James R. Kalyvas is a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the firm's national Management Committee. He is the firm’s chief strategy officer, chair of the firm’s Information Technology & Outsourcing Practice and a member of the Emerging Technologies Industry Team. Mr. Kalyvas advises companies, public entities, and associations on all matters involving the use of information technology, including structuring technology initiatives (e.g., outsourcing, ERP, CRM), vendor selection (RFP strategies, development and response review), negotiation, technology implementation (professional service agreements, SOWs, and SLAs), and enterprise management of technology assets. Mr. Kalyvas specializes in structuring and negotiating outsourcing transactions, Enterprise Resource Planning initiatives, and unique business partnering relationships. He has incorporated his experience in handling billions of dollars of technology transactions into the development of several proprietary tools relating to the effective management of the technology selection, negotiation, implementation, and management processes.
Technology acquisition issues that Mr. Kalyvas counsels clients on include: vendor representations on system performance and integration; cloud computing; ownership issues relating to custom programming and other intellectual property rights; acceptance testing; vendor accountability; and remedies for varying degrees of breach of warranty or system failure. Implementation issues include service level and statement of work development, system response time and downtime protection, data security and privacy, and disaster avoidance and recovery.
In addition, Mr. Kalyvas assists clients in developing "pay for performance" technology relationships that tie compensation to the achievement of meaningful and measurable business objectives. These strategies have been successfully applied in outsourcing; ERPs; and clinical, financial, CRM, manufacturing, and other critical system transactions.
Mr. Kalyvas has been Peer Review Rated as AV® Preeminent™, the highest performance rating in Martindale-Hubbell's peer review rating system and in 2010 and 2011, the Legal 500 recognized him for his technology work, specifically in the area of outsourcing.
Mr. Kalyvas has authored articles and books relating to software licensing and the negotiation of information systems. He co-authored the publication Software Agreements Line By Line (Aspatore Books, 2004) and Negotiating Telecommunications Agreements Line By Line (Aspatore Books, 2005). Together with colleagues in his practice, Mr. Kalyvas co-authored the whitepaper "Cloud Computing: A Practical Framework For Managing Cloud Computing Risk."
A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School (J.D., 1981) and Oakland University (B.A., 1977), Mr. Kalyvas was admitted to the California Bar in 1981.