Cloud Computing Conference

Lori MacVittie is the senior technical marketing manager for F5 Networks. With more than a decade of experience in managing enterprise architecture and ISV application development, her expertise in cloud computing and application delivery are second to none in the tech industry.Prior to joining F5, MacVittie was the senior technology editor at Network Computing Magazine, where her extensive knowledge of programming and systems development enabled her to shape the then-emerging application delivery market. She holds a B.S. in Information and Computing Science from the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Nova Southeastern University.

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.

Thomas is a seasoned technology executive with broad based management experience, leading international teams in Enterprise Architecture consulting, and the real world application of Cloud Computing, Mobility, Middleware Integration, and Business Process Management. As head of Integration Services for Novartis, Thomas is responsible for enterprise middleware at the global level.

As a former entrepreneur and CTO, Thomas is an accomplished leader with over 15 years of experience in diverse industry verticals delivering complex technology solutions that meet business needs through partnership, communication and collaboration, with a focus on financial impact and results.

Thomas has been a featured speaker for the past several years at The Oracle CIO Summit, Oracle Openworld, and most recently Cloud Connect.

Neal Sample is CIO, Enterprise Growth, for American Express. In this capacity, he manages end-to-end platform technology, infrastructure and operations for the Serve platform and suite of American Express pre-paid products, including the delivery and implementation of the Bluebird, Zynga and Verizon partnerships.
Prior to American Express, Neal served as the CTO of X.commerce, eBay's open development and commerce platform. Prior to X.commerce, he was Vice President of Architecture and Platform Products at eBay, where he was responsible for leading the company's platform architecture, product strategy and managing the design and delivery of the developers program. Prior to eBay, Neal was a senior executive at Yahoo! where he led the Open, Social, and Participation platforms. In addition to platform operation and development, his team was responsible for partnerships with Zynga, Facebook and Twitter.
Neal has extensive technology and engineering experience and has spent most of his career developing and building platforms and products for emerging technologies.

Neal attended Stanford University where he received his MS and PhD in Computer Science. He also completed a post-doctoral research fellowship with the CIA Office of Research and Development.

Neal lives in Montclair, NJ with his wife Meredith and three children Aidan, David, and Julia.

Mark has responsibilities across several functions at Switch. He will be maintaining his industry thought leadership activities and will also be working with the Switch team on new data center technologies, partnership development and cloud. Switch (http://www.switchlv.com) builds and operates the world’s most powerful data center and technology ecosystem. The Switch campus environments were constructed by the company including the world’s highest density, ultra-scale and most efficient data center - the 407,000 square foot Switch SuperNAP. Before coming to Switch Mark was VP of Data Center Strategy at ServiceMesh, the leading cloud management platform company. He is also Founder and President of Data Center Pulse, a not-for-profit group focused on improving efficiency in data centers and providing a voice for the owner/operators.

Mark brings significant IT infrastructure and data center experience to the Switch team, which was developed over the years working with leading organizations like VMware, Brocade, Gilead, & HP. He is a globally recognized leader in efforts to improve the business readiness and efficiency of IT and is very active with industry groups like The Green Grid, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and Infrastructure 2.0. Mark is an advisor to venture firms and startups and a globally recognized speaker at premier industry events.

Ron is a 25 year veteran of the construction industry with a primary focus on Mission Critical Facilities. As Market Leader for the Western Region for JE Dunn Construction, Ron leads the Mission Critical market and focuses on high density, highly efficient, and sustainable data center solutions. Ron has successfully managed projects and programs ranging from $1 million to $650 million and worked in Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, California, Colorado, Japan, Washington, and Arizona. Ron has a B.S. in Construction Management from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Ron was awarded the certification of Designated Design-Build Professional by the Design-Build Institute of America and is a LEED Accredited Professional with a specialty in Building Design and Construction.

Gerry Fassig is CoreSite’s Vice President of Sales for the Cloud & Hosting vertical. Gerry leads a national team responsible for account acquisition & management of customers in the Cloud Service Provider market. Gerry brings over 20 years of enterprise and start-up sales leadership experience. Prior to CoreSite, Gerry held senior sales and management positions with Savvis, starting with Exodus and through the Cable & Wireless and Savvis acquisitions. Prior to Savvis, Gerry held sales and management responsibilities at Wheelhouse, a CRM strategy consultancy and at Gartner. Gerry holds a BA in Strategic Management, attending San Diego State and Dominican University, and abroad at the University of Salamanca.

William Forrest is a principal of McKinsey and Company in Chicago. He previously served as senior manager of Deloitte Consulting, where he managed the development of business management programs for clients such as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. Previously, as director of AAC Associates, he directed and managed the Clinton-Gore 1996 campaign database, including the presidential inauguration database project. He also served as vice president of the Leadership Institute. William received his master’s degree in politics from Edinburgh University.

Kara Sprague is a Principal with McKinsey’s Business Technology Office in San Francisco. Kara co-leads McKinsey’s global Cloud Practice and is a core leader in McKinsey’s Software and Services Practice. She spends most of her time serving software product and service providers, specializing in technology disruptions (e.g., cloud computing, big data, mobility, cybersecurity) and has substantial experience in corporate and business unit strategy, product and services strategy, go-to-market, and business-building. Her work on 8 Technology Trends to Watch is one of the McKinsey Quarterly’s top-rated publications of all time.Prior to joining the Firm in 2004, Kara was a member of the technical staff at Oracle Corporation and held several positions in software, firmware, and hardware engineering at Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies. Kara has three degrees from MIT: Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Master of Science in Technology and Public Policy.

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.

