Speakers
Don Beaty
Founder and President,
DLB Associates
Don Beaty is Founder and President of DLB Associates Consulting Engineers; a firm providing international consulting on a selective basis for over 20 years. Don was Chair of ASHRAE Technical Committee TC 9.9 from its inception through June 2006. His interest in educating the industry about ASHRAE being the unbiased source of data center cooling material resulted in Don publishing over 50 technical papers and articles and presenting in nine countries on the topic of data center cooling. Under his committee leadership, the plan of publishing an extensive series of small, reader friendly books was developed with four books published prior to 2007 and at least two more to be published in 2007. Don is currently International Chair TC 9.9 Committee-Liaisons, Alliances and International Activities.
Ken Brill
Founder and Executive Director, The Uptime Institute
Ken Brill is the Founder and Executive Director of The Uptime Institute and the 85-corporate member Site Uptime Network. He holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Many industry innovations including dual power and the industry's Tier System for evaluating data center design level trace back to his original conceptual work. In 1999, recognizing that increasing heat density would become critical to IT availability, Ken worked closely with the Thermal Management Consortium to publish the first 2000-2010 Heat Density Product Trends white paper. This foundational document predicting many of the problems now facing IT executives was updated in April 2006.
Ken has authored or contributed to many white papers and is a frequent commentator in business and technology media on data center and site infrastructure design, engineering and management issues. His current focus is on strategic and business impacts of The Economic Meltdown of Moore's Law.
James Callahan
Operations Security Executive, Customer Data Center Security, Verizon Business
In his role running security for Verizon Business Customer Data Centers and their hosting product suite, James Callahan brings over 25 years of experience in directing security initiatives for the public and private sectors. The vast majority of Callahan's experience was gained as a counter-intelligence special agent with the Department of Defense (DoD) and an active duty military officer. Callahan now focuses his efforts on the customer facing aspects of what he calls "Security at the 8th Layer" or, everything on the human side of the keyboard. In this role, he is driving the human side of the data center's security program and ensuring these programs represent a competitive differentiator for Verizon Business.
James holds bachelor and associate of science degrees from the University of the State of New York , Regents College . He is a board certified CPP (Certified Protection Professional), a graduate of the US Army Computer Investigations Course for Special Agents (CICSA) and Advanced CICSA, a Check Point Certified Security Administrator (CCSA) and an Associate Business Continuity Planner (ABCP) from DRII. He is also certified as a US Army Master Instructor with specialized certification in Systems Approach to Training and Video Tele-training. He has been published in the Center for Army Lessons Learned and Data Center World as well as other industry trade publications.
Mark Diamond
President and CEO, Contoural, Inc.
Mark Diamond is founder, President and CEO of Contoural, Inc., a provider of business and technology consulting services. Under his leadership, Contoural has grown to be the industry leader in developing business and technology strategies for data retention policies and information archiving. Providing innovative approaches, these strategies help simplify complex issues, ensure compliance, reduce risks and lower costs.
Previously, Mark was co-founder of Symantec's (OpenVision) Professional Services group. Additionally, Mark was founder and General Manager, Worldwide Professional Services for Legato Systems, a supplier of storage software as well as the was founder and Principal of Smith, Diamond and Associates, a management consulting firm. Additionally he was Vice President of Worldwide Professional Services at RightWorks, a provider of business application software to the B2B marketplace. Mark recently served as Chair of the Storage Networking Industry Association customer advisory board on data security.
Mark is a frequent industry speaker, addressing storage, backup and data classification on the best practices for managing storage. He has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of California San Diego . Mark is President of the UC San Diego Alumni Association, and a Trustee of the university's foundation.
Sidney Finehirsh
Founder and CEO, The CMX Group
Sid Finehirsh is the CEO and founder of The CMX Group, a professional services firm of specialists who bring to each client a unique blend of experience and knowledge in leveraging technology to create business alignment. Sid is a recognized authority on IT financial, capacity, and service management. He has conducted seminars in the US and abroad, been featured on webcasts, and spoken on chargeback, capacity planning and IT strategy at numerous conferences including IT Financial Management Association's (ITFMA) Best Practices Conferences, the CFO Executive Conference, the IQPC Conference on Chargeback and Computer Measurement Group's International Conferences and regional meetings.
His career in IT infrastructure management spans over 30 years of experience in financial and technical engagements relating to the planning and implementation of a variety of IT accounting, capacity and executive reporting systems for mainframe, Unix and Windows platforms as well as public and private networks. Recent projects have included the creation of cost models for virtual systems. He is also intensively involved in the application of ITIL Financial Management for IT infrastructures to achieve cost transparency, improve data center operations, analyze platform decisions and chargeback.
Barb Goldworm
President and Chief Analyst, Focus Consulting
Barb Goldworm is president and chief analyst of Focus Consulting, a research, analyst and consulting firm focused on systems, software and storage. Barb has spent thirty years in technical, development, marketing, sales, senior management and industry analyst positions with IBM, Novell, StorageTek, Enterprise Management Associates and multiple successful startups.
A frequent speaker at industry events, Barb also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit conference on blades and virtualization, created and chaired the Network Storage segment of Interop and has been one of the top three ranked analyst/knowledge expert speakers at Storage Networking World. She has authored numerous white papers on systems, virtualization, storage, storage networking and systems management, and has been a regular columnist for Network World, Computerworld Storage Networking World Online and TechTarget. She has just released a new book entitled Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs published by Wiley .
