Workshops

Robin Gareiss is Executive Vice President and Senior Founding Partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research product development, conducts primary research, and advises leading enterprises, vendors, and carriers. She serves as chief financial officer, as well.

For the past 21 years, Robin has advised hundreds of senior IT executives, ranging in size from Fortune 100 to Fortune 2000, analyzing their use of mobile technologies, communications services, and UC architectures. She also has developed industry-leading, interactive cost models for some of the world's largest enterprises and vendors.

Robin is a widely recognized expert in the communications field, with specialty areas of mobility, collaboration, managed/hosted communications services, and branch-office technologies. She is a sought-after speaker at conferences and trade shows, presenting at events such as Navigator360, IDG’s IT Roadmap, Enterprise Connect, Enterprise 2.0, Citrix Synergy, Interop, Mobile Business Expo, and CeBit. She also writes the IT Transformation blog for No Jitter.

Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst, who specializes in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking field and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID.

A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. His clients have included: AT&T, Sprint, Foundation Capital, IBM, RIM, Prudential Insurance, McGraw-Hill, and Merrill Lynch.

A prolific writer, for twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal.

Well respected as an educator, Mr. Finneran has conducted over 2000 seminars on networking topics in the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He taught in the Graduate Telecommunications program at Pace University, and conducted programs at the Center for the Study of Data Processing at Washington University in St. Louis. His programs are now offered through Telecom+UC Training.

A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

David (Dave) S. Linthicum is a Cloud Computing Expert and an internationally recognized industry expert and thought leader, and the author and coauthor of 13 books on computing, including the best-selling "Enterprise Application Integration" (Addison Wesley). Dave keynotes at many leading technology conferences on cloud computing, SOA, Enterprise Application Integration, and enterprise architecture, and has appeared on a number of TV and radio shows as a computing expert. Dave's latest book is "Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise, a Step-by-Step Approach.

John Custy has more than twenty-five years of experience designing, developing, and implementing IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, both as a practitioner and as a consultant. He has helped many organizations develop their service strategies and translate these strategies into functional business outcomes, resulting in improved IT and Service Management practices. John is a well-known speaker on service management and is an active contributor to service management programs.
John received his BS from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and his MS in innovation and technology from Boston University. He is a member of the HDI Faculty and an ITIL-certified Practitioner and Service Manager, holding ITIL Expert, Lifecycle, and Capability certifications as well as ISO/IEC 20000 and ISO/IEC 27002 certifications. In addition, John has been recognized by itSMF as a Distinguished Professional in Service Management (DPSM).

Tom Randall is a Vice President with BT Americas. Having been both a CIO as well as running a data center on Wall Street, he understands what it takes to make IT successful in supporting enterprise business objectives.

Barb Goldworm is founder, president, and chief analyst of FOCUS, a research, analyst, and consulting firm focused on transformational technologies in virtualization, cloud computing, systems and storage. In addition to serving as Virtualization Track Chair for Interop, she also leads the Enterprise Cloud Summit Private Cloud and Desktop Transformation Workshops, as well as the Private Cloud Track and Workshop for CloudConnect. Barb has spent 30 years in various senior management, engineering, marketing, sales, and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and multiple successful startups.

A keynote speaker at hundreds of virtualization, cloud, datacenter and storage events, she has also been one of the top three rated speakers at Data Center Decisions and Storage Networking World. She also chaired the original Interop Storage Networking Track, and the Blade Systems Insight and Server Blade Summit events.

Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular expert columns for Network World, ComputerWorld, Tech Target and others, authoring hundreds of business and technical white papers, market research reports, user surveys, and articles, as well as the Wiley book"Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" available on Amazon.

Barb started with virtualization on mainframes in the 1970s, delivered the industry’s first PC Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) Solution in the late 1980s, was a SAN thought leader in the 1990s, a blades and virtualization thought leader and book author in the 2000s, and now focuses on cloud, datacenter and desktop transformation.

Mike Pennacchi is owner of Network Protocol Specialists, a network analysis and training company based in Seattle, Washington. His company specializes in analyzing network performance problems for companies throughout the United States. He has taught at Interop since 1997 and has received the event's Instructor Award as highest ranking instructor several of those years. Mike brings his experience as a network analyst into the classroom and assists students in understanding how to fix problems in their own networks.

Tony Byrne is the founder of Real Story Group. RSG is a vendor-averse analyst firm that evaluates content and collaboration technologies, publishing hard-hitting research that compares different solutions head-to-head.

Tony a former journalist, and a 20-year technology industry veteran. Prior to founding RSG in 2001, he managed an engineering team at a systems integration firm. He now focuses his own research on Enterprise Community and Collaboration software, SharePoint, and Digital Marketing.

Tony leads a team of analysts who offer practical, research-based advice to enterprise subscribers from major enterprises around the globe.

Ivan Pepelnjak, CCIE#1354 Emeritus, is the chief technology advisor at NIL Data Communications. He has been designing and implementing large-scale service provider and enterprise networks as well as teaching and writing books about advanced technologies since 1990. He’s author of several Cisco Press books, prolific blogger and author of a series of highly successful webinars.