Free Evening Programs

Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and as an extensive blogger. He sits on the boards of a number of organisations, both commercial and not-for-profit. Ben is well connected having spoken at length with the vast majority of SaaS players in existence.

David Bernstein is the Managing director of Cloud Strategy Partners. Most recently, has was VP/GM in Cisco’s Office of the CTO. His team ran Cisco’s Cloud Lab, was responsible for Cisco’s University, Research, and Industry activities in Cloud Computing. He headed development for Cisco’s Cloud Security, Interoperability and Standards initiatives.

David’s experience includes executive positions in AT&T, Siebel Systems, Pluris, InterTrust, and Santa Cruz Operation.

His extensive consulting experience along with his recent leadership and expertise in Cloud Computing has led to the formation of Cloud Strategy Partners, LLC.

David holds nearly a dozen patents in software and communications, publishes research regularly in IEEE, ACM, and IARIA conferences, and is a member of the IEEE Advanced Technology Executive Forum. He was a key author/contributor to many industry standards such as OpenSOA.org, OASIS SCA, WS-I, JCP/J2EE, and IEEE POSIX.

David holds degrees in Physics and Mathematics from University of California where he was awarded the UC Regents Scholar designation for his work for the Office of Naval Research.

Adrian founded the open source jclouds multi-cloud library 2 years ago, and is actively engaged in cloud interoperability and devops circles. Recent efforts include vCloud ecosystem engineering at VMware, Java integration at Opscode, and cloud portability efforts at Cloudsoft. Adrian's currently consulting under Cloud Conscious LLC.

David Pallmann is a Windows Azure MVP and author of the upcoming book, The Azure Handbook. He is GM of the App Dev practice at Neudesic, a national Microsoft SI partner, where he leads technical readiness, IP development, and business development for the Windows Azure platform.

Areas of expertise –Windows Azure platform:

• Cloud computing business and technical consulting - cloud strategy, impact on organization and IT department, evaluation, planning, implementation, management
• Cloud computing assessments – envisioning, risk/reward analysis, TCO/ROI analysis, IT portfolio profiling, technical suitability analysis
• Cloud computing architecture – design patterns and best practices
• Cloud computing development – migration, new development, implementing the SaaS model

David Kavanagh is a software engineer for Eucalyptus Systems, a cloud infrastructure company based in Santa Barbara, CA. Prior to that he was a software consultant for 12 years. He has been designing and developing software for 20 years. Since 2006, his focus has been on cloud computing with a lot of time spent developing solutions using Amazon Web Services. He is the author of the open source typica library which provides a Java interface for an expanding set of Amazon Web Services. David lives in upstate NY.

James Urquhart manages cloud computing infrastructure strategy for the Server Provider Systems Unit of Cisco Systems. Named one of the ten most influential people in cloud computing by the MIT Technology Review, and author of the popular cloud computing blog, The Wisdom of Clouds (http://news.cnet.com/the-wisdom-of-clouds), Mr. Urquhart brings a deep understanding of these disruptive technologies and the business opportunities they afford. James has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics and Mathematics from Macalester College.

Bernard Golden has been called a “cloud guru.” He is CEO of HyperStratus, a Silicon Valley cloud consulting firm that helps its clients plan, design, and implement cloud computing. HyperStratus clients include mBlox, Applied Biosystems, and the County of Santa Clara. Bernard is the Cloud Computing Advisor for CIO Magazine, which publishes his highly popular blog examining the benefits and challenges of cloud computing. He is the author or co-author of three books on virtualization and cloud computing, including Virtualization for Dummies, the most popular book on the subject ever published. Bernard is a popular speaker, appearing at many conferences like CloudWorld, Structure, and EDUCAUSE.

Sam Johnston is an independent consultant delivering cloud computing solutions for large enterprises, having previously worked as a technical program manager in the Site Reliability Engineering team at Google Switzerland. Before joining Google, Sam worked at Citrix Systems and served as founder and CTO for a number of successful high-tech start-ups in Australia, France and Ireland. A computer scientist at heart, he was recently listed as one of the leaders of cloud computing, having been an active contributor to the cloud computing community since its inception (particularly in the areas of security, standards and interoperability).

Sam has advised and architected pilots for various European enterprises (including one of the earliest and largest commercial cloud deployments to date, started in 2006 with 35,000 users) and presented at a number of international conferences on the subject.

Sam earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, having moved from his home town of Perth, Western Australia in 1996 to accept a Co-op scholarship in Electrical Engineering.

Alex brings twenty years experience designing software solutions in the enterprise, start-up, and academic sectors. Most recently Alex was with Enigmatec Corporation where he led the development of what is now the Monterey® Middleware Platform™. Previous to that, he founded PocketWatch Systems, commercialising results from his doctoral research.

Alex holds a PhD (Informatics) and an MSc (Cognitive Science) from the University of Edinburgh and an AB (Mathematics) from Princeton University. Alex was both a USA Today Academic All-Star and a Marshall Scholar.

Andrew Shafer is a lead engineer and infrastructure consultant at Cloudscaling where he helps organizations leverage and create next generation cloud computing resources and platforms. Since 2004, he has been a regular participant in the Salt Lake City Agile Roundtable and a team member or manager in an Agile setting. Andrew brings with him a background in computational science, embedded Linux, database administration, web frameworks, and operations. In addition to technical expertise, Andrew is focused on finding ways to balance prescriptive processes with the uniqueness of projects and teams.