Track Chairs
- Andreas Antonopoulos, SVP and Founding Partner, Nemertes Research
- John Bartlett, SomeTitle, SomeCompany
- Alistair Croll, Principal Analyst, BitCurrent
- Howard Goldstein, Founder, Howard Goldstein Associates, Inc.
- Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, Focus Consulting
- Jeffrey Kaplan, Founder and Managing Director, THINKstrategies
- Eric Krapf, Program Co-Chair, VoiceCon and Editor Business Communications Review
- Craig Mathias, Principal, Farpoint Group
- Jim Metzler,Vice President Ashton, Metzler & Associates
- John Pironti, Chief Information Risk Strategist, Getronics
- Anne Skamarock, Research Director, Focus Consulting
- Rick Sturm, President, Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
- Steve Wylie, General Manager and Conference Director, TechWeb Networks
Data Center/SOA/Green IT Track Chair
Andreas Antonopoulos
SVP and Founding Partner
Nemertes Research
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a Senior Vice President and Founding Partner with Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars and advises key clients. Andreas is a computer scientist, a master of data communications and distributed systems, a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a self-professed geek, with an engineering, programming and consulting background.
Andreas honed his speaking skills in front of audiences ranging in size from five executives in a boardroom to hundreds of people in large conferences. With more than three hundred speaking engagements under his belt he is considered a world-class and charismatic public speaker and teacher.
Before joining Nemertes, Andreas was the Security Practice Director at ThruPoint Inc, where he was responsible for a global team of security consultants who deliver solutions to multinational clients. Prior to ThruPoint he was a Security Practice Lead at Greenwich Technology Partners, where he designed the security architecture of a global wire-transfer network interconnecting the world’s banks.
Telepresence and Video Conferencing
John Bartlett
Voice, Video and Data Application Performance
NetForecast, Inc.
John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments.
John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996.
Prior to working as a consultant, John was a founder and VP of Engineering and Manufacturing at Agile Networks, now part of Lucent Technologies. Under his leadership, the company designed and built a high performance Ethernet switch implementing VLANs, and one of the first commercial ATM switches. Both products were successfully introduced to the market and the firm became profitable before it was acquired. John also served on the IEEE 802.1 committee during this period, and contributed to the development of the IEEE 802.1P and IEEE 802.1Q standards (priority and VLANs.)
John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.
In the Cloud Track Chair
Interop Unconference Organizer
Alistair Croll
Principal Analyst
BitCurrent
Alistair is a senior analyst at research firm Bitcurrent, covering emerging web technologies, networking, and online applications. Prior to Bitcurrent, Alistair co-founded Coradiant, a leader in online user monitoring, as well as research firm Networkshop. He has held product management positions with 3Com Corporation, Primary Access, and Eicon Technology.
Alistair contributes to industry events such as Interop and Web2Expo, and writes for a variety of online publications including GigaOm. He is the author of numerous articles on Internet performance and security, and co-author of Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Applications from Prentice-Hall.
Storage Track Chair
Howard Goldstein
Founder
Howard Goldstein Associates, Inc.
Howard Goldstein has over 30 years' experience in storage, data and telecommunications networking. His background includes positions in technology, management and education with practical technical experience in architecture, design, planning, implementation and operations. His technical focus ranges across various storage network architectures and products including IP storage, iSCSI, SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI, Serial ATA, Fibre Channel, TCP/IP, Gigabit Ethernet, Infiniband, PCI, PCI-X, PCI Express and others.
Goldstein holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts and an M.S. in Telecommunications from Pace University. He is a frequent speaker at Interop and Storage Networking World. He founded Howard Goldstein Associates, Inc. an Education & Technology Company offering instructor led training. Visit www.hgai.com. He provides in-depth skills with his technology-specific classes. His job task approach in his Storage Networking Planning, Design, Performance and Troubleshooting classes provides the skill level required to perform specific job roles in the Storage Networking industry today.
