Keynote Speakers
Jim Whitehurst
President & CEO,
Red Hat
Jim Whitehurst was named President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat in December 2007.
Whitehurst joined Delta Air Lines in 2002, serving in various roles, most recently as Chief Operating Officer, responsible for Operations, Sales and Customer Service, Network and Revenue Management, Marketing and Corporate Strategy. Prior to joining Delta, Whitehurst served as Vice President and Director of The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and held various leadership roles in their Chicago, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Atlanta offices.
A native of Columbus, Ga., Whitehurst graduated from Rice University in Houston, Texas, with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Economics. He also attended Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, holds a general course degree from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Dirk I. Gates
Chief Executive Officer and Founder,
Xirrus
Dirk Gates brings more than 15 years of executive management experience to Xirrus as well as a track record of success evolving a high-tech startup into a world class, publicly traded company. Having founded Xircom, Inc. in 1988 on the premise of delivering Ethernet connectivity to mobile computers, he attracted venture funding from Greylock, grew the company to 2,000 employees, and achieved revenues of $500M and a market cap in excess of $2B. During his tenure as Chairman and CEO, Mr. Gates led Xircom into the wireless arena through partnerships and acquisitions that positioned the company to deliver mobility solutions based on IEEE 802.11, GPRS and BlueTooth technologies. He subsequently negotiated the sale of Xircom to Intel Corp. in March of 2001. Mr. Gates holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from California State University at Northridge and an MBA from Pepperdine University.
Jeff Benck
President & Chief Operating Officer
Emulex
Jeff Benck joined Emulex in May 2008 as executive vice president and chief operating officer (COO) and was subsequently appointed to the position of president and COO in August 2010. Benck oversees the company's engineering, marketing, business development, operations and sales organizations. Benck also plays a key role in contributing to the corporate strategy and is focused on diversifying the Emulex product portfolio and delivering growth through the deployment of converged networking.
Previously, Benck served as president and chief operating officer at QLogic. Prior to joining QLogic, he spent 18 years at IBM, most recently serving as vice president of xSeries, BladeCenter and Retail Store Solutions development. While at IBM, Benck's focus included growth initiatives, product development, marketing and strategy, portfolio management and customer relationships. Benck is widely known for his role in establishing IBM's blade server product line. His BladeCenter team received IBM's highest honor with the IBM Chairman's Award for Client Excellence. Benck holds a Master of Science degree in management of technology from University of Miami and a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology. Benck is also a distinguished inventor in the computer systems field and holds 6 US patents.
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Ben Gibson
Vice President
Data Center/Virtualization Marketing
Cisco
Ben Gibson brings 18+ years of IT industry experience to Cisco Systems, where he currently leads the Cisco Data Center/Virtualization Marketing effort globally. Gibson has been instrumental in key areas of solutions marketing prior to his current role for Cisco inclusive of leading Cisco’s Enterprise Global Marketing Solutions and Program Development and leading Cisco’s Wireless and Mobility Solutions Marketing.
Prior to Cisco, Gibson served as Vice President of Marketing at both Meru Networks and Proxim Corporation, where he led global marketing, communications, investor relations, and channel marketing programs. During his tenures both at Meru and Proxim, Gibson successfully positioned the companies in the emerging voice-over-WLAN and WiMAX markets, launched several new broadband wireless solutions targeting outdoor applications, and developed successful global channel and demand generation programs.
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Dario Zamarian
Networking Platform Vice President and General Manager
Dell Inc.
Dario Zamarian serves as vice president and general manager, Networking Platform, for Dell. In this role, he is responsible for engineering, design, development and marketing of all networking products and solutions.
Prior to joining Dell in 2010, Dario was vice president of Systems and Network Management for the Access Routing Technology Group at Cisco Systems, Inc. He also served as vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Security and Network Management business unit.
Prior to joining Cisco in 2004, Dario held senior leadership roles with several Silicon Valley startup companies, including Servgate Technologies and Securify.
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Keynote Panel
Cloud Computing: The New Platform
Every decade or so, the platforms on which we build change dramatically. We saw this as mainframes gave way to client-server, or as enterprise computing moved to the web. This decade's shift is happening in clouds — from on-premise to on-demand platforms — but also in the network fabric, rich client interfaces, and virtualized infrastructure on which applications are built. This panel brings together the industry's biggest builders of new platforms for a look at how the very fabric of IT is changing beneath us.
Keynote Panelist:
Randy Rowland
Senior Vice President, Product Development
Terremark Worldwide, Inc.
Randy Rowland is the Senior Vice President of Product Development. As part of his role, Mr. Rowland oversees the operation of Terremark’s Infinistructure™ and The Enterprise Cloud utility computing product offerings. Mr. Rowland has more than 14 years of experience in the IT services industry, including eight years with Data Return, where he was most recently responsible for product development. Prior to that, Mr. Rowland previously held senior positions in sales engineering and IT consulting for Data Return and CompuCom. Born in Brawley, California, Mr. Rowland received his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Distribution from Texas A&M University. He lives in the Dallas area with his wife and children.
Keynote Panelist:
Andy Schroepfer
Vice President of Enterprise Strategy
Rackspace Hosting
As VP of Strategy at Rackspace, Andy Schroepfer’s goal is to quicken the pace that businesses see, and act on, the reality that the future of computing is not about servers, but about service. He calls this the Road to ACE (All Cloud Enterprise), where ACE is a business that operates powerfully without servers, by leveraging the most efficient hosting platform (dedicated or cloud) for their custom apps and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications for the rest.
Schroepfer has been the go-to analyst in the hosting industry since its inception in the late 1990s. From his beginnings at Piper Jaffray where he developed and managed the VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol) industry’s primary market statistics, Schroepfer published a 270-page report on the dis-aggregation of communications which sparked his coverage of the Web hosting industry. He then joined Goldman Sachs as VP and Senior Equity Analyst on the Internet Infrastructure Services industry during the time when Equinix, Loudcloud (now HP), and Webex (now Cisco) were executing their IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). In late 2000, Schroepfer founded, led, and later sold Tier 1 Research, the leading specialist research firm on the hosting and data center industry whose insights and data remain best-of-breed. Schroepfer has been a technology investor and founded CagedTweets.com, an archiving firm for social media applications like Facebook and Twitter.
Moderator:
Alistair Croll
Founder
BitCurrent
Alistair is the Founder of Bitcurrent, a research firm that produces content and events on subjects such as cloud computing, human-computer interaction, and emerging technologies as well as the Bitnorth conference. He is also a principal at startup accelerator Rednod, an advisor to several technology venture firms, and a board member of Visible Government. Alistair co-founded web performance management firm Coradiant, as well as Networkshop, the analyst firm from which Coradiant was created. Prior to Networkshop, Alistair worked as a product manager for 3Com Corporation, Primary Access, and Eicon Technology.
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