Presentation Topic:
Opening Remarks

Douglas Balog

Vice President, IBM

Mr. Douglas Balog, Vice President, IBM BladeCenter Business Line Executive, Systems and Technology Group, is responsible for the overall IBM BladeCenter business and strategy. Mr. Balog also serves as Chairperson of the industry BladeServer solution community - Blade.org. Previously, Mr. Balog was Vice President, IBM BladeCenter Development, Systems and Technology Group. In that role, he was responsible for the technical direction and development of IBM's BladeCenter products and overall xSeries software.

Until mid-2004, Mr. Balog served as Vice President of IBM TotalStorage Open Software Development in the Systems and Technology Group, and was responsible for leading the development of open system storage software products and autonomic storage management infrastructure. At that time he was also the Senior Site Executive of the IBM San Jose, California facility.

Mr. Balog graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a B.S. in Computer Science in 1983.

Presentation Topic:
End User Panel Discussion

Brian Bouterse

Networking & Systems Specialist, The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, North Carolina State University, Raleigh

Brian Bouterse is a networking and systems specialist with The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, located at North Carolina State University's Centennial Campus. He received his Masters from North Carolina State University in Computer Networking; his background includes Virtualization, Enterprise Storage, Software-as-a-Service, and Web 2.0. Currently, Brian is pursuing his doctorate in the area of clustered hypervisor scheduling.

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Presentation Topic:
Opening and Closing Remarks

Tom Bradicich, Ph.D.

IBM Fellow, and Vice President, Systems Technology, IBM Rack, Blade, and x86 Servers

Dr. Bradicich was the lead design engineer and product development manager for several IBM mobile, desktop, and server products. In the late 1990's, Tom directed the technology investment portfolio for IBM's x86 PC and server lines. Tom is a cofounder and IBM's executive sponsor for many technical and industry standards bodies and SIGs.

In 2001, Tom was named an IBM Distinguished Engineer, elected to the IBM Academy of Technology in 2004, and appointed an IBM Fellow in 2006.

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Presentation Topic:
Building the Next Generation Data Center with Embedded Virtualization

Richard A. Brunner

Chief Platform Architect
VMware

Richard A. Brunner is the Chief Platform Architect in the CTO office at VMware. He is responsible for defining and driving future platform features that can benefit virtualization.

Richard has over 27 years experience in the computer industry and really started as a computer architect at Digital Equipment Corporation in the late 80's.   While at Intel Corporation for nine years, Richard served as the chief i960 architect and led a number of microcode development teams for the i960 and IA64 implementations. Most recently, Richard was the Software Architect for Advanced Micro Devices' AMD64 Architecture serving as an AMD Fellow.

Richard holds a Masters of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.   He holds patents in computer architecture and has presented extensively including VMworld, Hot Chips, Siggraph, WinHec, Linux Kernel Summit, Linux World, Ottawa Linux Symposium, and Intel Developers Forum.

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Presentation Topic:
10G Ethernet: Networking in the Next-Generation Data Center

Tim Chao

VP, Software Engineering and Advanced Technology
BLADE Network Technologies

Tim Chao is a distinguished software engineer with BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE), where he has contributed to making BLADE the industry leader for blade networking. His contributions have lead to a number of inventions and patents, including SmartConnect™, VM ready™, NMotion™, ServerMobility™, Session-less transparent and service load balancing, plus Sequential Frame Forwarding.

Tim has been working in the industry for over 20 years and had major impacts prior to joining BLADE.  Some of his accomplishments include:

At Nortel Networks Corp, he successfully delivered the industry’s first 2-7 blade server switch module for IBM BladeCenter with patented PACE (Packet Acceleration Engine) technology which was recognized as the best L4 and L7 performance in the industry. As IBM and HP entered the blade server market, Tim successfully delivered the industry’s first Layer 2/3 switch modules for both vendors in addition to conceiving and taking the lead on the development of Nortel’s Industry Standard CLI.

At AlteonWebsystems, he was responsible for WebOS 8.0 - enabling Alteon to penetrate the web hosting market.  Tim also led development of the Alteon SSL Accelerator, in addition to the design and development of the SSH and Content Intelligent software.