Howard Goldstein has expertise in many aspects of the human side of technology offering innovative consulting and education services on Professional Vitality and Career Development, Adult Learning, and Presentation Development & Delivery Techniques. Howard believes that content and context delivery is as important as content development and is a master of both. Goldstein is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association and serves on the SNIA Education Committee. He has helped develop the SNIA Certification Program as well as other SNIA Education initiatives. He has been active in the publications world as technical editor of Building Storage Networks and Resilient Storage Networks.
Virtualization Track Chair
Barb Goldworm
President and Chief Analyst
Focus Consulting
Barb Goldworm has spent 30 years in systems and storage in various senior management, marketing, sales, technical and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. A frequent speaker at industry events, she also created and chaired Interop’s Network Storage Track. More recently, she was one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW and has been a regular expert speaker for TechTarget Webcasts and Ziff-Davis Summits and E-seminars. She also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization.
Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular columns for Network World and ComputerWorld, as well as numerous business and technical white papers and articles on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. She currently writes a regular column for TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization. In 2007, she published a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" commissioned by Wiley, available on Amazon.com.
Barb brings a unique blend of marketing and technical depth, both strategic and tactical, with experience in product management, product marketing, sales, market research, software development, project management and education.
SaaS Track Chair
Jeffrey Kaplan
Founder and Managing Director
Focus THINKstrategies
Jeff Kaplan is the Founder and Managing Director of THINKstrategies (www.thinkstrategies.com), a strategic consulting firm that helps IT enterprise decision-makers with their sourcing strategies; solution providers with their marketing strategies; and venture firms with their investment strategies.
Kaplan is also the founder of the Managed Service Showplace® (www.msp-showplace.com or www.thinkmsp.com) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Showplace® (www.saas-showplace.com or www.thinksaas.com) free, online directories. THINKstrategies' online directories provide an easy-to-use listing of SaaS solutions by application and MSPs by service category, and extensive information and insight about industry best practices to help organizations fully leverage the growing array of SaaS solutions and managed services.
Prior to forming THINKstrategies, Jeff served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at InterOPS Management Solutions, an Internet Operations Management Services Provider. Before joining InterOPS, Jeff was Director of Strategic Marketing at International Network Services (INS) and subsequently Lucent Technologies, which acquired INS. Jeff also spent thirteen (13) years as a leading industry analyst at IDC, Dataquest and META Group.
Jeff is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and contributing columnist for BusinessWeek, Mass High Tech Journal, Financial Times of London, NetworkWorld, Business Communications Review, ComputerWorld, InfoWorld, InformationWeek, Managing Automation, the Web Hosting Industry Review and Services News on topics ranging from utility computing, managed services, outsourcing strategies, IT operations and service level management (SLM).
Jeff serves as the Site Guide for ITworld’s Utility Computing web portal (www.utilitycomputing.itworld.com) and is the Outsourcing Expert for TechTarget’s SearchCIO (http://searchcio.techtarget.com) and SearchSMB (http://searchsmb.techtarget.com) web portals, as well as the Offshore Outsourcing Best Practices (OOBP) Association, and SmartFundIT.com.
Jeff is also a Senior Advisor to Triple-Tree, LLC; a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium; a member of the SaaScon advisory board, the IT Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), the Software-as-a-Service Executive Committee of Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), and Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. He has also served on the board of directors of AMR Research.
He has a BA in Urban Planning from Rutgers University and MBA from Boston College.
VOIP/Unified Communications Track Chair
Eric Krapf
Program Co-Chair, VoiceCon
Editor, Business Communications Review
Eric Krapf was named editor of Business Communications Review at the beginning of 2004, after serving as the magazine's managing editor since 1996. As editor, he is responsible for all magazine content and production, as well as content for BCR's electronic publishing endeavors. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor at 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.
Wireless and Mobility Track Chair
Craig Mathias
Principal
Farpoint Group
Craig J. Mathias is a Principal with Farpoint Group, a wireless and mobile advisory firm based in Ashland, MA. 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 variety of topics. He is a well-known industry analyst and frequent speaker at industry conferences and trade shows, and is currently a member of the Advisory Boards for the Interop (Las Vegas and New York), Mobile Business Expo (MBX), and WiMAX World conferences. He also serves as a semi-monthly columnist for SearchMobileComputing.com, ardent blogger for Unstrung.com, and weekly columnist for Computerworld.com. He holds an Sc.B. degree in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science from Brown University.