Steve Riley is Technical Leader in the Office of the CTO at Riverbed Technology, an innovator in wide-area networking and storage optimization. Steve actively works to raise awareness of the technical and business benefits Riverbed's solutions, particularly as they relate to accelerating the enterprise adoption of cloud computing. His specialties include information security, compliance, privacy, and policy. Steve has spoken at hundreds of events around the world, including RSA, SANS, Black Hat Windows, InfoSec US, (ISC)2, SIIA, IANS, TechEd, Connections, Cloud Expo, and Interop. He co-authored a book about Windows network security, contributed a chapter to a book on auditing cloud computing, has published numerous articles, and conducted technical reviews of several data networking and telecommunications books. Born with an Ethernet cable attached to his belly button, Steve grew up in networking and telecommunications. Besides lurking in the Internet's dark alleys and secret passages, he enjoys freely sharing his opinions about the intersection of technology and culture. Contact him at steve.riley@riverbed.com, on Skype as stvrly, and join the conversation at http://stvrly.tumblr.com.

A native Czech, Roman has founded five companies since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. After selling a software distribution business to Powersoft/Sybase, Roman co-founded NetBeans in Prague in 1997. The company disrupted the IDE market through smarter distribution and product innovation, outstripping Borland, IBM and Symantec. NetBeans was bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999, and today, NetBeans, part of Oracle, is one the biggest Java IDEs in the world.After NetBeans, Roman founded Systinet, the leader in SOA Governance, which was sold to Mercury Interactive/Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $105 million. Systinet disrupted the application platform market, first OEMing to most major app server vendors including BEA, TIBCO, FileNet and Oracle then by selling directly into Fortune 500 and Government agencies.Today, Roman is Founder and CEO of GoodData, which provides business intelligence software delivered as an on-demand service. GoodData is built to disrupt the broken world of BI: for $1,000 a month, you can get what used to cost $100,000 or more. GoodData?s engineering in Prague and Brno, Czech Republic, while Roman lives in the San Francisco area where he oversees sales, marketing, business development and strategic partnerships.

Michael Adams joined VMware in 2007 and is a group product marketing manager working on the VMware vSphere platform. In his role, Michael helps drive efforts around product launches and helps evangelize the platform to both internal and external audiences. Prior to VMware, Michael lead the marketing efforts for the NetBackup product line at both Symantec and VERITAS Software. Prior to joining the vendor community, Michael was an open systems storage analyst for the Giga Information Group (now part of Forrester Research). Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Michigan.

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.

David (Dave) S. Linthicum is a Cloud Computing Expert and an internationally recognized industry expert and thought leader, and the author and coauthor of 13 books on computing, including the best-selling "Enterprise Application Integration" (Addison Wesley). Dave keynotes at many leading technology conferences on cloud computing, SOA, Enterprise Application Integration, and enterprise architecture, and has appeared on a number of TV and radio shows as a computing expert. Dave's latest book is "Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise, a Step-by-Step Approach.

As Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development Kurt is responsible for driving Courion's strategic vision and direction. He is responsible for Courion’s setting overall corporate direction, long-term product strategy and roadmap, strategic investment, and mergers and acquisitions. Kurt also has the responsibility of securing and managing Courion's strategic alliances and partnerships.

Prior to joining Courion, Kurt was VP of the Service Management Strategies at the analyst firm META Group (acquired by Gartner) Previous to META Group, Kurt led the CRM practice at The Bentley Company (acquired by eLoyalty) IDC, a premier global provider of market intelligence, and Digital Equipment.

A frequent speaker and widely recognized as an authority on identity and access management (IAM), IT security, and IT Service Management, Kurt is a founding board member of the HDI Strategic Advisory Board. He holds Bachelor of Science degrees in both Marketing and Finance from Boston College.

Lori MacVittie is the senior technical marketing manager for F5 Networks. With more than a decade of experience in managing enterprise architecture and ISV application development, her expertise in cloud computing and application delivery are second to none in the tech industry.Prior to joining F5, MacVittie was the senior technology editor at Network Computing Magazine, where her extensive knowledge of programming and systems development enabled her to shape the then-emerging application delivery market. She holds a B.S. in Information and Computing Science from the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Nova Southeastern University.

Bernard Golden has been called a “cloud guru” and a “cloud computing rockstar.” He is Vice President, Enterprise Solutions for Enstratius, 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.

His status as a global cloud computing thought leader has been recognized by inclusion in a number of influencer lists:

2012 Wired.com: Named as a “Top Ten Influential People of Cloud Computing”
2012 CloudCamp Cloud Awards: Nominated as “Cloud Hero”
2011 Sys-Con Media: Named a “Top 100 Security Most Powerful Voice”
2011 AlwaysOn Media: Named as a “Top Twenty Most Important Cloud Blog”
2010 AppDynamics poll: Named as third most influential cloud blog
2010 Sys-Con Media: Named a “Top 50 Cloud Computing Blogger”

Bernard is the Cloud Computing Advisor for CIO Magazine. His blog has been called “brilliant and incisive” and is read by tens of thousands of people each month. Bernard's writings on cloud computing have also been published by the New York Times and the Harvard Business Review.

Bernard is a frequent speaker on cloud computing. He regularly presents on the following cloud computing topics: strategy; cloud provider selection; application design; security; ROI and TCO economics; and workforce effects. He has keynoted cloud computing conferences in the United States, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, and Moscow.

Bernard is the author or co-author of three books on virtualization and cloud computing:

-Virtualization for Dummies (sole author; Dummies Press 2007): the most popular book on the subject ever published.
-Creating the Infrastructure for Cloud Computing (co-author; Intel Press, 2011).
-Cloud Computing: Managing the Risk (co-author; IT Governance Press, May 2012).