Gartner IT Infrastructure Operations & Data Center Summit

Ken Albert has worked in the IT industry for 26 years starting with Digital Equipment Corporation in R&D Engineering; Compaq Computer Corp as a Unix & Linux Enterprise Architect and Hewlett Packard as the lead Enterprise Architect for Automation and Orchestration tools into HPs’ Enterprise Accounts. Ken joined Oracle in August 2011 as Director of Strategic Solutions in Oracle’s Systems business working within the Sales Consulting group focusing on championing Oracle’s Automation and Orchestration management tools relating to Oracle infrastructure.

Thomas Bittman is a vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner Research. Mr. Bittman has led the industry in areas such as cloud computing and virtualization. Mr. Bittman was an early pioneer for the concept of private cloud computing, and invented the term "real-time infrastructure," which has been adopted by major vendors and many enterprises as their infrastructure direction. He has served as Gartner's lead analyst covering IBM and Microsoft, and he served for three years as a member of Gartner's Senior Research Board. In 2005, he earned Gartner's Analyst of the Year Award.

Matthew Boon is a managing vice president and group team manager in Gartner Research, with global responsibility for the Technology & Service Provider Research group's Data Center team. Focusing on servers, networking, communications, storage, infrastructure software, IT Security, imaging and print services, and data center transformation the Data Center team covers trends and analysis of the marketplace with respect to data center technologies and issues. Mr. Boon's team of analysts spans the globe, reporting and advising on data center technology and market trends, publishing research, and advising clients on strategic and tactical advantages related to trends in global data center and related markets. Mr. Boon is based in the Gartner office in Sydney, Australia. In addition, Mr. Boon spends time researching and delivering advice and content on data center technology and deployment trends, particularly across the Asia/Pacific region. He is a frequent speaker at Gartner and industry events and is often sought for comment by the IT press on data center technology and market trends.

Michele Caminos is a managing vice president with Gartner Technology and Service Provider research, managing the global team of Imaging and Print Services and Security Services. Previous to this role, Ms. Caminos was a research vice president covering data center transformation. Ms. Caminos has also covered the SMB and channels research area, as well as IT services, within Gartner in the U.S. and Asia/Pacific. Key research areas include vendor strategies, go-to-market strategies and user demands. Ms. Caminos is a regular presenter at local and international IT events and contributes regularly to Australasian and Asia/Pacific computing journals and publications. She resides in Auckland, New Zealand.

David J. Cappuccio is a Managing Vice President and Chief of Research for the Infrastructure teams with Gartner, responsible for research in data center design, construction and cost models, data center futures, servers, power/cooling, green IT, and data center consolidation and migration strategies. Mr. Cappuccio's experience extends more than 43 years in the technology arena, including financial services, IT operations, market research and management consulting. Starting in 1992, he spent 10 years at Gartner in various research and executive roles, including Group Vice President and General Manager of Gartner's worldwide Research organization.

Roger Cox is a research vice president in Gartner Research, where he is part of the Data Center Convergence research team. His focus encompasses disk storage systems, technology and market views. During his career with Gartner, Mr. Cox has worked with all the leading and many of the emerging storage companies, assisting them to develop winning product and go-to-market strategies, as well as compelling product positioning and messaging strategies. In addition to handling hundreds of inquiries annually from end users, investment and vendor clients, he is responsible for developing credible vendor market share and forecast reports for the external controller-based disk storage market. Mr. Cox is Gartner's lead analyst for EMC as well as the lead author for many Gartner-branded research documents, including SWOT reports for EMC, NetApp and IBM.

David Coyle is a Managing Vice President in Gartner Research, responsible for leading the Infrastructure Software team. Team coverage includes market share and forecast analysis in application development, application infrastructure and middleware, database management, IT operations management, storage management, cloud management, and virtualization. Mr. Coyle helps clients understand the best practices, leading trends and competitive landscape involved with optimizing data center and infrastructure and operations management. His focus is on ITSM, IT operations management (especially IT service desk) and ITIL best practices.

