Join us at ONUG Fall 2021 as we focus on enabling Cloud 2.0 and the future of Enterprise Computing.
Attend any of the more than 55 sessions led by cloud and digital transformation thought leaders from some of the largest cloud consumer companies in the world. Hear from cloud service providers and ecosystem players and learn about the newest in infrastructure, platforms and software that will drive digital transformation in your company.
ONUG Fall is a digital event that provides a unique attendee experience. With interactive content, vendor neutral discussions, valuable Q&A’s and networking, ONUG events are the trusted bi-annual conferences for enterprise cloud and IT professionals.
Join the ONUG Community of Global 2000 companies, enterprise architects, cloud providers and thought leaders as we explore the software building blocks required to create flexible, transformative IT business platforms
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“Join the ONUG Community for two days of education, networking and thought leadership surrounding the the critical software building blocks required to create flexible IT business platforms”
ONUG Fall 2021 is where enterprise architects, cloud providers and thought leaders engage in important discussions and build the relationships necessary to navigate their digital transformation journeys. Join us for the 100% digital live event.
Ernest Lefner
Suzan Mahboob
Don Duet
Phil Venables
Janet Van
Michael Thomas Clark
Preeti Krishna
Peter Campbell
Pradeep Kathail
Jerome Bell
Anton Alekesandrov
John Willis
Michael Wheeler
Be prepared for 2021 and beyond with the tools need to operationalize flexible IT business platforms at scale
Agenda details will be posted shortly.
Register Today
Previously, Eyal ran Cato’s product management organization where he helped build Cato. He brings more than 20 years of experience in security and networking companies.
Dr. Douglas E. Comer is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. Formerly, he served as VP of Research at Cisco Systems. As a member of the original IAB, he participated in early work on the Internet, and is internationally recognized as an authority on TCP/IP protocols and Internet technologies.
Dr. Comer has written a series of best-selling technical books on Computer Networks, Internets, Operating Systems, and Computer Architecture. His 3-volume Internetworking series is cited as an authoritative work on Internet protocols and technologies. Dr. Comer’s books have been translated into 16 languages, and are used in industry and academia in many countries.
Dr. Comer consults for industry, and has lectured to thousands of professional engineers and students around the world. For twenty years he was editor-in-chief of the journal Software – Practice and Experience. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the recipient of numerous teaching awards.
Timon Sloane serves as the VP of marketing for Ananki, commercially delivering a private 5G solution for Industry 4.0 applications. Ananki is a sister organization to the non-profit Open Networking Foundation, where Timon also serves as the VP of marketing and ecosystem leading the organization’s efforts building an open source ecosystem.
Prior to the ONF, Timon provided product and management consulting services to numerous technology firms, most recently with Ericsson where he was driving product strategy for the networking product lines. He has also held numerous executive roles in product management, marketing and engineering for firms such as Matisse Networks, Extreme Networks, NET, FlowWise and SCO.
Timon received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Nick Lippis is an authority on corporate computer networking. He has designed some for the largest computer networks in the world. He has advised many Global 2000 firms on network strategy, architecture, equipment, services and implementation including Hughes Aerospace, Barclays Bank, Kaiser Permanente, Eastman Kodak Company, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Liberty Mutual, Schering-Plough, Sprint, WorldCom, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and a wide range of other equipment suppliers and service providers.
Mr. Lippis is uniquely positioned to comment, analyze and observe computer networking industry trends and developments.
Ernest co-founded ONUG with Nick Lippis after realizing that the user community needed to take control of their own destiny and expedite the network transformation. At the time he was VP of the Internetwork Engineering organization at Fidelity Investments and under his leadership Fidelity hosted the first ONUG in Boston in February 2013.
A 12-year veteran of Fidelity, Ernest was responsible for leading the team that engineered world class network, security, and application delivery services driving value to the customer beyond infrastructure management. Ernest also managed the Network and Voice service portfolio as well as Global Network Operations LAN/WAN teams and has held various technical and leadership roles.
I’m the Co-Founder and Co-Host of The Tech Fugitives Show. The show covers IT news with a dash of science. Mix in some humor and it becomes… “Tech Talk that doesn’t Suck!”
Preeti is a Principal Product Manager for Microsoft’s Cloud and AI Security group. With over 12 years of experience with Microsoft, Preeti has delivered multiple Bing and .NET products. In her current role, Preeti is responsible for Azure Sentinel ecosystem and community charter. She’s passionate about delivering great customer and developer experiences. Preeti is an active contributor to the ONUG Automated Cloud Governance working group, driving the Cloud Security Notification (CSNF) initiative.
Janet Van is a Product Manager at IBM Cloud and owns the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center product. The Security and Compliance Center focuses on providing unified visibility across IBM Cloud and its partners as a cloud security posture management tool for central security and compliance management. Her role as the product focal is to own the product life cycle management across teams (development, design, research, tech sales, support, marketing, etc) and to set the long-term vision, priorities and strategic roadmap for the offering. Alongside, she is also driving overall user experience and quality in the offering and managing the go-to-market activities. Previously, she started her technology career as a software developer within CIO at IBM. During her time within the CIO, she deepened her roles in technical delivery in product offerings supporting IAM and MFA security infrastructure at an enterprise level, globally within IBM. With each new role, she has always strived to explore and broaden her passion working across business and organizations to deliver and improve product and customer experience. Outside of work, Janet is a dog-mom who who enjoys spending time with her heeler pups and hiking state parks across North America.
