Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit

Merv Adrian is an Analyst following database, big data, NoSQL and adjacent technologies as extreme information processing transforms assumptions about how to activate unused information assets. He also monitors the way the software/hardware boundary for information platforms is shifting as more processing moves into the hardware layer and appliances change purchasing patterns.

Kishore is a trusted executive level IT strategist and technologist with extensive experience implementing Information Management & BI projects for fortune 500 corporations such as Sodexo, HP, CVS Caremark, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Kraft, Citibank, Heinz, Unisys etc. Kishore has a very strong consulting background, leading large Practices. His focus is on improving business outcomes using technology and the power of motivated teams. Kishore has an MBA in Finance & Marketing and has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from India. Kishore’s experience spans across various industries and countries and his understanding of culture of organizations have always made him a successful change agent and a goal-achiever.

Sanjeev Aggarwal is a Database and BI Technical Architect for Markets & International Banking. He is responsible for database design, technology road map, and application architecture, along with his contribution to the overall big data analytics program at RBS. He has more than 21 years of experience in IT, including software development, technical project management, account management, business analysis, systems implementation, and architecture. With 10+ years in Application and Solution Database Architecture plus 11 years Financial Services, Mr. Aggarwal’s experience as a consultant and corporate technology strategist give him a practical, proactive perspective.

Before co-founding Cloudera in 2008, Amr (@awadallah) was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Accel Partners. Prior to joining Accel he served as Vice President of Product Intelligence Engineering at Yahoo!, and ran one of the very first organizations to use Hadoop for data analysis and business intelligence. Amr joined Yahoo after they acquired his first startup, VivaSmart, in July of 2000. Amr holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University, Egypt, and a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

In the 90’s, Mr. Battas led a team which created some of the earliest Very Large Databases (VLDBs) for data analytics in the telecommunications industry and since that time he has been a veteran of many very large BI implementations. He speaks internationally on the topic of data integration and holds several patents in the areas of Relational Database, parallel query optimization and real time information architectures. In 1995, he co-authored the book with Bill Inmon (known as the father of the data warehouse) which created and defined the construct of an Operational Data Store. Mr. Battas has led engineering teams in the creation of DBMS software, acted as CTO of our IM and BI practice and most recently worked as CTO for our internal IT organization where he helped construct a 1.5PB analytics infrastructure. He is currently the Chief Technologist for Data Management within HP’s Enterprise Servers Storage and Networking group focusing on emerging database technology. Mr. Battas holds a degree in Decision Sciences from Indiana University.

Ian Bertram is the Global Manager of the Analytics and Business Intelligence Research team, plus he holds the title of Head of Research for Asia/Pacific. Mr. Bertram leads a team of analysts who focus on the analytics, business intelligence and performance management market. The areas of coverage are topics such as business intelligence strategy and platforms, intelligent business operations, corporate performance management, content analytics, business activity monitoring and business analytics competency centers. The analysts within this team cover various countries across the globe, publishing research and advising clients on strategic and tactical advantages with respect to trends in business intelligence and information management. Mr. Bertram is based in Gartner's Sydney office.

As a Research Vice President, Mark A. Beyer is the co-lead for Big Data research where he researches practical use cases in this area. He also covers traditional data warehousing, data integration and information management practices. Mr. Beyer's work in information management, big data and data warehouse/analytics allows him to complete cooperative research in the business process management, SOA and application integration fields. With all of this cross-over, he also covers metadata management to a depth well beyond design time documentation and research the use of "active" metadata.

Tapan Bhatt is responsible for driving the go-to-market strategy for Splunk in business analytics. He has over 12 years of experience in product marketing, product management and business development. Prior to joining Splunk, Tapan was the responsible for product and corporate marketing at Vendavo, a price management and analytics software provider. Tapan also spent time at Siebel, where he worked on the Siebel analytics applications. He has a MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.

Is a Sr. Director, Strategy and Portfolio for Information Management and Analytics within HP Enterprise Services – He has several years of experience in the Travel and Transportation and Automotive industries, having managed several of HP’s products and services in the past including leverage of cloud platforms. Ashim has more than 20 years of leadership experience in leveraging IT solutions to provide business value in Customer Services, Supply Chain and Product Lifecycle Management in multiple industries, working at both established companies such as Autodesk and i2 and successful startups that were acquired. He started his career developing information optimization solutions for NASA. He is passionate about knowledge based decision making in the age of the information economy. Ashim holds a PhD in computer science (artificial intelligence) from the University of Minnesota, a Masters degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston and a Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology in India.