Monte Davis is an entrepreneur with experience in new venture creation and financing. His role as COO of NTT Communications has given him experience in transaction advisory as well as strategic consulting to newly formed enterprises both in established and emerging markets globally. Monte's interest and experience is in research in management with a focus on entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Sid Deshpande is a Senior Analyst in the data center infrastructure and management team. He advises vendors, service providers and end users on data center infrastructure strategies, with a focus on storage and cloud deployments. He is strongly focused on emerging technology areas such as cloud storage, infrastructure as a service and big data. Mr. Deshpande advises IT vendors, channel partners and data center hosters on their cloud infrastructure strategies.

A recognized leader in enterprise solutions go-to-market for more than a decade, Giuliano Di Vitantonio is Vice President of Data Center and Cloud Marketing at Cisco. In this role, he leads global marketing for the Cisco portfolio of products and solutions that target the data center and cloud infrastructure markets, across the enterprise and service provider segments. He is a core team member of Cisco’s Data Center Board and Cisco’s Cloud Board, which drive innovation and customer value as Cisco customers move to adopt new computing models. Di Vitantonio has been with Cisco since 2011. Prior to Cisco he spent 17 years at Hewlett-Packard, where he held leadership positions in marketing, strategy, business development and R&D. In his last role at Hewlett-Packard, Di Vitantonio led Marketing and Strategic Alliances for Business Intelligence Solutions (BIS), where he was responsible for all aspects of global and regional marketing for BIS, including strategic alliances with SAP Business Objects, Microsoft BI, SAS Institute, and Informatica, among others. Previously, Di Vitantonio led Hewlett-Packard Worldwide Enterprise Solutions, comprising the pan-company programs that span hardware, software, and services. As part of this role, he led marketing for Service Management, Application Modernization, Information Optimization, and Data Center Transformation, which won the ITSMA Marketing Excellence Gold Award for Best New Solution in 2008. In prior roles, Di Vitantonio served as a strategy director and business development director in the Office of Strategy and Technology, and was a senior research manager at Hewlett-Packard Labs where he was responsible for research management and innovation incubation. Di Vitantonio’s business and technical expertise includes business value analysis of technology investments, solutions strategy, IT governance, and IT sourcing models. He has been published widely in industry and technical journals, and has been a visiting lecturer at St Mary’s College, ENST Bretagne, and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. Di Vitantonio has a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bologna, with a major in Telecommunications, and an MBA from the London Business School. He has lived and worked in five different countries and is currently based in San Jose, California.

A recognized leader in enterprise solutions go-to-market for more than a decade, Giuliano Di Vitantonio is Vice President of Data Center and Cloud Marketing at Cisco. In this role, he leads global marketing for the Cisco portfolio of products and solutions that target the data center and cloud infrastructure markets, across the enterprise and service provider segments. He is a core team member of Cisco’s Data Center Board and Cisco’s Cloud Board, which drive innovation and customer value as Cisco customers move to adopt new computing models. Di Vitantonio has been with Cisco since 2011. Prior to Cisco he spent 17 years at Hewlett-Packard, where he held leadership positions in marketing, strategy, business development and R&D. In his last role at Hewlett-Packard, Di Vitantonio led Marketing and Strategic Alliances for Business Intelligence Solutions (BIS), where he was responsible for all aspects of global and regional marketing for BIS, including strategic alliances with SAP Business Objects, Microsoft BI, SAS Institute, and Informatica, among others. Previously, Di Vitantonio led Hewlett-Packard Worldwide Enterprise Solutions, comprising the pan-company programs that span hardware, software, and services. As part of this role, he led marketing for Service Management, Application Modernization, Information Optimization, and Data Center Transformation, which won the ITSMA Marketing Excellence Gold Award for Best New Solution in 2008. In prior roles, Di Vitantonio served as a strategy director and business development director in the Office of Strategy and Technology, and was a senior research manager at Hewlett-Packard Labs where he was responsible for research management and innovation incubation. Di Vitantonio’s business and technical expertise includes business value analysis of technology investments, solutions strategy, IT governance, and IT sourcing models. He has been published widely in industry and technical journals, and has been a visiting lecturer at St Mary’s College, ENST Bretagne, and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. Di Vitantonio has a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bologna, with a major in Telecommunications, and an MBA from the London Business School. He has lived and worked in five different countries and is currently based in San Jose, California.