At 3Com Corp., Tim helped to design and develop 3Com’s DynamicAccess 1.5 software including the intermediate driver technology and automatic installation routines for all Microsoft platforms. This software offered automatic installation for device drivers, one of the first intermediate driver technology and IP switching with COS.

Tim holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan and a Masters in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University, California.

Presentation Topic:
Future I/O Technologies for Blade Servers

Rob Davis

VP of Advanced Technology
QLogic

Rob Davis is the vice president of Advanced Technology at QLogic.  As a key evaluator and decision-maker, Davis takes responsibility for keeping QLogic at the forefront of emerging technologies, products, and relevant markets. Davis’ in-depth expertise spans Virtualization, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SCSI, iSCSI, InfiniBand, SAS, PCI, and sATA.

Davis joined QLogic in 1999, when it acquired Ancor Corporation—a company that he had been helping to guide and build for the past 18 years. Davis’ involvement with Fibre Channel technology reaches back to its beginnings before 1990; at that time he functioned as an adapter and switch software engineer, moving later into engineering management and technical marketing. Davis’ insights and focus led him to InfiniBand development, both at Ancor and QLogic, and resulted in his representing both companies to the IBTA Marketing working group. Most recently, Davis served a major adviser on QLogic’s decision process in acquiring PathScale and SilverStorm. Davis’ iSCSI experience helped him contribute to guiding QLogic's acquisition of Little Mountain Group, as well as overseeing the growth of QLogic’s entire iSCSI product line. In addition, Davis had been deeply involved with the acquisition of Troika Networks, bringing advanced storage virtualization products and resources to QLogic.

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Presentation Topic:
End User Panel Discussion

Matt Drew

Chief IT Engineer, GameVee, Inc.

Matt Drew is the Chief IT Engineer for GameVee, Inc, a social game-play video sharing website. He's managed systems and networks for ten years at places like IBM, Red Hat, and Parata, a start-up pharmacy automation company. He spends his spare time gaming and trying to play the guitar. He currently resides in Durham, North Carolina.

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William Friemann

Vice President, Operations, Security and Compliance
Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors

Mr. Friemann entered into the industry over twenty years ago working for the federal government directly and then indirectly through contracts with several agencies in both consulting and full time roles. He segued from the U.S. Government into the retail market where he established the Saks Fifth Avenue e-mail and web presence. He re-entered private practice into security consulting and developed and ran an MSSP until 2004. In 2004, William entered into the carrier space with a key focus on contractual agreements surrounding managed services and compliance with MCI and post-merger with Verizon Business.

In 2006, William took over IT operations Fox & Roach/Trident, LP, the holding company of six home services, financial and relocation related companies as the Vice President of Technology Operations, Security & Compliance. In this capacity, Will is responsible for physical and information security as well as the complex compliance required for the third largest real estate company in America.

The Fox & Roach/Trident, LP, includes Prudential Fox and Roach, ETC REO, and The Trident Group. The specific compliance laws include, GLBA, PCI, FACTA as well as Patriot (for international relocation), Sarbanes Oxley (for partnerships with publicly traded companies). The challenge of removing end-user participation in the classification and destruction of documents in accordance with FACTA, as an example, helps incubate this business plan. Will's role within PFR also brought about a 32% cost savings by renegotiating all carrier contracts. He also rolled out an Aruba Wireless infrastructure using 802.1X leveraging Lenovo laptops.

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Presentation Topic:
End User Panel Discussion Moderator

Barb Goldworm

Founder, President and Chief Analyst
FOCUS consulting

Barb Goldworm is the president and chief analyst of FOCUS (www.focusonsystems.com), a research, analyst and consulting firm focused on systems, software and storage, with a focus on creating a more dynamic and agile IT. A frequent speaker, columnist, and author, Barb has spent thirty years in the computer industry, in various technical, marketing, sales, senior management, and industry analyst positions with IBM, Novell, StorageTek, Enterprise Management Associates, and multiple successful startups.