Stephen Brobst is the CTO at Teradata. Previously, he founded three start-up companies (one acquired by IBM, one acquired by NCR, and one IPO). Stephen performed his Masters and PhD research at the MIT in the area of high performance parallel processing. He also completed an MBA with joint course and thesis work at the Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management. Stephen was appointed to Barack Obama's Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) where he focused on Big Data strategy across all federal agencies.

As the VP of eBusiness for HP Autonomy, Dan Burke is responsible for providing subject matter expertise along our Big Data Analytics solution, with a focus on multichannel analytics and how it relates to Business Discovery. Before joining HP Autonomy, Dan held senior marketing roles within established financial brands such as Fidelity. He is a specialist in the area of multichannel analytics and in this session will offer advice on how your company can better monetize your various information assets. His presentation will focus on extracting actionable insights to feed into your business activity from both structured and unstructured behavioral data types.

Frank Buytendijk is a Gartner Research VP, covering information management. Within this broad topic, Mr. Buytendijk specializes in information management strategies, big data and analytics. He recently developed a special interest in semantic technologies. Next to his responsibilities at Gartner, Mr. Buytendijk is also a visiting Fellow at Cranfield University School of Management and a regular guest lecturer at the London School of Economics.

French Caldwell is a Vice President and Gartner Fellow in Gartner Research, where he leads governance, risk and compliance research. Mr. Caldwell advises executive clients and program managers of Global 2000 companies and government agencies on strategies, markets, public policy and processes. He leads strategic research and advisory projects on governance, risk management and compliance (GRC), corporate governance, enterprise risk management (ERM), vendor risk management, IT risk management, public policy and legal developments, social risk management, and strategic information risk analysis. He advises on emerging issues in public policy and corporate affairs such as Dodd-Frank Whistleblower rules, U.K. Bribery Act, third-party risk management and cross-border compliance. He led the ground-breaking White House-sponsored cyberterrorism war game, Digital Pearl Harbor, and has appeared on international news programs, including a documentary on the History Channel. He established Gartner research and advisory programs on knowledge management, digital society, government, public policy, and risk management and compliance.

Neil Chandler is a Gartner Research Director, where he focuses on business intelligence, analytics and performance management. This includes writing about and advising organizations about market trends, vendors, service providers and best practices. Mr. Chandler has a leading position in driving Gartner's research into business analytics and performance management incorporating modeling, metrics, scorecards, strategy management and corporate performance management.

Roxane Edjlali is a research director focusing on DBMS, data management and integration technologies. With prior background in business intelligence and data warehousing, Ms. Edjlali addresses data warehousing current and future challenges both from a technology and architecture perspective but also from an organizational, and best practices perspective. As a result Ms Edjlali also follows big data challenges, in-memory dbms and the logical data warehouse as emerging trends.

Irma Fabular is a senior managing partner with Gartner Consulting. She leads the North America Consulting industry practices for education, academic medical centers and healthcare providers. Ms. Fabular has more than 25 years of experience in various aspects of information technology strategic planning, acquisition, implementation and project management. She has led many consulting engagements focused on optimizing the contributions of information technology solutions and resources to organizational performance and transformation. Her areas of expertise include strategic planning, governance, IT services management, application software and integration service procurement, portfolio management, project and program office development, and independent verification and validation. Ms. Fabular has worked with several large organizations in education, healthcare, government and other nonprofit industries.

As a member of the Information Management team, Ted Friedman conducts research focused on data integration, data quality, information governance and information management strategy. He works with Gartner clients on building the business case for investing in and furthering their maturity in these areas. In addition, he closely follows the related technology markets, advising clients on vendor and tool selection, price negotiation, and emerging deployment approaches for optimal impact and value. Through his work on concepts such as Gartner's Information Capabilities Framework, he assists clients with modernization strategies for their information management programs and technology infrastructure.

Bill Gassman is a Research Director, advising Gartner for Marketing Leaders clients. He directs the Digital Marketing Programs key initiative, focused on program management, analytics-driven optimization and social marketing.