Cloud Security Engineering leader responsible for security engineering and security innovation. Enables new and untried technologies, running proof of concepts, designing and engineering security configurations, enabling the business to leverage new technology safely. Led the creation of Cigna’s security assurance framework which ensures that the security vision is consistently executed. Current research focus on the domains of security data lakes, multi-cloud security and automated Cloud governance. ONUG CSNF Speaker and Contributor.
Karl Miller is a US Navy veteran and works as Director of Product Management for OCI Security Products covering internal and external security. He has more than 20 years of experience in multiple areas of cyber security including cryptography, identity & access management, and Operations. For the past 6 years, he has concentrated on securing cloud services and customer workloads. He holds patents in federated authentication and currently resides near Atlanta, GA, USA.
Don is an accomplished leader in successfully developing and executing business and technology strategy.
Don is co-founder and CEO of Concourse, an emerging leader in public cloud management and governance services, as well as a Senior Advisor at McKinsey Corporation.
Don spent 28 years at Goldman Sachs, during which time he held senior leadership roles in Technology in New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Don led the global technology division for Goldman from 2012 to 2016 and was named a partner of the firm in 2006 and Managing Director in 2000. Don was the CIO for Asia Pacific from 2001 to 2006 and served on the Asia management committee. Since relocating to the US in 2006, Don co-chaired the IBD Technology Investment Committee and was a member of the firm’s Firmwide Risk, Market Risk and Business Standards committee.
Don played an integral role in creating Goldman’s business systems architecture, algorithmic trading and risk management platform as well as leading strategic firm wide investments in VDI, Data architecture, AI and Cloud / Software Defined Infrastructure. He also created and led the teams responsible for the development of Symphony and Orbit which were subsequently spun out of the firm as broader industry platforms.
Within the technology industry, Don has been an active and vocal proponent of Open Source and Open Standards communities including acting as a founding board member of the Open Compute Project.
Don and his family reside in New York City where he is actively engaged in education and arts, serving on the board of the New York Foundation for the Arts, Columbia University School of Professional Studies, Marist College board of trustees and Teaching Matters.
Phil is the Chief Information Security Officer and Vice President of Google Cloud where he oversees a team of security industry experts and leaders in the Google Cloud Office of the CISO. As CISO of Google Cloud, Phil is focused on ensuring the company’s security and compliance, and engaging customers, partners and stakeholders on security and risk matters.
Prior to joining Google Cloud, Phil was a Partner at Goldman Sachs where he held multiple roles over a long career, initially as their first Chief Information Security Officer, a role he held for 17 years. In subsequent roles he was Chief Risk Officer for the firm’s operational risks, an operating partner in their private equity business and a senior advisor to the firm’s clients and executive leadership on cybersecurity, technology risk, digital business risk, and operational resilience. In addition to this, Phil was a Board Director of Goldman Sachs Bank (USA).
Before Goldman Sachs, Phil held multiple Chief Information Security Officer as well as senior engineering roles across a range of finance, energy and technology companies.
Outside of Google, Phil serves on the boards of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the NYU Stern Business School Volatility and Risk Institute. He also serves on the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board of NIST and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Phil earned a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of York and an MSc in Computation and Cryptography from the Queen’s College at Oxford University. He was awarded the designation of Chartered Engineer in 1995 and Chartered Scientist in 2002 and was elected a Fellow of the British Computer Society in 2005.
As Group VP, North America Cloud Security Engineering, Johnnie leads a team of cloud security experts and advisors who help customers securely deploy and operate on Oracle Cloud. She has spent more than 20 years bringing security technologies to market, most recently for Microsoft’s Enterprise Cybersecurity Group. She has, in prior roles, led product, business development and marketing for industry leaders Gigamon, Juniper Networks, Varonis and Check Point software. In earlier years, she designed cellular infrastructure networks for Motorola Inc. Johnnie’s work has been featured in trade, business press as well as security conferences.
Konstantas holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park.
I am an experienced IT leader who is passionate about information security. My experience and work involve developing innovative programs to cost effectively address IT security risk for enterprises.
I am also the founder and co-host of the Defensive Security Podcast, intended to help information security professionals grow and learn from publicly disclosed security breaches in order to better defend their own organizations.
Pradeep Kathail is the Chief Network Architect of Intent Based Networking Group (IBNG) at Cisco, and is responsible for architecture, technology and standards strategy, innovation, and incubation of new technology.
His current focus areas are trustworthiness of network, rules-based engines for network diagnostics and compliance, as well as new market disruption coming from software defined IT infrastructure. He has led many large-scale OS infrastructure and system development projects.
Prior to Cisco, Pradeep held various technology management jobs at Apple, Novell, SITA and IBM.
He holds a MS Computer Science degree from IIT Roorkee, India.
Ann Johnson is Corporate Vice President of SCI Business Development at Microsoft. She oversees the investment and strategic partner strategy roadmap for security, compliance, and identity for one of the largest tech companies on our planet to help organizations become operationally resilient on their digital transformation journey and unlock capabilities of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud and next generation AI. She is a member of the board of advisors for FS-ISAC (The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center), an advisory board member for EWF (Executive Women’s Forum on Information Security, Risk Management & Privacy), and an advisory board member for HYPR Corp. Ann recently joined the board of advisors for Cybersecurity Ventures. For more about Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Solutions, visit the Microsoft Security Site, or follow Microsoft Security on Twitter at Msft Security Twitter or Msft WDSecurity Twitter. You can also hear her talk with some of the biggest influencers in cybersecurity each week on Afternoon Cyber Tea with Ann Johnson.