Barb recently released a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" (available on Amazon.com), and Focus has just published an in-depth Focus Research Series on Desktop and Application Virtualization and Delivery Alternatives. Barb currently chairs the Virtualization Tracks at Interop and Blade Systems Insight, and is a frequent keynote speaker at both virtualization and blades events throughout North America. She also created and chaired the storage networking track at Interop, and has been one of the top rated expert speakers at Tech Target Data Center Decisions and Storage Networking World. Since the 1990s, Barb has been a regular expert columnist for publications including NetworkWorld, ComputerWorld, Storage Networking World Online, TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization and SearchVMware and Virtual Strategy Magazine, and has authored numerous business and technical white papers and market research reports.

Coming from a strong technical background, Barb started her career with virtualization on IBM's VM/370 in the 70s, and spent a decade in technical roles working on mainframe, PC and server software, as a software developer, systems architect, systems engineer, and managing software development and testing. After another decade in product marketing and sales, up through VP of marketing and sales, Barb has spent the last ten years as an analyst, consultant, author and speaker.

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Presentation Topic:
Scaling the Data Center Technologies & Trends

Sanjeev Jorapur

Vice President of Technology
NetXen

Sanjeev is an industry veteran with 20 years of management and technical experience in the areas of enterprise and network computing. Since joining Netxen, he has led the architectural and technological efforts behind NetXen's products. Prior to NetXen, he co-founded CoWave Networks, which pioneered the wireless mesh architecture. At CoWave, he was responsible for the architecture and software development of its initial products. He has held senior technical positions at HP, where he was one of the key architects of a distributed, multi-node system. Earlier in his career, he worked at Unisys as one of the architects of "Opus", a distributed, Single System Image, UNIX implementation. Sanjeev holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT, Mumbai.

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Presentation Topic:
Building the Data Center of the Future: Enabling Secure Information Access with a Converged Data Center Infrastructure

Madhu Matta

Vice President, Server Connectivity
Brocade

As Vice President, Server Connectivity at Brocade, Madhu Matta is responsible for the company's embedded switching and server connectivity business. While at Brocade he helped develop the company's first SAN module for the IBM eServer BladeCenter, and he has been instrumental in launching a variety of SAN switching products. 

One of the founding members of Blade.org, Matta most recently served as Chairman of the Business Development Committee for that organization. Prior to joining Brocade, Matta spent two years at Gadzoox Networks as a Senior Product manager and, before that, he was a Program Manager on the Quality Leadership Council at Quantum Corporation. 

Matta has an MS in Industrial Systems Engineering from San Jose State University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from BMS College of Engineering, India. 

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Presentation Topic:
Data Center Concerns

Alex Nicolson

Vice President of Technology
Emulex

Alex Nicolson joined Emulex in 2001 and serves as vice president of technology. Mr. Nicolson has been instrumental in evolving Emulex’s host bus adapter (HBA) architecture and Virtual HBA technology. Alex Nicolson is also responsible for helping guide the company’s research and development spending and for interfacing with end user customers at the design level.
 
Mr. Nicolson came to Emulex as a result of the company’s acquisition of Giganet where he served in several senior management and development engineering roles. Prior to joining Giganet, Alex Nicolson held positions in senior engineering and marketing management at Banyan Systems and Data General. Mr. Nicolson has over 30 years of experience in the computer and storage industries.

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Presentation Topic:
Processor and Memory Trends in the Next-Generation Data Center

Rob Nance

Principal Architect, High Density Computing Group
Intel

Rob Nance joined Intel in 2005 and is currently serving as chief architect in the High Density Computing Group. He has over 15 years experience in the server design industry, with the last 8 years focused on blade servers. He first designed blade systems for Dell Computer while serving as a technical leader in the server group responsible for the PowerEdge line of products. Mr. Nance then left Dell, following a Dell executive, to join RLX Technologies, a small blade server company, where he served as the chief architect. Intel brought in the RLX design team in 2005 where Mr. Nance was responsible for the architecture and development of the Intel Modular Server, a blade server targeted at the SMB market. His current responsibilities include defining the architecture for server products that will be optimized for the next generation data center.

