IT Management Expert Lowell Starling Joins Affinity Technology Consultants

Business Wire, April 3, 2008

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Lowell Starling, an information technology management expert, is joining Affinity Technology Consultants, a leading professional and advisory services and consulting firm.

Starling will serve as a Senior Advisor for Affinity's information technology strategy, working with clients to address issues in the areas of data center operations, consolidation, and implementation of environmental efficiencies (Green Data Centers). He also continues to provide business consulting services in affiliation with McKonly and Asbury, LLP, a Camp Hill, PA based accounting firm.

"Lowell has been incredibly successful in developing new technology resources to help companies reach their goals and operate more efficiently," said Rhett Hintze, Affinity Managing Director.

Starling comes to Affinity with 40 years of information technology management experience. He most recently served as Vice President of Infrastructure Management at Highmark in Camp Hill, where he was responsible for integrating hardware, software, communications, security, desktops and telephone systems into one company-wide computing resource. Throughout his five years in the position, he achieved measurable improvements in service delivery and customer service and was able to save Highmark $31 million in software costs over a six year period.

In 2005, Starling oversaw the opening of Highmark's state-of-the-art data center near Hershey, Pa. The center, one of the few Uptime Institute certified Tier-III and LEEDS Silver certified data centers in the country, recently earned Highmark recognition as the number one Green-IT User by Computerworld magazine.

From 1988 through 2002, Starling served as Vice President of several sectors of Highmark. As Vice President of Electronic Commerce and Network Services, Starling developed and implemented technologies to link Highmark employees and their trading partners. This included the use of Electronic Data Interchange protocols and designing and operating Wide Area Networks and Local Area Networks.

About Affinity

Affinity Technology Consultants is a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania based professional and advisory services and consulting firm staffed with a team of seasoned professionals who create innovative solutions in a complex organizational environment. Affinity team's experience brings a history of significant technology successes including: statewide consolidated procurement for telecommunications services; acquisition and implementation of the largest slot machine control and monitoring system in the world; rollout of a statewide Enterprise Resource Planning system; statewide email and desktop services standardization; and creation and development of various e-government applications.