Yesim Akdeniz is a senior Managing Director in Citi technology organization and has been responsible to driving significant
transformation across the technology infrastructure landscape over the last 5 years. She has been part of the core leadership team
that has driven 30%+ savings across the operating expense, while significantly modernizing Citigroup’s technology capabilities,
enhancing customer experience, business agility and managing risk.
Citi technology organization supports business operations in 100+ countries that Citi operates in, across multiple lines of business
spanning both Institutional and Retail businesses. The technology engineering organization is designing and deploying industry
leading solutions across the Citi footprint as the bank continues to leverage product and business model innovation to maintain and
increase Citi’s competitive edge in the market place. Yesim is at the forefront of the innovative thinking that CATE (Citigroup
Architecture and Technology Engineering) is delivering.
She has held several senior management positions across Citigroup technology, Yesim has a Masters in Business Administration,
Wilmington College and a Bachelors of Art in Computer Science, East Carolina University.
As one of the senior most women in technology and co-chair of Enterprise O&T Women Leadership Council at Citigroup, Yesim is
actively involved with various ‘Women in Technology’ initiatives, including the Women’s Bond Club and Citigroup sponsorship
programs. Additionally, Yesim was awarded the top 100 CIOs award by the CIO magazine in 2010,
http://www.citigroup.com/citi/press/2010/100603e.htm, and she was inducted into the 42nd Annual YWCA Academy of Women
Leaders on in 2016.
Previously was at Cisco for +20 years, Soni has extensive experience in marketing and driving industry transformation through disruption and commercializing innovative technologies
Held numerous positions including SVP/GM, most recently serving as Cisco’s SVP of Marketing
Prior to joining Cisco, Soni held marketing executive positions at UB Networks and Excelan
Independent Non-Executive Director of The Sage Group plc
B.S. in Computer Science from University of London
Dr. Douglas E. Comer is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. Formerly, he served as VP of Research at Cisco Systems. As a member of the original IAB, he participated in early work on the Internet, and is internationally recognized as an authority on TCP/IP protocols and Internet technologies.
Dr. Comer has written a series of best-selling technical books on Computer Networks, Internets, Operating Systems, and Computer Architecture. His 3-volume Internetworking series is cited as an authoritative work on Internet protocols and technologies. Dr. Comer’s books have been translated into 16 languages, and are used in industry and academia in many countries.
Dr. Comer consults for industry, and has lectured to thousands of professional engineers and students around the world. For twenty years he was editor-in-chief of the journal Software – Practice and Experience. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the recipient of numerous teaching awards.
Timon Sloane serves as the VP of marketing for Ananki, commercially delivering a private 5G solution for Industry 4.0 applications. Ananki is a sister organization to the non-profit Open Networking Foundation, where Timon also serves as the VP of marketing and ecosystem leading the organization’s efforts building an open source ecosystem.
Prior to the ONF, Timon provided product and management consulting services to numerous technology firms, most recently with Ericsson where he was driving product strategy for the networking product lines. He has also held numerous executive roles in product management, marketing and engineering for firms such as Matisse Networks, Extreme Networks, NET, FlowWise and SCO.
Timon received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Paul Silverstein is a managing director and senior research analyst and covers telecom & networking equipment. Prior to joining Cowen in 2013, Mr. Silverstein was a director in Credit Suisse’s equity research department, covering the communications infrastructure industry. Before that, he was a senior analyst in equity research at Robertson Stephens and at Needham & Co. Prior to becoming a securities analyst, Mr. Silverstein practiced corporate and securities law as an associate at Weil Gotshal & Manges and at Pryor Cashman Sherman & Flynn. He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from Columbia Business School, and a JD from Cornell Law School.
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers – the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently…”.
Guru loves these lines from that classic Apple Ad because he believes few things better describe those with the singular goal to create market-leading platforms with outsized impact.
After his last startup was acquired (Nuova Systems acquired by Cisco), Guru joined Lightspeed as an investor in 2012 working with the partnership on investments in Zscaler (IPO), Avere
Guru believed the core idea behind Avi Networks was so powerful that he joined the founding team as the 4th co-founder. In just a few years, they built out the business from an idea to a platform that served over 20% of Fortune 50 businesses, among hundreds of other customers. Avi Networks was acquired by VMware in 2019.
After his entrepreneurial journey, Guru decided to focus his time and energy back on venture and returned to his Lightspeed roots, using the lessons from his founding experience to help early-stage founders.
“I’ve been in startups through most of my career. My operational experience spans sitting in a room with my co-founders and not much else, to building billion dollar run rate products,” said Guru. “During this journey, I’ve run product management, marketing, strategy, and have even been the early stage sales rep cold-calling customers. I bring this experience to every interaction I have with founding teams – a deep understanding of technology and how to monetize it.”
Guru primarily invests in Enterprise sectors such as security, DevOps, observability/ops tools, cloud infrastructure and application development. “These areas are seeing extremely rapid innovation and offer significant value creation opportunities for both entrepreneurs and investors,” said Guru.