Andrew Kutz
Principal, l o s t c r e a t i o n s
Andrew Kutz is deeply embedded in the dark, dangerous world of virtualization. Andrew is an avid fan of .NET, Open Source, Terminal Services, coding and comics. He is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD), a SANS/GIAC Certified Windows Security Administrator (GCWN) GOLD, and a VMware Certified Professional (VCP in VI3. Andrew is the author of the popular open source project Sudo for Windows. He was employed by the University of Texas at Austin for nearly a decade as a systems administrator and developer and more recently as an analyst for The Burton Group. Andrew graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in Ancient History and Classical Civilization.
Robert McFarlane
Principal - Interport Division President, Shen, Milsom & Wilke Inc.
Robert McFarlane has spent more than 30 years in communications consulting, with experience in every segment of the industry. As a pioneer in the field of building cabling design, Bob authored papers that set forth fundamental principles for the industry that are still followed today. He was also instrumental in the development of video teleconferencing, giving nationwide seminars on room and system design before writing the foundation paper, published in Architectural Record, that set the standards for this field. He is often interviewed by the trade press and has been asked to speak at countless seminars on building infrastructure for electronic communications, evolving technologies and the highly demanding requirements of trading floor and data center design on which he is a leading expert.
Bob currently teaches the Data Center Facilities course in the Marist College IDCP (Institute for Data Center Professionals) Certification Program. He is also a member of the Adjunct Faculty of New York University where he lectures in telecommunications. Bob served for twelve years as President of Interport Financial, Inc., a firm specializing in designs for financial trading floors and critical data centers. Interport was acquired by Shen, Milsom & Wilke in 1999, and Bob continues as President of the Interport Division which carries on these multi-disciplined projects.
Bill Peldzus
Director of Data Center Services, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, GlassHouse Technologies Inc.
Bill Peldzus, Director of Data Center Services, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity at GlassHouse Technologies, is responsible for developing and overseeing new services, including the proprietary methodology and tools that shape these services. Prior to GlassHouse, Bill had more than 20 years' experience working in technical positions at Imation Corporation's Storage Professional Services and StorageTek's SAN Operations business group, as well as running multiple IT groups at CNA Insurance and Northern Trust Company. Bill has extensive experience as a speaker at industry events and is often interviewed by industry publications and analysts about storage, disaster recovery and business continuity issues.
David Pultorak
Founder and Chief Executive, Pultorak & Associates
David Pultorak is the founder and Chief Executive of Pultorak & Associates, where he applies his 20 years of experience helping organizations get results from their IT service and process management efforts. David has contributed to IT service and process management frameworks, including ITIL and MOF. He holds a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in IT and organizational science, and is a founding member of the University's Center for Organizational Dynamics. David is lead author of the popular, MOF: a Pocket Guide, which has been translated into six languages. His most recent book is, IT People: Doing More with Less.
Greg Schulz
Founder and Senior Analyst, The StorageIO Group
With more than 25 years of experience in the IT and storage industry, Greg Schulz has held strategic positions in management, marketing, sales, technology development and data center management. He is experienced in server and storage performance and capacity planning, platform management, disaster recovery and systems development. He has worked for storage provider MTI and storage networking vendors INRANGE and CNT where he was part of successful global product launches and revenue growth.
Prior to working as an industry analyst, Greg worked in IT organizations at various firms including an electric power utility, railroad and benefits processing firm. At StorageIO Greg consults on technology strategy and positioning to tier-1 through emerging startup vendors as well as IT organizations of all size on storage, networking and management software matters. Greg is a frequent speaker at industry events around the world as well as regularly appearing in leading on-line and print venues. He has written over a thousand articles, reports, tips and white papers pertaining to data and storage topics. Greg is author of the SNIA-endorsed book Resilient Storage Networks - Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures from Elsevier books.
Anne Skamarock
Advisory Analyst and Author, Focus Consulting
Anne Skamarock has been involved with computers and associated technology for nearly 30 years. She started her career as a software engineer developing custom scientific codes and then as a UNIX systems administrator. She then moved over to the systems vendor side and worked as a software engineer, technical sales, marketing and management for both large and start-up systems and storage companies such as SRI, International, Sun Microsystems, Solbourne Computer and StorageTek. For the past seven years, Anne has worked as a market analyst focusing on the convergence points around systems, storage and software. Anne has published extensively including regular columns and tips for SearchChannelStorage.com, Network World and numerous business and technical white papers. She has recently finished her second book as co-author of Blades and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs published by Wiley.
Matt Stansberry
Site Editor, SearchDataCenter.com, TechTarget
Matt Stansberry has been reporting on the convergence of IT, facility management and energy issues since 2003. He has been writing and editing for SearchDataCenter.com since its launch in January 2005. Before that he was Managing Editor of Today's Facility Manager magazine and a staff writer for the U.S. Green Buildings Council.
Jon William Toigo
CEO and Managing Principal, Toigo Partners International, LLC
Jon William Toigo is CEO and Managing Principal of Toigo Partners International LLC, an independent consultancy and information technology research & analysis firm focused on providing meaningful guidance to IT consumers and decision makers. He is also chairman of The Data Management Institute LLC, a professional development organization he founded for those who design, plan, manage and administer storage infrastructure and data assets.
Jon is a 25-year IT veteran who has worked both as an operative within corporate information systems departments and as a senior consultant with two international systems integrators. He is also a prolific writer with 15 books and thousands of articles in the technology trade press to his credit. His technology columns in seven popular print and on-line media garner a loyal readership of more than 500,000 per month worldwide.
Chris Wolf
Senior Analyst, The Burton Group
Chris Wolf is a Senior Analyst with the Burton Group who brings 14 years of experience in IT, with established expertise in virtualization, data protection and high availability. Dedicated to server virtualization since 2000, Chris authored the first book on modern virtualization technologies, Virtualization: From the Desktop to the Enterprise, and is a Windows Virtual Machine MVP. He has published dozens of articles on advanced server virtualization topics and frequently speaks at national industry events.