Speakers

Robert McFarlane
Principal Data Center and Financial Trading Floor Consultant

Robert McFarlane, Principal Data Center and Financial Trading Floor Consultant, has spent more than 35 years in communications as both a consultant and teacher. His experience spans every segment of the industry including cable design, fiber optics, data communications, telephony, data center facilities, financial trading systems, satellite earth stations, video and multi-media, and acoustics. 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, which set the standards for this field. Robert has spoken at countless seminars on building infrastructure for electronic communications, evolving technologies and the highly demanding requirements of data center design and financial trading floors. Bob currently teaches the Data Center Facilities course in the Marist College IDCP (Institute for Data Center Professionals) Certification Program and is a member of the Adjunct Faculty of New York University where he lectures in telecommunications.

Shannon Snowden
Consulting Partner, New Age Technologies

Shannon Snowden is a Consulting Partner for New Age Technologies, an IT consulting firm headquartered in Louisville, KY. He has been focused on delivery of virtualization solutions and training for as long as the major vendors have been doing production virtualization, and was one of the first four public students to get the VMWare Certified Professional designation delivered via a hand written exam (his official VCP number is 12). Shannon became the first certified trainer for North America on XenServer version 3.2 and XenEnterprise 4.0; some of his certifications include VMWare Certified Professional VCP#12, Citrix XenSource Certified Professional, Citrix Certified Instructor, Novell Certified Linux Professional, Certified Novell Instructor, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Microsoft Certified Trainer.

While these certifications allow Shannon to teach classes, he places more value on practical field experience to learn how things actually work in the real world. While he enjoys teaching classes, his primary focus is on project delivery.  Shannon has had the good fortune to be able to perform countless virtualization design and delivery engagements. These projects have ranged from small up to Fortune 100 companies, and he considers each project as an addition to the depth and breadth of his experience and knowledge.

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 and 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. He is currently busy building the C-4 Community and Microfactory to define a strategic approach for tackling cost, compliance, continuity and carbon footprint with purpose built infrastructure, web services based management and intelligent data management. He is also working with colleges and universities in the Southeast Atlantic and Gulf Coast states to create the Disaster Avoidance and Recovery Information Network Grid (DARING) for cross-institutional data protection and application failover.

Dan Golding
Vice President and Research Director , Tier 1 Research

Daniel Golding currently leads coverage of the Hosting and Internet Infrastructure industries and also serves as the Conference Director for Tier1's Hosting Transformation Summit event series.

Prior to joining Tier1, Daniel spent three years as a senior industry analyst at the Burton Group, covering enterprise internetworking. Daniel has served as Global Peering Manager at America Online, where he led AOL's efforts to become a core Internet network. Daniel has also held senior engineering and architecture positions at a variety of major Internet service providers.

Daniel has briefed the FCC on Internet policy issues and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He is Chairman of the Global Peering Forum and has served as a member of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) Program Committee.

Daniel is also an Adjunct Professor of Telecommunications at George Mason University, teaching courses in Internetworking. Daniel holds a BS from Auburn University and an MS from George Mason University, both in engineering.