Rod is the senior equity analyst for the Hardware and Communications Technology sector in Global Investment Research. He joined Goldman Sachs as a managing director in 2017. Prior to joining the firm, Rod was the senior analyst for IT Hardware and Networking Technology at JP Morgan in
North America. Previously, he covered Communications Technology stocks for JP Morgan based in London. Earlier in his career, Rod covered Telecom and Cable stocks in Europe at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, and prior to that, he was employed in both technical and managerial positions at AT&T in both the US and France. Rod earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University and an MBA with a focus in finance at INSEAD. He also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
John Willis is Senior Director of the Global Transformation Office at Red Hat. Prior to Red Hat, he was the Director of Ecosystem Development for Docker, which he joined after the company he co-founded (SocketPlane, which focused on SDN for containers) was acquired by Docker in February 2015. Previous to founding SocketPlane in Fall 2014, John was the Chief DevOps Evangelist at Dell, which he joined following the Enstratius acquisition in May 2013. He has also held past executive roles at Chef and Canonical. John was one of the earliest cloud evangelists and is considered one of the founders of the DevOps movement. John is the author of 7 IBM Redbooks. He is also the co-author of the “DevOps Handbook” and “Beyond the Phoenix Project” along with author Gene Kim.
Ernest co-founded ONUG with Nick Lippis after realizing that the user community needed to take control of their own destiny and expedite the network transformation. At the time he was VP of the Internetwork Engineering organization at Fidelity Investments and under his leadership Fidelity hosted the first ONUG in Boston in February 2013.
A 12-year veteran of Fidelity, Ernest was responsible for leading the team that engineered world class network, security, and application delivery services driving value to the customer beyond infrastructure management. Ernest also managed the Network and Voice service portfolio as well as Global Network Operations LAN/WAN teams and has held various technical and leadership roles.
Preetha Vijayakumar is Vice President of Data Center, Network and Collaboration Services in FedEx Services. She joined FedEx in 2001 as a Technical Analyst, focusing on the management of all Internet facing systems. In 2013, she entered into management and assumed leadership roles including Manager and Managing Director responsible for the creation and management of platform architecture solutions for providing platform automation across the FedEx enterprise and spearheading FedEx’s cloud native migration journey.
Guruprasad Ramamoorthy is the, Global Head of Network Architecture, Engineering & Operations and Site Lead for S&P Global India. He has been with the company since 2017 and is a hands-on technology executive with a unique blend of Product Development, Digital Infrastructure, End User Computing and Cybersecurity experience.
Mr. Guruprasad is responsible for plan-build-run functions of our global network that spans across 80+ offices, 10+ on-premise Data Centers and 4+ multi-cloud environments. He also leads various enterprise wide initiatives to rapidly transform our infrastructure to software-defined, re-imagine the edge and strengthen the cybersecurity.
In the last two years, Mr. Guruprasad was responsible for building S&P Global’s Technology center of excellence in India from ground-up while attracting the best talent in the region. The site in India (Hyderabad) accommodates more than 1000 associates and is purpose-built to facilitate innovation by providing employees with access to latest technologies and infrastructure, as well as physical spaces that enable highly collaborative teams.
Mr. Guruprasad represents the company’s commitment to develop talent to deliver new insights, accelerate the speed of operations and value delivery for our customers while establishing S&P Global as the most innovative company. To achieve this, he works closely with the global leaders to enable S&P Global’s product and systems with the help of 1000 + technology associates.
Mr. Guruprasad has about 18 years of experience. He was previously associated with companies such as Visa, BNY Mellon and Sify Technologies.
He completed his Master’s in Business Administration from Madurai Kamaraj University and holds a Bachelor’s in Technology from Anna University.
John Willis is Senior Director of the Global Transformation Office at Red Hat. Prior to Red Hat, he was the Director of Ecosystem Development for Docker, which he joined after the company he co-founded (SocketPlane, which focused on SDN for containers) was acquired by Docker in February 2015. Previous to founding SocketPlane in Fall 2014, John was the Chief DevOps Evangelist at Dell, which he joined following the Enstratius acquisition in May 2013. He has also held past executive roles at Chef and Canonical. John was one of the earliest cloud evangelists and is considered one of the founders of the DevOps movement. John is the author of 7 IBM Redbooks. He is also the co-author of the “DevOps Handbook” and “Beyond the Phoenix Project” along with author Gene Kim.
Sam Gambarin joined Kaiser Permanente in 2010. Over the years he has been providing leadership over numerous functions at Kaiser Permanente. Currently Sam is leading architecture, design, creation, product management, and operations of Application Platform-as-a-Service (aPaaS) and System of Intelligence PaaS at KP. Sam is also responsible for managing multiple platform components to enable development teams to deliver Cloud Native and Cloud Hybrid solutions. He is a key contributor to creation of Shared Technical Services/Digital Foundation framework for Kaiser Permanente.
Sam has more than 20 years of IT experience, including positions at Razorfish, AT&T, Travelocity, and NASA. He is proven results-driven leader unafraid to get involved in the details regarding initiatives concerning strategy, practices, processes, solution-building, and operations.
Sam holds an MBA in information systems and Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the San Francisco State University.
Swamy Kocherlakota is the Chief Information Officer for S&P
Global and is responsible for driving the digital transformation and
delivering productivity improvements for our customers and
employees.
