Skip to content
Mike Reams

03 — Profile

About

Most enterprise architecture repositories are accurate the week they're published and wrong six months later. In 2024 I stopped treating that as a documentation problem and rebuilt how our practice maintains its knowledge — around an AI.

Not a chatbot pointed at a SharePoint. The AI curates the architecture knowledge base against a written operating contract it reads before every session. Sources stay immutable. Consequential changes need human ratification before anything is written, and automated integrity checks surface contradictions, stale claims, orphaned pages and provenance drift on a schedule. The AI does the curation; the architect stays the review authority. That division is the whole design, and it's why the output is trustworthy enough to govern real portfolio decisions.

I think that's where the discipline is heading. An architecture function whose knowledge compounds instead of decaying isn't just better documented. It's a different function — one that can answer questions it previously couldn't afford to research.

Behind that are twenty-six years of building practices rather than artifacts: founding an EA program and growing it to eight architects, writing the architect career ladder, advising the C-suite, and leading a regulated move to Azure. Today I lead technical architecture across Sherwin-Williams' enterprise platform estate. The detail is below.

Known for

  • AI governance for the architecture function — operating contracts, ratification gates and integrity checks that make AI output trustworthy
  • Standing up architecture practices and governance that survive leadership changes
  • CMDB and CSDM data quality as an AI-ready foundation, not a recurring cleanup project
  • Application portfolio rationalization with Gartner TIME and the 6Rs
  • Architecture governance anchored to TOGAF 10 ADM, ArchiMate 3.2 and Zachman

Experience

Download résumé (PDF)
  1. Oct 2023 – present

    Principal Lead Enterprise Architect

    Sherwin-Williams · Cleveland, OH

    Technical architecture lead across the enterprise platform estate: ERP and SaaS finance, procurement, integration and data management, CRM, ServiceNow ITSM/ITOM and CMDB governance, API management, security architecture, operational technology, and observability.

  2. Feb 2023 – Oct 2023

    Practice Director, Security and Cloud Infrastructure

    Bennett Adelson Consulting · Cleveland, OH

    Owned delivery for the Microsoft Azure and AWS practice — scoping engagements, writing the technical content of statements of work, and running a portfolio of concurrent client engagements across private companies, federal government, and state agencies.

  3. Jan 2022 – Jan 2024

    Co-Founder and CTO

    Creative Social (concurrent venture) · Cleveland, OH

    Built and closed alongside a full-time architecture role. A global e-commerce marketplace for creators on Web3 — blockchain-backed buying and selling of physical and digital goods, with creator collaboration as the differentiator.

  4. Jun 2019 – Nov 2022

    Director of Enterprise Architecture

    Quadax · Cleveland, OH

    Built the Enterprise Architecture program for a healthcare revenue-cycle company and led an eight-architect team through its cloud transition.

  5. Jul 2006 – Jun 2019

    Lead Enterprise Architect

    Cox Enterprises · Atlanta, GA

    Thirteen years, six roles — Systems Administrator to Lead Enterprise Architect — ending with ownership of the EA program guiding 50+ technology and business strategies across the enterprise portfolio.

Earlier: Porsche Cars North America, NASCO, American Cancer Society, The EPI Companies, and IBM Global Business Services (1999–2009).

Certifications

Recognition

  • Patent holder — blockchain technology in healthcare

    Granted patent covering blockchain applied to a healthcare use case.

  • 1st place, Microsoft/TAG HackATL

    2018
  • 3rd place, FinTech/FinServ Hackathon

    2018

Education

  • Troy University

    Global Business Management, Business/Managerial Economics

  • Kennesaw State University

    Computer Information Systems

  • Valdosta State University

    Computer and Information Systems Security / Information Assurance

  • North Florida Community College

    Associate's, Business Administration and Management