Cloud Connect Advisory Board

Steve Wylie is the General Manager and Conference Director for the Cloud Connect Conference produced by UBM Tech. Steve was formerly the General Manager of the Enterprise 2.0 conference, Mobile Business Expo, and co-chaired CMP's annual Interop conferences in Las Vegas and New York. Prior to running conferences, Steve managed CMP's renowned InteropNet, including a multi-vendor test lab geared to evaluate, improve and showcase early implementations of open-standard IT infrastructure technologies. Steve is based in San Francisco, California.

Alistair Croll is the principal analyst at Bitcurrent, a research firm focused on emerging technologies; a founding partner of startup accelerator Year One Labs; an executive at CloudOps; and an advisor to various technology venture firms. Prior to Bitcurrent, Alistair co-founded startup accelerator Rednod; web performance management firm Coradiant, and Networkshop, a research firm. He has also worked as a product manager for 3Com Corporation, Primary Access, and Eicon Technology.

Alistair coordinates content for a variety of prominent technology events such as Cloud Connect, Interop, and Strata. He is also the creator of the Bitnorth conference and helped found the International Startup Festival in Montreal, Canada, and has written several books on technology, including Web Operations (2010, O'Reilly), Complete Web Monitoring (2009, O'Reilly) and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks (1999, Prentice-Hall).

A sought-after speaker with 15 years' on-stage experience, he regularly addresses business audiences and IT executives on a wide range of topics, including cloud computing, product management, data-driven marketing, Big Data, startup acceleration, web analytics, and more. He blogs at Solve For Interesting.

Scott Bils has nearly two decades of expertise in technology business and product strategy, operations, corporate and business development, mergers and acquisitions, and alliances in the early stage and next generation information technology (IT) markets.

As the leader of Everest Group's Next Generation IT practice, Scott approaches each consulting engagement with service providers, infrastructure vendors, and buyers with an end-to-end understanding of disruptive cloud technologies, virtualization, and mobile computing.

Prior to joining Everest Group, Scott founded and was the CEO of Conformity, Inc., a venture-backed provider of on-demand cloud identity and SaaS management solutions. At Troux Technologies, a leading venture-backed provider of enterprise architecture and IT governance software solutions, he drove dramatic increases in revenue and average selling prices through organic and acquisition-driven expansion of the company's product portfolio. Scott was also a consultant at McKinsey & Company and Accenture leading and facilitating engagements that resulted in significant cost savings for clients.

Scott has an MBA from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business and a BA in Finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Forbes, Network World, Sandhill.com and other media outlets and analyst reports on SaaS and the cloud. He was also the primary author of the corporate blog, SaaS Management: Challenges of the On-Demand World.

Jeremy is currently the Lead Site Reliability Engineer for Netflix, the largest subscription video streaming site in the world. Previously he was the Information Cowboy (aka. Head of Technology) for reddit.com, an online community for sharing and discussing interesting things on the internet that did more than a billion pageviews a month. reddit was an Alexa Top 100 website whose entire operations are run on Amazon's EC2. Jeremy has spent 15 years in technology: 4 in operations, 3 in security, 4 in consulting, and 4 in academic computing. When working for Sendmail, he helped administer the most bleeding edge Sendmail server on the internet; at eBay he helped protect people from phishing and scams, created patent-pending fraud detection software, and evaluated hardware for the eBay platform; and at UC Berkeley, he wired up large portions of the dorms for internet, back before every college student in America had a net drop in their room. Jeremy has keynoted at conferences such as PyCon and Cloud Connect. He holds a Cognitive Science degree from UC Berkeley.

Bernard Golden has been called a "cloud guru" and a "cloud computing rockstar." He is Vice President, Enterprise Solutions for enStratus Networks, a leading cloud management software company. In this role, he works with large enterprises throughout the world, helping them migrate to cloud computing and gain its full benefits. Formerly, was the CEO of HyperStratus, a Silicon Valley cloud computing consultancy that works with clients throughout the world.