Prior to S&P Global, Mr. Kocherlakota was SVP, Global Head of
Technology Operations & Infrastructure at Visa, Inc. where he
oversaw global infrastructure and applications that processed over
130 billion transactions annually. Before VISA, he was at BNY
Mellon as the head of Global Infrastructure Engineering and
Architecture and led their infrastructure transformation. Mr.
Kocherlakota holds the recognition of being a distinguished
engineer at Lucent Bell Labs where he managed technology for
Lucent and its ventures.
Mr. Kocherlakota is a NASD registered representative and has a
PhD in Computer Science from Michigan State University.
Sean D. Mack is a visionary and innovative technology leader with a history of driving global business strategy and transformation. He has extensive background in all aspects of technology leadership including DevOps, security, cloud, infrastructure, enterprise applications, development, and program management.
Sean is the CIO and CISO at Wiley. Sean has led global teams across a wide range of companies from large financial companies like Experian to innovative tech companies like Etsy. Throughout his career he has held a variety of technology leadership ranging from Vice President of Operations and Applications for Pearson Education to CIO for a start-up in the streaming media space.
Sean has his Bachelor’s degree in Computer and Information Sciences from the University of California and a Masters in Business Administration from Seattle University. Sean was born and raised in New York City and has lived in various places around the world including Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and the UK. He currently lives in New York with his wife and six year old daughter. He likes fitness including martial arts and skiing. He rides a Triumph Thruxton and plays upright bass.
Brendan Welter the Chief Security and Technology Officer at Sterling National Bank, responsible for enterprise-wide technology services, cyber, resiliency and corporate security across the enterprise. He has nearly 20 years of experience focused on building and leading innovative technology, cybersecurity and risk teams within diverse global businesses. Prior to joining Sterling National Bank, Brendan was a Director at Credit Suisse where he held a number of leadership roles, including Global Head of Cyber Security Product Management, Global Head of Cyber Security Operations and Head of Technology Risk Management Governance. Previously, Brendan was with Oliver Wyman Group and NERA Economic Consulting. Brendan earned his BS from Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business and his MS, with distinction, from New York Institute of Technology’s School of Engineering and Computing Sciences. Additionally, Brendan was also a Military-Business Fellow with Madison Policy Forum.
Dr. Douglas E. Comer is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. Formerly, he served as VP of Research at Cisco Systems. As a member of the original IAB, he participated in early work on the Internet, and is internationally recognized as an authority on TCP/IP protocols and Internet technologies.
Dr. Comer has written a series of best-selling technical books on Computer Networks, Internets, Operating Systems, and Computer Architecture. His 3-volume Internetworking series is cited as an authoritative work on Internet protocols and technologies. Dr. Comer’s books have been translated into 16 languages, and are used in industry and academia in many countries.
Dr. Comer consults for industry, and has lectured to thousands of professional engineers and students around the world. For twenty years he was editor-in-chief of the journal Software – Practice and Experience. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the recipient of numerous teaching awards.
Johna Till Johnson is CEO and Founder of Nemertes Research, where she sets research direction and works with strategic clients. Under her leadership, Nemertes has emerged as a leading trusted advisor to Fortune-50 and other world-class organizations. A widely regarded expert, Ms. Johnson currently serves as the content committee chair at the Wall St. Technology Association (WSTA), which provides technology guidance to some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated financial services firms. She regularly speaks at industry trade shows, conferences, and seminars, including Nemertes Navigator360, IDG’s FutureIT, ISC, and (WSTA). She writes regular columns on cybersecurity and IoT for TechTarget. Prior to founding Nemertes in 2002, Ms. Johnson served as chief technology officer (CTO) at Greenwich Technology Partners, a global consulting and engineering firm. Prior to that, she led the Global Networking Strategies Service business unit of META Group. Prior to that, as Senior Technology Editor she oversaw the lab-testing program at Data Communications magazine, providing testing and assessment of up to 16 emerging technologies per year. She also has designed and developed security, speech-synthesis, and free-space laser products at companies including Mosler Security Systems and Digitus Corp. Ms. Johnson holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering/computer science (BSEE/CS) from The Johns Hopkins University, has conducted graduate work in nuclear and particle physics at the University of Rochester, speaks three languages, and has published a science fiction novel. She is an avid urban kayaker and novice woodworker and candymaker.
Greg is the Co-Founder of Packet Pushers Interactive LLC, speaker,co-host of the Packet Pushers Podcast and analyst.
I’m a recovering Network Architect/Engineer who survived 25 years of Corporate IT . You can hire me for contract work, freelance or ad hoc work by the hour.
Packet Pushers is the largest weekly data networking podcast in the world delivering 500K downloads per month.
I’m also professional writer, presenter, speaker and author.
My technical site is EtherealMind.com. Sometimes I speak at events.
As Technical Fellow for FedEx Enterprise Network Architecture, Aryo Kresnadi responsible for setting network architecture guideline, future and solution for FedEx Global Enterprise Network supporting all FedEx information movement to ensure on time delivery for all FedEx packages. Current responsibility for research, design and implementation of the next generation network for FedEx, including: future direction of networking technology, all aspect of SDN architecture, cloud capability, global foot print, WAN architecture/connectivity and next generation network management.
Joining FedEx in 1998, Aryo has been involved in Network Operation Center, network management system and architecture, network compliance (SOX/PCI) area, ITIL process and Network WAN/LAN/DC design, deployment and architecture.