Cameron Haight is a Vice President in Gartner Research. His primary research focus is on the emerging IT philosophy known as DevOps and associated technologies, processes and organizational structures. He is also developing the concept of the "cloud operating model," which seeks to enable enterprises to develop capabilities typically found only in large cloud services providers, such as Amazon and Google.

Eric Hennessey is a Business Continuity Solutions Evangelist with Symantec’s Information Management Group. His area of expertise for more than 10 years has been in the area of high availability and disaster recovery and he speaks frequently on the topic at industry events. Eric joined Symantec (then Veritas Software) in 1999 as an enterprise solutions architect in the professional services group and has designed and implemented high availability and automated disaster recovery solutions for some of the most mission-critical applications in finance, telecommunications and national security systems. Eric has a diverse IT background including 27 years combined active and reserve time with the US Air Force and time in the insurance, defense contracting and computer software industries.

Rob James is the Chief Technology Officer of Echo Entertainment, which owns and operates 4 Casino properties within Australia. Rob is responsible for architecture, innovation and strategy across the organisation and has been instrumental in delivering a "Mobility First" strategy across the enterprise. Prior to joining Echo, Rob worked with a series of Start-Ups including Posse.com, Spacio.us and Museek where he drove the engineering and product development teams. This included a successful IP sale to Cisco and acquisition to Global One Publishing. Rob has over 15 years of experience in technology innovation and currently sits on advisory boards for several technology start-ups.

Leena Joshi is Sr.Director, Solutions Marketing at Splunk. She is responsible for marketing Splunk solutions for IT Operations and Applications management professionals. She is passionate about the use of Splunk to solve operational problems that no one else can. Notable apps from Splunk that solve challenging datacenter problems are the Splunk Apps for virtualization technologies (Vmware, XenServer, XenDesktop, XenApp) and associated infrastructure technologies like NetApp/UCS and more. Leena has been a Splunker for over 3 years and before that, she spent over four years with VMware product management and product marketing. Prior to that she held positions at Intel & Accenture.

Annette Jump is a Research Director in Gartner Research, where she is part of the Worldwide Consumer Technology and Markets team and the backup agenda manager for Consumer Dynamics research agenda. Her areas of expertise include brand valuations with Gartner's Brand Strength Index methodology, understanding what consumers want and the underlying trends shaping consumer behavior, consumer device adoption, and the purchase and usage of digital media and technologies. Her additional areas of expertise are the mature and emerging PC and tablet markets in EMEA. She is the leading analyst behind client operating systems worldwide research and forecast and looks at Windows, Mac OS and Linux adoption and migrations in the market.

Paul is not your ordinary IT manager, nor does he lead an ordinary IT team. With an affable personality and endearing sense of humour, Paul manages to bring a spark and fun attitude to the too often mundane and jargon-driven world of information technology. But this easy-going nature is no reflection on his passion and skill in this fast-paced and ever changing world. With over 16 years commercial Internet experience in Australia and the UK and an MBA from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Paul’s strong technical background combined with management skills help to ensure projects are delivered with a high degree of quality and innovation, along with his trademark passion and enthusiasm. “Commander Keen” as he is affectionately known at RedBalloon, is responsible for all IT-related activity within the business, including development, network infrastructure, hosting, phone systems, security and business strategy. In just over 12 months behind the Big Red Door, Paul has racked up a host of achievements. These include the installation and customisation of an open-source back office ERP system; a customer-focussed big data project - extracting, linking and repurposing tools to have one consolidated view of customer interactions with the brand; refining the Agile project management governance with best practice initiatives with a commitment rate averaging 95%; replacement of PBX, Internet connection and email to a fault tolerant architecture; and most recent and perhaps most notably, migration from dedicated hosting to cloud-based Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of very few Australian businesses to have done so. Reporting directly to the CEO, Paul is part of the senior RedBalloon leadership team, and is leading his team to provide strategic initiatives to help the business reach its “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” of hitting $100 million in revenue by 2015.

