As technology was taking off exponentially in the late 1990s, I left the insurance vertical and joined the exciting world of software development. I think it was the immediate gratification of writing a little code, pushing a button, and seeing it come to life right in front of your eyes. This lead to the creation of a collaboration software application and the forming of a start-up company named OpenItem.com. During this time, I met Mario Chaves, who is now the CEO of Avantica, a premier nearshore software development company. With our seed money I worked with Mario and his brother Luis to develop the platform I designed. This allowed Luis to quit his day job also, and really start ramping up his software development team at Avantica. I recall being in their first office in San Jose, Costa Rica with myself and 3 other developers. Now that team is well over 500 strong in Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia, and Silicon Valley.

Most might recall that the first decade of the 2000s were trying times. First the dot com bust starting in early 2000 followed by the financial crisis starting in late 2007. It was during these years that I moved into delivering, installing and training on Service Desk solutions and ITIL then into pre-sales engineering for said solutions and finally into sales engineering for the telecommunications industry. It was a time when telecom was moving away from TDM and into the IP telephony space full force.

In April 2007 I was recruited by InterTel, a publically traded traditional telecom manufacturer, to be a pre-sales engineer for their new line of IP Communications solutions – the new Mitel 7000 SIP based architecture and the existing InterTel 5000 Hybrid TDM and IP solid state solution. About a month later Mitel Networks announced plans to acquire InterTel and the merger was completed in August of that year.

Wow! What an exciting industry and time to be involved. Business communications is a never ending learning experience. Tying communication solutions into business processes and applications is a new and continuously evolving frontier. Everything from Phones, to Video, Instant Messaging, SMS, Email, etc. is now Unified Communications. And now days we are not just designing these solutions for on premise deployments, but also in a private or public cloud, or a hybrid in between.

Currently, I am a pre-sales Solution Architect for Mitel Corporation and provide sales engineering design and solution(s) expertise services for Mitel Authorized Partners primarily in the western United States. This web site is a showcase for the solutions we offer at Mitel (click the Mitel link – syndicated content available to our partners) and integration services available through Avantica to assist tying your business applications to your communications solution.

So other than dating myself with the information above, this early and continuous IT experience combined with more than 25 years of business process review and consulting has resulted in a strong skill set to assist businesses with solving problems.

Clark Networks – Founded 2002