Aryo holds Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from The Ohio State University and Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) from University of Pittsburgh. Aryo currently based in Collierville, TN, the home of FedEx World Technology Center.
Shafeeq Shaikh has over 22 years of experience in the IT industry with a focus on Network Strategy, Roadmaps, Architecture and designs with Fortune 50 companies including Enterprises and Service Providers. He’s a passionate Enterprise Network & Security Executive, leading Global Digital Transformation, driving teams to leverage technology to create pragmatic business solutions that would enrich customer experience. Currently at Johnson&Johnson the worlds largest Healthcare company, Shafeeq is developing and leading NextGen Network – Internet First Borderless Strategy, driving digital transformation by enabling the foundation via SDWAN, Cloud Networks(AWS, Azure, GCP), Cloud Network Security i.e. Secure Access Service Edge and Network Automation.
Previously, Eyal ran Cato’s product management organization where he helped build Cato. He brings more than 20 years of experience in security and networking companies.
Brian is a Network and Cloud Architect at McKesson, one of the oldest and largest healthcare companies in the US and currently operating in 16 countries. He is responsible for linking the needs of their businesses with infrastructure technology so they may serve their customers. This includes architecting and designing networks for McKesson’s global backbone, regional WAN’s, distribution centers, offices, clinics, and pharmacies, in addition to our private and public cloud environments. Areas of recent focus include SD-WAN, multi-cloud public cloud enablement, security for McKesson’s Operational Technology environments, and planning and implementation of our global network organization.
Bruce Pinsky is a Distinguished Engineer in the Product Infrastructure and Reliability Engineering team at Intuit, Inc. with over 25 years of network experience. Mr. Pinsky leads the development of vision and strategy for the network supporting Intuit’s SaaS platform for products such as TurboTax Online and QuickBooks Online.
Mr. Pinsky is a Cisco Certified Architect (CCAr) and is one of the earliest CCIEs (#1045) and CCDEs (#2007::0003).
Mr. Pinsky is co-author of the book Cisco Router Configuration: A Practical Introduction to Cisco IOS Configuration, 1st and 2nd edition and co-inventor of U.S. Patents 6,130,890, 6,870,851, 7,623,528, and 7,969,992, A Method and system for optimizing routing of data packets and U.S. Patent 7,733,798, Evaluation of network data aggregation.
Ravi Rao leads Orchestral with years of experience as a technologist and entrepreneur. He is responsible for defining and delivering Orchestral’s vision of the AI-Driven Autonomous Enterprise.
William Collins is a highly technical strategic thinker and catalyst for innovation. Over his career, he has helped enterprises build large-scale networks, driven modernization through cloud adoption, and excels at optimizing complex environments through good design practices and automation. As Principal Cloud Architect for Alkira, William focuses on evangelizing Alkira, the company reinventing networking for the cloud era. William has held various senior technical roles across Financial Services and Healthcare, most recently as Associate Director of Cloud Architecture at Humana.
Hammad is a Principal Solutions Architect at Aviatrix specializing in multi-cloud networking and security across AWS, Azure, GCP and OCI. Prior to Aviatrix, he has been leading technical teams at VMware on NSX and Kubernetes, at Riverbed and Microsoft.
You can follow him on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloudhammad/) or on Twitter (@cloudhammad).
Brandon Carroll is Director of the Technical Evangelist team at Riverbed. Brandon is passionate about technology and sharing what he knows with the networking community. At Riverbed he leads the Technical Evangelist team to help build public awareness of its NPM, Application Acceleration and SD-WAN solutions. The Technical Evangelist team developed and maintains the SteelDemo platform, a platform that provides enablement for over hundreds of Riverbed and Partner SE’s globally, delivering high-impact live demonstrations, along with video and written technical content. His technical competencies include multi-vendor knowledge including SD-WAN, Unified NPM and emerging technologies. He’s proficient in Firewalls, Cisco IOS, PIX, ASA, and FWSM, MPF, IPSec, IOS Firewall Technologies, Layer2/3 Attack mitigation, Identity Management, NAC, ACS and Cisco ISE, and many other network technologies.
Prior to founding MarketWord in 2006, Mark Fishburn held roles as Managing Director, VP marketing, VP sales, VP market development, technical strategy, and business unit manager with Xerox, Retix, Netcom Systems, Spirent. He has been a board member and chairman of several industry associations and frequent speaker at industry conferences worldwide.
Sam Gambarin joined Kaiser Permanente in 2010. Over the years he has been providing leadership over numerous functions at Kaiser Permanente. Currently Sam is leading architecture, design, creation, product management, and operations of Application Platform-as-a-Service (aPaaS) and System of Intelligence PaaS at KP. Sam is also responsible for managing multiple platform components to enable development teams to deliver Cloud Native and Cloud Hybrid solutions. He is a key contributor to creation of Shared Technical Services/Digital Foundation framework for Kaiser Permanente.
Sam has more than 20 years of IT experience, including positions at Razorfish, AT&T, Travelocity, and NASA. He is proven results-driven leader unafraid to get involved in the details regarding initiatives concerning strategy, practices, processes, solution-building, and operations.
Sam holds an MBA in information systems and Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the San Francisco State University.
Yesim Akdeniz is a senior Managing Director in Citi technology organization and has been responsible to driving significant
transformation across the technology infrastructure landscape over the last 5 years. She has been part of the core leadership team
that has driven 30%+ savings across the operating expense, while significantly modernizing Citigroup’s technology capabilities,
enhancing customer experience, business agility and managing risk.