Rakesh Kumar is a vice president in Gartner Research, where he specializes in enterprise infrastructure and operations strategies. With more than 23 years of international experience, Mr. Kumar is a recognized leader in data center architectures, infrastructure, high availability and operational processes. Mr. Kumar is also leading the research in data center power and cooling issues and is an established international authority in environmental and "green" IT strategies. He has worked with the European Union and various governments around the world on energy-related technology issues. Mr. Kumar has spent considerable time in India working with many companies and government departments. He is one of the world's foremost experts on the development of core IT infrastructure in India.

Craig Lindley is an experienced Senior IT Executive of up to 90 onshore and offshore people in the Utility, IT System Integration, Mining & Oil, Primary industries. Craig commenced his career as a Cadet Computer Systems officer with the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1979 where his first job was to write a compiler for a new computer language. Craig subsequently worked for a number of blue chip companies including Australian Wheat Board, BP Australia, Ferntree/GE Capital IT Solution/CSC before joining ComTech/DiData. In 2002 Craig joined Yarra Valley Water as a Program Manager to establish a program management practice. Craig is currently IT Operations manager at Yarra Valley Water where he is responsible for the operations, maintenance and support of all IT Systems, sourcing and procurement of IT products and services, the management of IT Vendors in addition to service desk, desktop and technical services. Craig led a Price Benchmark review in 2010 and an IT Sourcing Strategy in 2011. He subsequently insourced all application support and infrastructure services from a major outsourcing company 6 weeks ahead of time, under budget, without dropping service and resulting in a top 2 box increase in customer satisfaction from 30% to 78% and a $1.5M OPEX reduction. Craig is also leading a multi-year program to transfer all YVW production services to a Tier 3 Data Centre to radically improve the DR capabilities and substantially reduce RTO and RPO. At the same time YVW is building a new computer room at their campus for their Dev, Test and Pre-prod systems. In his spare time Craig is currently completing an MBA at the Australian Institute of Business and renovating a holiday home at Rye. Craig also has completed an Advanced Diploma of Project Management, Graduate Diploma of Data Processing and a Bachelor of Science and is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt.

Ian Macalpine is a highly experienced senior IT executive, with a career spanning nearly three decades in the customer side of the industry delivering data centre infrastructure and networks to the Insurance, Investment Banking and Retail industries. In 2007, after working for companies such as ING and Macquarie Bank, Ian took on the role of Head of Infrastructure for Woolworths Limited, Australia’s largest retailer Over the next four years Ian led infrastructure delivery to Woolworths, delivered a >$100m data centre program and led a transformation in how Woolworths’ very large data and voice services were delivered.

Angus MacDonald consults to Oracle's customers and partners about the application and implementation of enterprise-wide architectures. He is a 19 year veteran of Sun and has worked for a number of vendors over the years, as well as being the "customer from hell" to some of these same vendors in the early days of his career! Data Centre technologies, infrastructure and management have been a major focus for Angus and with over 30 years’ IT experience Angus has a strong understanding of the industry and has successfully helped many customers achieve their business goals via the adoption of innovative technologies.

Angus MacDonald is responsible for articulating Oracle's Systems product strategy and roadmap, collecting customer feedback and requirements, and driving the adoption of Oracle's Systems technologies. He consults to Oracle's customers and partners about the application and implementation of enterprise-wide architectures. Angus has come to Oracle through the Sun acquisition, being a 16-year Sun veteran who had worked in various customer-facing positions within Sun Australia and New Zealand. Prior to his tenure with Sun Microsystems, Angus worked for a number of Systems vendors, including Fujitsu, ICL and Prime Computers. Angus also spent 10 years with CSR where he learned a different and important perspective as an IT customer. With over 30 years’ IT experience as an application developer and architect, and in the vendor environment, Angus has a strong understanding of the industry. Over this time, Angus has successfully helped many customers achieve their business goals via the adoption of innovative technologies.

With more than 15 years of professional experience in Enterprise Class Technologies for Global 2000 companies. Recognized IT Operations, process and methodology expert, with a strong background in running global operations organizations, process design and implementation, architecture platforms and offshoring initiatives. Chris has an established track record and experience of managing enterprise level projects, implementing solutions with global reach and structure. Chris’s experience speaks to his ability as both a strategist and organizational leader.