Barb Goldworm is founder, president, and chief analyst of FOCUS, a research, analyst, and consulting firm focused on transformational technologies in virtualization, cloud computing, systems and storage. In addition to serving as Virtualization Track Chair for Interop, she also leads the Enterprise Cloud Summit Private Cloud and Desktop Transformation Workshops, as well as the Private Cloud Track and Workshop for CloudConnect. Barb has spent 30 years in various senior management, engineering, marketing, sales, and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and multiple successful startups. A keynote speaker at hundreds of virtualization, cloud, datacenter and storage events, she has also been one of the top three rated speakers at Data Center Decisions and Storage Networking World. She also chaired the original Interop Storage Networking Track, and the Blade Systems Insight and Server Blade Summit events.

Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular expert columns for Network World, ComputerWorld, Tech Target and others, authoring hundreds of business and technical white papers, market research reports, user surveys, and articles, as well as the Wiley book "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" available on Amazon.

Barb started with virtualization on mainframes in the 1970s, delivered the industry's first PC Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) Solution in the late 1980s, was a SAN thought leader in the 1990s, a blades and virtualization thought leader and book author in the 2000s, and now focuses on cloud, datacenter and desktop transformation.

Eric Hanselman is the Chief Analyst of 451 Research's Networks practice. He has an extensive hands-on understanding of a broad range of IT subject areas, having direct experience in the areas of networks, virtualization, security, and semiconductors. Eric helps 451 Research's clients understand how market and technology trends may impact them, and how they can best capitalize on them.

For more than 20 years, Eric has worked with segment leaders in a spectrum of technologies, most recently as CTO of Leostream Corporation, a virtualization management provider. Prior to that, Eric delivered networking security solutions for IBM and Internet Security Systems. At Wellfleet/Bay Networks, Sitara Networks and NEC, he was involved in the introduction of many new technologies ranging from high-performance image analysis to rollouts for IPv6.

Eric is a member of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a VMware Certified Professional (VCP), and he is a frequent speaker at leading industry events.

Jeff Kaplan is the Managing Director of THINKstrategies, the only strategic consulting firm focused entirely on the business implications of the transition of the technology industry from a product-centric to services-driven solution model, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Managed Services. THINKstrategies helps IT/business decision-makers with their sourcing strategies; solution providers with their marketing strategies; and venture firms with their investment strategies. Kaplan is also the Founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace (www.cloudshowplace.com), the largest, vendor-independent, online directory and best practice resource center regarding SaaS, Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), including Managed Services.

As CTO of BML, David Linthicum focuses on emerging technology spaces and the industry's move toward cloud computing. Linthicum is a widely recognized technology thought leader who has appeared in InfoWorld, Intelligent Enterprise, and eBizq.net, covering SOA and enterprise computing topics. He is a regular columnist in Government Computer News, Cloud Computing Journal, SOA Journal and Align Journal, and is the editor of Virtualization Journal. In addition to daily communications, Linthicum is the author of 13 books on computing.

Maribel has more than 18 years of professional experience focusing on the telecommunications and networking industry. Currently she analyzes how disruptive forces such as mobility, collaboration and social software, virtual currencies and Clean Tech will change the future. Most recently, Maribel spent over 10 years at Forrester Research analyzing multiple topics related to the telecommunications, media and entertainment industries including operator network and service strategies, enterprise communications and consumer markets for voice, video and data. She has also held positions at Motorola, International Data Corporation and Shiva.

JP is a Principal Solutions Architect in EMC’s Cloud and Virtual Data Center Services Ranger group as part of Global Services, where he focuses on cloud advisory services, IT transformation, and application portfolio rationalization. He’s been a vocal advocate for cloud computing for many years, even going so far as being a formal Cloud Evangelist in a previous company. He is well known in the IT world as an expert in IT strategy and cloud computing. JP has more than 25 years of expertise in enterprise technology. He’s a prolific blogger and author on the topics of integration, software development and cloud computing, and has written or co-authored four books, including his most recent publication "Cloud Computing: Assessing the Risks He serves as the Lead Cloud Computing editor for InfoQ.

Justin Pirie is a Blogger, Analyst and Mimecast's Director of Content and Communities. Justin is a leading SaaS and Cloud specialist - he authors the influential "This Week in SaaS", blog and runs the largest SaaS community in the world, with over 30,000 members.