Networking and Services/Application Delivery Track Chair
Jim Metzler
Vice President
Ashton, Metzler & Associates
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.
IT Security/Governance, Risk and Compliance Track Chair
John P. Pironti
CGEIT, CISA, CISM, CISSP, ISSAP, ISSMP
Chief Information Risk Strategist
CompuCom
John P. Pironti is the Chief Information Risk Strategist for CompuCom. He has designed and implemented enterprise wide electronic business solutions, information security programs, and threat and vulnerability management solutions for key customers in a range of industries, including financial services, government, hospitality, aerospace 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 a Information Systems Security Management Professional (ISSMP). He is also a published author and writer, and a frequent speaker on electronic business and security topics at domestic and international industry conferences.
Before joining CompuCom, Mr. Pironti was a Principal Enterprise Solutions Architect and Principal Security Consultant for Unisys, Inc. Prior to that he has held technical and management positions at AT&T and Genuity Inc.
Mr. Pironti has a B.S. degree in imaging systems management from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Virtualization Track Chair
Anne Skamarock
Research Director
Focus Consulting
Anne Skamarock has over 25 years of technical, marketing, research, analysis and consulting experience, as an end-user/administrator, vendor and industry analyst. She has held various technical and marketing positions with SRI, International; Sun Microsystems; StorageTek; EMA; and several successful startups. For the past 10 years, she has focused on systems, storage, networked storage and storage management solutions, and on the intersection points between systems, software and storage. Anne’s expertise encompasses systems, storage and storage networking architectures; virtualization technologies; enterprise management software; data protection solutions; and tape and disk storage solutions. A frequent speaker at conferences, she chaired Interop's Network Storage Track for several years. She was a co-creator as well as Program Manager for the ROI Planning Lab at the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization, and also ran key tutorial sessions on blades and virtualization. In addition to a regular Network World column on storage, Anne also co-authored the book "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" as well as "Storage Solutions: a Buyer's Guide." Anne is currently writing regular tips/articles for TechTarget SearchStorageChannel.
IT Service Management Track Chair
Rick Sturm
Founder and President
Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
For the past 25 years, Rick has been dedicated to the field of information technology. As a former Chief Architect for Network and Systems Management, he witnessed first-hand the challenges of enterprise management. At that time, management platforms were in their infancy. With the advent of the Internet, the landscape of managing enterprise computing and communications had forever changed. Prior to founding EMA, Rick worked in senior IT roles at US West and A.C. Nielsen.
It was at this time that Rick realized how critical it was to effectively manage this technology. Equally important, he saw that not one industry analyst firm was positioned to offer specialized technical information and business guidance about management software and services. As a result, EMA was born.
Throughout his distinguished career, Rick has remained an active figure in the industry. As a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), he was co-chair of the Applications MIB Working Group that developed the standards for managing application software with SNMP. Rick was co-founder of the OpenView Forum and served as its first President and as a member of the Board of Directors. He was also co-founder of the Enterprise Management Institute.
Rick has authored over 100 articles about various aspects of enterprise management that have appeared in leading trade publications, including Network World, Information Week, Computerworld, Network Computing, Data Communications and Internet Week. He was the Technical Editor of The OpenView Advisor and has also co-authored four books, The Foundations of Application Management, Foundations of Service Level Management, SLM Solutions: A Buyer’s Guide and Working with Unicenter TNG. As a recognized and widely quoted authority on management software and services, Rick has regularly spoken at leading industry events in the North America, Australia, Asia and Europe.
B.A., Economics, Allegheny College.
M.B.A., Information Systems, Bowling Green State University.
Enterprise 2.0 Track Chair
Steve Wylie
General Manager and Conference Director
TechWeb Networks
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 CMP Technology. Steve formerly co-chaired CMP's annual Interop conferences in Las Vegas and New York. Prior to running conferences, Steve managed CMP'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.