Citi technology organization supports business operations in 100+ countries that Citi operates in, across multiple lines of business
spanning both Institutional and Retail businesses. The technology engineering organization is designing and deploying industry
leading solutions across the Citi footprint as the bank continues to leverage product and business model innovation to maintain and
increase Citi’s competitive edge in the market place. Yesim is at the forefront of the innovative thinking that CATE (Citigroup
Architecture and Technology Engineering) is delivering.
She has held several senior management positions across Citigroup technology, Yesim has a Masters in Business Administration,
Wilmington College and a Bachelors of Art in Computer Science, East Carolina University.
As one of the senior most women in technology and co-chair of Enterprise O&T Women Leadership Council at Citigroup, Yesim is
actively involved with various ‘Women in Technology’ initiatives, including the Women’s Bond Club and Citigroup sponsorship
programs. Additionally, Yesim was awarded the top 100 CIOs award by the CIO magazine in 2010,
http://www.citigroup.com/citi/press/2010/100603e.htm, and she was inducted into the 42nd Annual YWCA Academy of Women
Leaders on in 2016.
Don is an accomplished leader in successfully developing and executing business and technology strategy.
Don is co-founder and CEO of Concourse, an emerging leader in public cloud management and governance services, as well as a Senior Advisor at McKinsey Corporation.
Don spent 28 years at Goldman Sachs, during which time he held senior leadership roles in Technology in New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Don led the global technology division for Goldman from 2012 to 2016 and was named a partner of the firm in 2006 and Managing Director in 2000. Don was the CIO for Asia Pacific from 2001 to 2006 and served on the Asia management committee. Since relocating to the US in 2006, Don co-chaired the IBD Technology Investment Committee and was a member of the firm’s Firmwide Risk, Market Risk and Business Standards committee.
Don played an integral role in creating Goldman’s business systems architecture, algorithmic trading and risk management platform as well as leading strategic firm wide investments in VDI, Data architecture, AI and Cloud / Software Defined Infrastructure. He also created and led the teams responsible for the development of Symphony and Orbit which were subsequently spun out of the firm as broader industry platforms.
Within the technology industry, Don has been an active and vocal proponent of Open Source and Open Standards communities including acting as a founding board member of the Open Compute Project.
Don and his family reside in New York City where he is actively engaged in education and arts, serving on the board of the New York Foundation for the Arts, Columbia University School of Professional Studies, Marist College board of trustees and Teaching Matters.
Chitra Elango is a Senior Director at FannieMae leading the vulnerability management team. She is an Industry recognized Cyber Security Leader, Innovator and Evangelist in DevSecOps, Application Security and Vulnerability Management. Applying her development knowledge to security has made a huge impact in “moving security to the left”.
Vesko Pehlivanov leads Solution Architecture & Strategy at Sterling National Bank. Sterling National Bank specializes in the delivery of financial services and solutions to business owners, their families and consumers within the communities it serves through teams of dedicated and experienced relationship managers. In this role, Vesko is responsible for providing technical solutions designed to offer effectiveness, efficiency, evolvability, reliability, security, scalability, and resiliency across all security and infrastructure services.
Prior to that, Vesko worked at Credit Suisse for 10 years in various leadership roles in Infrastructure Architecture and Cyber Security across a global footprint of production, non-production and test environments. In his time at CS he introduced emerging technologies and innovative products in software defined networking, network virtualization, data center and cloud networking and security, threat management and incident response, security automation and orchestration, and others. In addition to working closely with Credit Suisse’s engineering and operations teams, Vesko also served as technical advisor to the Technology Investment Banking, Equity Research, and Prime Investments business units.
Vesko has an MS in Computer Science from Columbia University with concentration in Network Systems and Network Security. He is currently based in New York City.
Bruce Pinsky is a Distinguished Engineer in the Product Infrastructure and Reliability Engineering team at Intuit, Inc. with over 25 years of network experience. Mr. Pinsky leads the development of vision and strategy for the network supporting Intuit’s SaaS platform for products such as TurboTax Online and QuickBooks Online.
Mr. Pinsky is a Cisco Certified Architect (CCAr) and is one of the earliest CCIEs (#1045) and CCDEs (#2007::0003).
Mr. Pinsky is co-author of the book Cisco Router Configuration: A Practical Introduction to Cisco IOS Configuration, 1st and 2nd edition and co-inventor of U.S. Patents 6,130,890, 6,870,851, 7,623,528, and 7,969,992, A Method and system for optimizing routing of data packets and U.S. Patent 7,733,798, Evaluation of network data aggregation.
Tim Van Herck is the Director of Technical Product Management at VeloCloud, now part of VMware. He has over 15 years of experience in networking, currently leading his team in strategy and development for training, content, and sales support. Prior to joining VMware, Tim held notable positions with Aryaka Networks, Cisco Systems, and Alcatel/Nokia. He has a Masters in Computer Science from Hogeschool Antwerpen.
Dale Smith heads Orchestral’s revenue operations team. He is responsible for ensuring Orchestral delivers extraordinary customer experiences throughout the lifecycle of customer engagement.