Justin has been in IT over ten years, gravitating towards SaaS over the last five. Before joining Mimecast he was consulting to companies large and small, helping them create successful SaaS products and strategy, and before that he was an officer at Endeavors Technology, the inventors of Application Virtualisation.

John P. Pironti is the President of IP Architects, LLC. He has designed and implemented enterprise wide electronic business solutions, information security and risk management strategy and programs, enterprise resiliency capabilities, and threat and vulnerability management solutions for key customers in a range of industries, including financial services, insurance, energy, government, hospitality, aerospace, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, and information technology on a global scale. John has a number of industry certifications including Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified in Risk and Information System Control (CRISC), Information Systems Security Architecture Professional and (ISSAP) and Information Systems Security Management Professional (ISSMP). John frequently provides briefings and acts as a trusted advisor to senior leaders of numerous organizations on information security and risk management and compliance topics and is also a member of a number of technical advisory boards for technology and services firms. He is also a published author and writer, highly quoted and often interviewed by global media, and an award winning frequent speaker on electronic business and information security and risk management topics at domestic and international industry conferences.

Dave has two decades of experience in strategic product development. Prior to his current role as vice president of strategy and marketing at ServiceMesh, he held a similar role at open networking vendor Vyatta, where he crafted the marketing and communications strategy that positioned Vyatta as the leader in open networking. Prior to Vyatta, Mr. Roberts was the co-founder, CTO, and vice president of strategy at Inkra networks where he pioneered virtualized security and networking technology for utility and cloud computing. Roberts has authored 11 patents, three technical books, and numerous articles.

Re-imagining the way work is done through big data, analytics, and cloud, Chris is the cofounder of Successful Workplace. He believes there’s no end to what we can change and improve.

Chris flew for the US Navy before finding a home in technology and software, first in application development with Perot Systems. His career has taken him from code to business strategy with Accenture, ILOG (now IBM) and TIBCO, where he leads Industry and Customer Marketing. 

An avid outdoorsman, Chris is passionate about technology and innovation and speaks frequently about creating great business outcomes at industry events. Chris also contributes to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and the PEX Network.

Joe Weinman is responsible for leading Telx's fast-growing cloud services business development and strategy. He joined Telx with over 30 years of experience in executive leadership positions at AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, and Bell Laboratories, in areas such as corporate strategy, business development, product management, operations, and R&D.

Named a "Top 10 Cloud Computing Leader" by TechTarget, Weinman is a frequent keynote speaker, blogger and the founder of Cloudonomics, a rigorous, multidisciplinary analytical approach leveraging economics, behavioral economics, statistics, calculus, computational complexity theory, simulation, and system dynamics to characterize the sometimes counter-intuitive multi-dimensional business, financial, and user experience benefits of cloud computing and other on-demand, pay-per-use business models. He is the author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, available from John Wiley & Sons in summer, 2012.

Mr. Weinman has been awarded 14 U.S. and international patents in areas such as line coding, simulation and workflow, consumer goods, wireless technologies, telecommunications, and distributed computing. He has more pending in cloud computing, homomorphic encryption, IP unicast/multicast error correction, Internet search results ranking algorithms, digital imaging, and software applications. He is also a recipient of the AT&T Architecture Award, the AT&T Patent Achievement Award, and multiple AT&T Distinguished Speaker Awards.

He has had a variety of articles and talks published in the print and/or on-line editions of The New York Times, Business Week, Fortune, CNN, Money, Business Communications Review, Global Telecoms Business, BillingOSS Magazine, Information Week, GigaOM, Salon, VON, the ACM, the IEEE, CIO Magazine, and The AT&T Technical Journal, and occasionally contributes to his own blogs, Cloudonomics.com and The Network Effect. He has also been featured in Art and Living magazine, appeared multiple times on Asian, U.S., and European television, and been quoted in the U.S. and international magazine, newspaper, and online media, and appears in a number of on-line videos.

He received a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Computer Science from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin - Madison respectively, and completed Executive Education at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland.