Biography
JOHNSON L. FISHER is Director of Information Services Operations for Kent State University, where Oracle, Java, .Net applications, the Banner ERP System and several other applications serve a population of 40,000 students, a faculty with 2,500 Professors and 1,000 Graduate Assistants and over 6,000 staff members. Kent State University technology supports its own Police, Fire Safety, Engineering, and Food Service departments and its own Electric Power Generation plant, similar to the needs of a small city, requiring information technology 24 hours per day and 365 days per year for its 8-campus network in eastern Ohio.
During Mr. Fisher’s tenure at Kent State University, technology changes have included the following:
• Implementation of the ERP System.
• Migration of applications from, and shutdown of, a Mainframe.
• Virtualization of 40% of servers.
• Conversion of 90,000 Student and Alumni accounts to Gmail.
• 18% Reduction of Electrical power used for computing.
• Conversion of Staff and Faculty to Office 365.
Prior to joining Kent State University, Mr. Fisher served as Director of Information Technology for the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas; CIO for Cleveland Municipal Court which is Ohio’s highest volume court; Manager of Application Development for FedEx Custom Critical (i.e. “Roberts Expressâ€); Senior Project Manager and Principal Systems Consultant, where he designed networks, computer systems, and DR/BC plans for government, educational and commercial enterprises.
Mr. Fisher, in his role as CIO for Cleveland Municipal Court, converted the court’s legacy mainframe styled system to an advanced ‘n-tiered’ architecture delivering Oracle applications to virtual and personal computers and the establishment Unified Communications with an underlying Voice over IP System.
Mr. Fisher is a member of AFCOM, Chairperson for Kent State’s Change Management Committee, has served on the Standards Sub-Committee of the Ohio Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Technology and the Project Management Institute. He has conducted technology training courses for the Ohio Supreme Court Judicial College and for Kent State University.
