Thomas J. Bittman, VP Distinguished Analyst, Stamford, CT USA
Thomas Bittman is a vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner Research. Mr. Bittman has led the industry in areas such as cloud computing, virtualization and infrastructure evolution. Mr. Bittman invented the term "real-time infrastructure," which has been adopted by major vendors and many enterprises as their infrastructure direction. He has served as Gartner's lead analyst covering IBM and Microsoft, and he served for three years as a member of Gartner's Senior Research Board. In 2005, he earned Gartner's Analyst of the Year Award. Before joining Gartner, Mr. Bittman was a division plan manager and chief software engineer with IBM, where he had development responsibility for four operating systems.
XL Global Services - GTS
Howard Fingeroth, Vice President, ICCM Infrastructure, Capacity & Configuration Management
Over 23 years experience in the field of Technology Services in industries such as: Insurance/Reinsurance, Commodities and Securities Trading/Clearance/Settlement, Semiconductor and Computer Product Distribution and Publishing.
XL Global Services / XL Capital - May 2007 - Current
Responsible for XL Global Services Server and Storage Infrastructure in its 5 data centers and 70 remote offices across the globe.
-Responsible for Capacity and Configuration Management of the Data Center Infrastructure.
-Responsible for evaluating new Server and Storage related technologies for enterprise use at XL.
-Responsible for Tier-2 and Tier-3 global engineering and support organizations at XL.
Driving and promoting virtualization across all of all XL Infrastructure
Prior to XL Howard was
- Managing Director of Infrastructure at SIAC (Securities Industry Automation Corp) and The American Stock Exchange.
- Managing Director Applications Development - Trading Floor Order Fulfillment Systems at SIAC.
- Global Applications Development Manager - Arrow Electronics - Order Fulfillment, Warehouse Management & Inventory Control Systems.
- March 2009 - profiled in Baseline Magazine on current application of Virtualization technologies. http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Business-Intelligence/Analyze-This/3/
- Have been an advocate of virtualization use in the enterprise since 2001.
- Have guided companies in the use of open source, virtualization and better use/reuse of hardware to achieve maximum cost savings and efficiencies .
- Have experience with virtualization tools with largest industry presence.
- Current focus on evaluating new virtualization products and supporting technologies to further efficiencies and cost reduction efforts and technology improvements.
Ciena
Per Hansen, Senior Director, Enterprise Marketing
Per Hansen is a Senior Director, Enterprise Marketing at Ciena, where he is focused on the networking needs of our enterprise customers. Prior to joining Ciena in September 2008, Per was Senior Director, North American Enterprise Sales and Business Development at ADVA Optical Networking, where he worked with service providers and enterprises on their application and networking needs, as well as guided the prioritization of product development. Prior to joining ADVA in June 2004, Per was one of five founding professionals who established Photuris Inc., which developed optical communication networking equipment primarily for the Regional Bell Operating Companies and the Competitive Local Exchange Carriers. Prior to 2000, he had served as Senior Manager of Lucent Technologies’ Network Product Groups and, before that, was a Research Scientist for Bell Labs. Per holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds 21 patents and has shared his expertise at more than 70 industry events and in more than 50 publications.
Platform Computing
David Warm, Chief Technology Officer, Financial Services,
David has over 20 years experience in Financial Services, working at major investment banks like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, where he managed many large and innovative technology projects prior to joining Platform. Most recently at Merrill, he was responsible for infrastructure architecture solutions design and service delivery, supporting the Fixed Income, Prime Brokerage and Global Markets Transactional Clearing and Settlement businesses. He held management positions at Goldman, ranging from managing data center resources for the entire North American Fixed Income Sales and Trading Division to managing the design and development team responsible for producing the first distributed Sales Trading System. His vendor side management experience includes: Fortent, an Anti-Money Laundering software vendor and Egenera, a virtualization hardware vendor – both serving Financial Services customers. He also has expertise in Knowledge Management, Market Data and Project Management. David holds a Masters Degree in Technology Management from NYU Polytechnic.
Avaya
Geoffrey Towell, PhD, Member of Technical Staff, Avaya Research and Development
Dr. Towell has over twenty years of experience in software research and development. He began his career an economist working for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He left that position to pursue a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Since completing his degree, Dr. Towell has worked in both research and IT development; principally in the areas of health care, telecommunications and brand security. He has worked for companies ranging from large multi-nationals down to small startups. His experiences have spanned the individual contributor and manager roles on projects ranging from research in the automation of nuclear power plants to web site design and maintenance. Within Avaya, Dr. Towell is currently responsible for development and delivery of high availability systems in virtualized environments.
Microsoft
Robert Contreras, Technology Specialist
Rob joined Microsoft back in June 2007 as a Technology Solutions Professional concentrating on Windows Server technical pre-sales for Microsoft’s enterprise accounts. Prior to joining Microsoft, Rob spent 16 years working in the Microsoft partner community as a professional services consultant involved in various projects from Active Directory, Exchange, Management and Virtualization technologies to name a few. Rob also served as Microsoft partner alliance manager and technical pre-sales architect with a strong passion for understanding and delivering the value of information technology as a tool corporations can use to enhance their competitive edge within their market. Rob is a frequent speaker at technical conferences around the country on various topics and has traveled oversees to conduct Microsoft related architecture design sessions. Rob holds a Bachelors of Information Technology (BIT) from AIU, and is a MBA-candidate at Norwich University. Rob lives in NJ with his wife Kathy and four children. When he's not working or with his family he can be found playing piano, playing baseball\football or reading (history and politics).
BMC Software
Herb VanHook is Vice President in the Corporate Strategy group at BMC Software – focused on industry mega-trends and technology impact to business. Prior to BMC, He held several positions at the industry analyst firm META Group (most recently serving as Interim President and Chief Operating Officer), and has more than 30 years of experience in information technology.
Cisco Systems, Inc.
David Lawler, Vice President, Product Management, Server Access Virtualization Business Unit
David Lawler is the Vice President of Product Management at Cisco for the Server Access Virtualization Business Unit. Lawler joined Cisco with the acquisition of Nuova Systems, a company he joined in early 2006. Prior to Nuova Systems, Lawler was Sr. Director of Product Definition and Strategy for Sun Microsystems’ Network Systems group where he drove the company’s volume systems strategy. Prior to that, Lawler was Sr. Director of Product Management at MFN/Above.Net and was responsible for their overall managed service offerings. Lawler earlier served as a marketing executive at Sun Microsystems where he created and owned Sun’s rack mount server product lines. His contributions helped define the rack mount server market and enabled Sun to command a leadership position in the Internet server market in the late 1990s. Earlier in his career Lawler served at Data General managing their European IT systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in accounting and computer science and an MBA in finance and computer information systems, both from Georgia State University. He also has a Masters in international project management from EAP/ESCP in Paris.
