As director of data center planning, Steven Harris brings Forsythe's comprehensive capabilities to clients, working with them to address their data center planning and design needs.
Harris's extensive expertise in facility and data center assessment; space planning/floor plan design; data center consolidation, site selection, building, and optimization; work flow dependencies analysis; disaster recovery planning; and related facility planning and project management including fundamental practicalities such as real estate lease/purchase negotiation and administration, and architect/contractor selection and management serves Forsythe clients well. He has assisted clients with the design and planning of data centers ranging from 2,500 to 300,000 square feet, totaling more than 1.7 million square feet of data center space.
Harris has nearly 15 years of experience in the area of data center planning and design and over 15 years of project management experience, including expertise in strategic planning and cost-benefit analysis.
Prior to joining Forsythe, Harris served in a similar capacity, initially as project manager, and eventually as director of facility project planning, for the disaster recovery division of Rosemont, Illinois-based Comdisco, Inc. (now SunGard Recovery Services, LP). Before Comdisco, Harris was a special projects manager focused on product and physical site selection for a number of IT systems at United Airlines. He began his career as a COBOL programmer and conversion analyst.
A respected industry expert, Harris has authored several articles on data center best practices and has been quoted in tech industry publications such as Processor.
Harris holds a bachelor’s degree in technical resources and management from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and a second bachelor’s degree in computer science, with honors, from Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago.