Errol Rasit covers data center infrastructure and management, specializing in user and provider advice regarding data center system technologies, infrastructure virtualization, cloud computing and infrastructure convergence. His background includes database and Web development, IT services and operations assurance, and IT demand forecasting, as well as project and sales management.

John Roberts is a Research Vice President and Distinguished Analyst with Gartner's CIO and Executive Leadership research team. He specializes in helping CIOs and IT leaders develop effective IT strategies that contribute to business transformation. Mr. Roberts conducts research and provides advice and support for Gartner clients on IT strategies and governance, business value of IT, improving business processes, restructuring application portfolios, IT organization management strategies and skills, and IT performance metrics and satisfaction surveys. Mr. Roberts is based in Australia and travels extensively across Asia/Pacific.

Joe Skorupa's research centers on advanced network architectures, focusing on converged infrastructures, (fabric-based infrastructure), network virtualization/SDN/OpenFlow and FCoE. Mr. Skorupa also specializes in maximizing application performance via application delivery controllers (Layer 4-7 switching), Web front-end optimization and WAN optimization. In 2011, Mr. Skorupa led a team of 15 Gartner analysts who developed breakthrough scenario-planning-based research on the future of the data center market. He also advises vendors on product, market and partnership strategies and mergers/acquisitions. Through extensive collaboration, Mr. Skorupa's research extends to intersections between networking and business continuity/disaster recovery, application development, unified communications, storage, and data center optimization.

Damien Spillane is the Head of Engineering for Digital Realty Australia. He joined Digital Realty in June 2011 and is responsible for providing data centre solutions for Digital Realty’s properties in Sydney and Melbourne. His role involves developing technical solutions, cost-engineering and profitability models for customers, consultants and prospects in the Australian market. Mr Spillane has also worked for data centre design and engineering companies such as APC, sineQN, ISG and Cundall. Mr Spillane has a BSC in Building Services Engineering from Trinity College in Dublin Ireland and a Diploma in Engineering, Building Services Engineering from Dublin Institute of Technology.

Michael Warrilow is a Research Director and part of the Technology and Service Provider team. He is focused on infrastructure software, including virtualization, cloud and IT operations. Mr. Warrilow's coverage includes market share and forecast analysis in IT operations management, cloud management and virtualization. He helps clients understand the best practices, leading trends and competitive landscape involved with optimizing data center infrastructure and operations management. His focus is on the evolution of modern infrastructure software, including virtualization and cloud.

Andrew has a passion for service excellence which ensures that IT goals are aligned to the strategic direction of his organisation, reducing costs and improving overall efficiency. Andrew's current role as the Head of Service Enablement at Australia Post draws on his ability to collaborate and lead a customer centric service transformation. Throughout his career, he has delivered sustainable benefits realisation through maximising technology investments for the long term whilst lowering the overall risk profile of the business. Andrew has demonstrated abilities in delivering organisational change through the execution of in-sourcing IT Services in a mission critical 24x7 environment. Andrew identifies his specialty as the ability to build & lead high performing teams, through mentoring and coaching people ensuring they are empowered to own the outcome. This is substantiated by the performance of his teams, who have delivered record volumes of change within organisations who have embarked upon billion dollar growth strategies. Andrew took a lead role in ensuring the success of the Tabcorp/Echo Entertainment demerger which was awarded the National Category Winner - Information Technology at the AIPM Project Management Achievement Awards. Andrew has presented to both national and international audiences, most recently at the Knowledge12 Conference in New Orleans (2012).

Craig was appointed Chief Information Officer for Service Stream in March 2012. Craig’s mandate as CIO is deliver and execute a conjoined Business and ICT plan and operational service management across the Business. Craig’s experience extends from mining/resources, media, telecommunications, government, and banking and finance. Craig has achieved significant results throughout his career, leading global business transformations, management of large scale customer facing operations (National & International) and has provided Management Consulting to many well known ASX listed and global organisations.