Track Chairs

Alistair is the principal analyst at BitCurrent; an executive at CloudOps; an advisor to various technology venture firms; the founder of the Bitnorth conference; and the founder of the Human 2.0 blog on emerging technologies.

Prior to Bitcurrent, Alistair co-founded startup accelerator Rednod; web performance management firm Coradiant; and Networkshop, a research firm. He has also worked as a product manager for 3Com Corporation, Primary Access, and Eicon Technology. Alistair is the content chair for Cloud Connect, the industry's largest cloud computing event; the track chair for cloud computing and the Enterprise Cloud Summit at Interop; and the co-chair of O'Reilly Strata.

Alistair is a frequent contributor to a range of technology publications. He has taught at industry conferences such as Web2Expo, IGT, Interop, Structure, Enterprise 2.0, Velocity, Mesh, and eMetrics. He is also the co-author of Web Operations (2010, O'Reilly), Complete Web Monitoring (2009, O'Reilly) and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks (1999, Prentice-Hall).

Mike is Editor of Network Computing. He has been with TechWeb for over 11 years and has extensive experience evaluating enterprise remote access, security, and network infrastructure products. He previously was Lead Analyst with InformationWeek Analytics, Senior Technology Editor with Network Computing and Executive Editor for Secure Enterprise. He has spoken at several conferences including Interop, MISTI, the Internet Security Conference, as well as to local groups. He also teaches a network security graduate course at Syracuse University. Prior to Network Computing, Mike was an independent consultant.

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.

Dr. Phil Hippensteel is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Penn State University. He is an active industry consultant that has worked with major firms across the U.S. and Canada. His clients include manufacturers of test equipment such as Fluke, Agilent and Network Instruments. He has also worked with large multinational firms such as Hershey Foods, Avaya, Cisco and IBM. Over the last two decades he had taught nearly ten thousand students across 27 states. He is a regular presenter at trade shows. Currently he is a frequent contributor to Information Week and AV Technology magazines.

Eric Krapf is co-chair of the Enterprise Connect events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Communications as a Service marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, TechWeb's online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Communications as a Service industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine's editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America's Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas.

Craig J. Mathias is a Principal with Farpoint Group, a wireless and mobile advisory firm based in Ashland, MA. Founded in 1991, the company works with manufacturers, network operators, enterprises, and the financial community in technology assessment and analysis, strategy development, product specification and design, product marketing, program management, education and training, and the integration of emerging technologies into new and existing business operations, across a broad range of markets and applications. Craig is an internationally-recognized expert on wireless communications and mobile computing technologies, and has published numerous technical and overview articles on a wide variety of topics. He is a well-known and often-quoted industry analyst and frequent speaker at industry conferences and events, as well as Webcasts, Webinars, and podcasts. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the INTEROP conferences (Las Vegas and New York) and is the Chair of the Wireless and Mobility track. He serves as a monthly columnist for InformationWeek.com and the Enterprise Mobility Foundation (theemf.org), and ardent blogger ("Nearpoints") for networkworld.com. Craig holds an Sc.B. degree in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science from Brown University.

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

John P. Pironti is the President of IP Architects, LLC. He has designed and implemented enterprise wide electronic business solutions, information security and risk management programs, business resiliency capabilities, and threat and vulnerability management solutions for key customers in a range of industries, including financial services, energy, government, hospitality, aerospace, media and entertainment, and information technology on a global scale. Mr. Pironti has a number of industry certifications including Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Information Systems Security Architecture Professional and (ISSAP) and Information Systems Security Management Professional (ISSMP). He is also a published author and writer, highly quoted and often interviewed by global media, and a frequent speaker on electronic business and security topics at domestic and international industry conferences.

Steve Wylie is the General Manager and Conference Director for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference and Mobile Business Expo, both of which are produced by UBM TechWeb. Steve formerly co-chaired UBM TechWeb's annual Interop conferences in Las Vegas and New York. Prior to running conferences, Steve managed UBM TechWeb's renowned InteropNet, including a multi-vendor test lab geared to evaluate, improve and showcase early implementations of open-standard IT infrastructure technologies. Steve is based in San Francisco, California.