Bob started his career in wireless at Metricom (Ricochet wireless network) developing and deploying wireless mesh networks across the country to connect the first generation of Internet browsers. Following Metricom, Bob co-founded Airespace, a start-up focused on helping enterprises manage the flood of employees bringing unlicensed Wi-Fi technology into their businesses. Following Cisco’s acquisition of Airespace in 2005, Bob became the VP/CTO of Cisco enterprise mobility and drove mobility strategy and investments in the wireless business (e.g. Navini, Cognio, ThinkSmart, Phunware, Wilocity, Meraki). He also drove industry standards such as Hot Spot 2.0 and market efforts such as Cisco’s Connected Mobile Experience. He holds more than 15 patents.
Francesca is a Senior Director on Target’s Cloud and Compute team with 20 years enterprise technology experience. At Target Francesca is focused on driving multi-cloud initiatives as we expand our public cloud footprint, standardize how we build and manage operating systems and establish new patterns, and implement industry best practices for how we manage SDKs and language runtimes. Prior to joining in April 2021 she served in Cloud and Infrastructure leadership roles at Smithfield Foods, GE, The Coca-Cola Co., and Macy’s. Francesca is highly engaged in the Tech community as a proponent of mentoring and coaching diverse tech talent. Outside of work she enjoys travel, exercising and attending sporting events.
Kate is a Senior Engineer on the Target Application Platform (TAP) team in the infrastructure space. Since joining the team in February 2020 she has focused on building the orchestration engine and driving security initiatives for the platform.
Nicole has been with Target for five years primarily focused on Cloud and Security. Recently, she has been working to enable the Target Application Platform (TAP) for Target’s Cloud Providers delivering a cohesive deployment experience across infrastructure platforms. This includes but is not limited to evaluating new cloud providers, securing environments, and designing the right architecture patterns to meet Targets complex retail needs.
Stephani is a senior software engineer on Target’s Server Group Deployment Manager team. She began her engineering career in Target’s technology leadership program in the summer of 2016 after graduating with her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Bemidji State University. She worked on Target’s VMWare service offering. In 2018 she transitioned to the SGDM team. Mentoring and learning from other engineers, interns, new hires, and offshore partners to promote an inclusive work culture is among her passions. Outside of work she enjoys reading old literature, running, golfing, and caring for her two cats.
Ernest co-founded ONUG with Nick Lippis after realizing that the user community needed to take control of their own destiny and expedite the network transformation. At the time he was VP of the Internetwork Engineering organization at Fidelity Investments and under his leadership Fidelity hosted the first ONUG in Boston in February 2013.
A 12-year veteran of Fidelity, Ernest was responsible for leading the team that engineered world class network, security, and application delivery services driving value to the customer beyond infrastructure management. Ernest also managed the Network and Voice service portfolio as well as Global Network Operations LAN/WAN teams and has held various technical and leadership roles.
Mark has over 30 years of technical sales and account management experience in the software and semiconductor industries. For the past decade, his entire focus has been on bringing the benefits of cloud computing to the enterprise. Most recently his cloud vision has expanded to include microservices and DevOps. He passionately believes that the current wave of technology innovation can significantly improve the state of the art in enterprise software application delivery.
Prior to turning to the dark side Mark had 10 years of experience as an embedded software developer. He prides himself on having kept current on the technology front while still being able to find his way around a debugger.
Mark holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University.
Aakash is the CTO of Oak9. He is focused on building foundational security capabilities to help customers transform their security practice and deliver dynamic, comprehensive & risk-appropriate security that enables the velocity of modern software development.
Aakash is a proven leader in cybersecurity. Over his 17 years in the industry, he has held a wide range of roles. He has successfully built & evolved security practices at large organizations to enable new business models and support their digital transformation. He has defined security strategies to enable the adoption of Cloud, AI and IoT. As a security architect, he has architected and implemented security for core products across market verticals, including Healthcare and Defense. Prior to these roles, Aakash conducted cutting-edge security research in trusted computing, tamper resistant systems and critical infrastructure at organizations like MIT Lincoln Labs and Carnegie Mellon. Aakash has contributed to industry standards and taught information security courses.
Aakash holds a M.S. in Information Security from Carnegie Mellon and a B.S. in computer engineering from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Michael Clark has worked in large enterprise computing for over 25 years, first in operations and engineering, and for the past decade in architecture and strategy. He began his career in network and server platform engineering at Bausch & Lomb, where he was instrumental in developing B&L’s global network infrastructure and in launching their first website.
Mike then moved on to Fidelity Investments, where he ultimately took on management of desktop and server operations for Fidelity’s Retail Operations group, merged 19 technology support organizations across the U.S. into 1, and ran network and telecom operations for the Boston region. He spent his final 5 years at Fidelity in the Enterprise Architecture group focused on various platform infrastructure initiatives, including leading the effort to develop a unified server strategy for the firm.
Mike has spent the last 5 years engaged in global professional services activities. He recently became a Partner at Exceptional Leaders International, where his focus is on working with mid-market companies, many of them private-equity owned, to synchronize their business imperatives and technology strategies. He has deep experience in global networking and cloud implementations.
Mike is currently the Technology Industry and IT Consulting Executive at Renaissance Tech & Media. He has been with the company since 2010.
Now Boston-based, Mike hails from Canada, where he received his undergraduate education at The University of Western Ontario. He has since done graduate work at both Brandeis and Harvard.
In his spare time Mike enjoys photography, traveling, and digital audio recording.