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Marek Piekarski

CTO
VirtenSys

Marek Piekarski is the co-founder and CTO of VirtenSys where he is responsible for the company technical strategy and for defining VirtenSys’ technologies and products.
 
Marek has over 20 years experience in a broad range of industry segments. Prior to co-founding VirtenSys, he was responsible for defining products and applications for switching technology at Xyratex and was the technical lead on a consortium project developing novel storage and interconnect solutions for video servers. Before Xyratex, Marek served with Transitive, developing dynamic binary translation software and with Power X where he lead the technical development of high performance telecoms switch fabrics.
 
Marek has a consistent track record of innovation and is an inventor on 13 patents.

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Presentation Topic:
DynamicIT: Leveraging Virtualization and Why iSCSI Boot Plays a Dramatic Role

Joel Reich

VP and GM of SAN and iSCSI Business Unit
NetApp

Joel Reich is  Vice President and General Manager of Network Appliance's SANiSAN Business Unit. Reich's primary responsibilities include aligning and driving products, sales, services, and strategic partnerships to leverage market opportunities in fibre channel and iSCSI attached storage. Reich has over 20 years of marketing and technology management experience in the storage industry.

Prior to joining NTAP, he was the Vice President of Marketing and Product Operations for HighGround Systems. He has also held positions as Director of Product Management for CLARiiON products at Data General and EMC; Director of Sales and Marketing for Conner Peripherals Storage Systems Group, and has held marketing management roles at Aiwa/Core and Rodime Systems Inc.

During his career, he has led or been involved in the definition and introduction of the world's first 3.5" hard disk drive (Rodime); the first disk array for open systems and Windows (Core); the first fibre channel RAID system (CLARiiON) and the industry's first Unified Storage system (NetApp)."

Presentation Topic:
End User Panel Discussion

Steve Russell

Managing Director, Morgan Stanley/Technology

Steve Russell is Managing Director and Global Head of Enterprise Compute (EC) for Morgan Stanley. EC is responsible for the distributed system environment in the global institutional business and the non-US divisions of Global Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley and consists of approximately 60,000 desktops, 30,000 servers, 3,000 databases, and 5 petabytes of data in the 33 countries that Morgan Stanley conducts business.

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Presentation Topic:
Close Coupled Cooling - A New Concept for Data Center Heat Rejection

Jim Simonelli

Chief Technical Officer
APC

Jim Simonelli is Chief Technical Officer of APC.   In 2007, Schneider Electric acquired APC and formed the Critical Power & Cooling Services (CPCS) Business Unit, which includes the APC and MGE UPS Systems brands.   The CPCS Business Unit reported revenue of $3.5 billion in 2007 and employs 12,000 people worldwide. Schneider Electric, with 112,000 employees and operations in 190 countries, had 2007 annual sales of $25 billion (€17.3 billion).

Appointed as CTO in December 2007, Jim is responsible for technology direction, product platform roadmaps and system architectures devoted to Power, Cooling, Rack and infrastructure management software.   Jim is currently the lead architect of APC's InfraStruXure® system, leading the effort to expand and enhance integrated data center infrastructure solutions.  

Prior to his role as CTO, Jim held multiple executive engineering positions with APC including Vice President, System and Platform Architecture and Vice President Solutions Delivery Group.   Jim is a frequent speaker at power electronics and information technology conferences.

Prior to joining APC in 1991, Jim was employed at Digital Equipment Corporation where he worked in the power electronics design group developing switch mode power supplies and UPS equipment.  

Jim received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and holds 8 US patents.    

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Presentation Topic:
Desktop Consolidation

Stephane Verdy

CTO
Devon IT

CTO, has 10 years experience in information technology. Prior to joining Devon IT to lead product development, Stephane held several positions in the product development, marketing, business development and sales organizations at Tarantella. At Tarantella, he was instrumental in designing and selling secure access and server based computing solutions to some of the world's largest financial companies. Prior to Tarantella, Stephane worked as a consultant and also taught as professor of computer science at the Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala. Stephane holds a Masters of Computer Science from the University of Nancy, France.

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