As the vice president of consulting, Jeff Gibson brings over 15 years of consulting experience to The Table Group where he has responsibility for managing their global consulting organization, as well as new business development and all aspects of client service. Whether he's working with a CEO and his or her leadership team, addressing hundreds of senior executives during a conference or workshop, or simply counseling a client over the phone, Jeff brings his passion, enthusiasm and contagious optimism for organizational health to every client he touches. Currently, Jeff works regularly with CEOs and executive teams in quickly and effectively applying the concepts captured in all of business author Patrick Lencioni's books. His clients span a broad spectrum of various industries, including technology, financial services and health care. In addition to his work with consulting clients and speaking engagements, Jeff has been instrumental in the development and refinement of The Table Group's original methodologies and subsequent books authored by Lencioni. Prior to joining The Table Group in 1999, Jeff worked for Deloitte & Touche in the Human Capital Advisory Services Group, and as a hardware design engineer for Hughes Electronics.

Brian Gilmore is the program manager for Enterprise Intelligence, a business group of the Automation and Controls Division at McKenney's Inc. in Atlanta, GA. McKenney's is the Southeast's most trusted name in facility construction, operation and maintenance. In his role at McKenney's, Brian oversees design, development, implementation and support of the bdoc® brand of Business Intelligence for Buildings(TM) solutions. Brian brought his interest in "all things data" to McKenney's in 2007 after a six-year stint as a biologist and Life Support Technician at two public aquariums, where he applied rules-based analytics to insure water purity and clarity for the aquatic animals and aquarium visitors. Prior to working with wet feet, he designed data driven applications and operations in his role at a Harvard Medical School affiliated Hospital in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts.

A veteran of analytics, Goodarzi has lead several teams in designing, building and delivering predictive analytics and business analytical products to a diverse set of industries. Prior to joining 1010data, Goodarzi was the Managing Director of Mortgage at Equifax, responsible for the creation of new data products and supporting analytics to the financial industry. Previously, he lead the development of various classes of predictive models aimed at the mortgage industry during his tenure at Loan Performance (Core Logic). Earlier on he had worked at BlackRock, the research center for NYNEX (present day Verizon) and Norkom Technologies. Goodarzi's publications span the fields of data mining , data visualization, optimization , and artificial intelligence.

John brings over 30 years of business experience to his role of Market Strategist for IBM’s Business Analytics group, and over 20 years involvement in the business intelligence and analytics market. He joined IBM from Gartner where he was Vice President and Distinguished Analyst in the business analytics practice. Prior to Gartner, John was VP and Research Fellow at AMR Research, and held management roles in marketing and product management at Pilot Software, Cognos, and Dun & Bradstreet Software. John is a frequent speaker at industry events, discussing impacts of business analytics in driving exception performance.

John brings over 30 years of business experience to his role of Market Strategist for IBM’s Business Analytics group, and over 20 years involvement in the business intelligence and analytics market. He joined IBM from Gartner where he was Vice President and Distinguished Analyst in the business analytics practice. Prior to Gartner, John was VP and Research Fellow at AMR Research, and held management roles in marketing and product management at Pilot Software, Cognos, and Dun & Bradstreet Software. John is a frequent speaker at industry events, discussing impacts of business analytics in driving exception performance.

Gareth Herschel is the Lead Analyst on the use of analysis to drive improved business performance in the area of customer relationships. Mr. Herschel covers a wide variety of different types of analysis, including predictive analysis, social analytics, and text and speech analytics, to identify the most appropriate technique for different business situations.

Sara Hilliard (Vice President, Product Management, International Financial Data Services) Sara is responsible for multi-year product strategy, product development and product marketing. She has 18 years of experience in information processing, software services and business solutions to the financial services industry. Sara is a strategic leader with an exceptional and diverse background in the U.S., Europe and Canada. Over the last two years, Sara has led the product development and launch of IFDS Insight, a business intelligence solution for the Canadian investment funds industry.

Michael is an active evangelist, speaker and blogger on the subject of Big Data Analytics. In his role at Kognitio he leads Marketing and Business Development and is responsible for strategic partnerships across the globe. Mr. Hiskey joined Kognitio from IBM, where he led BI and Data Warehouse product evangelism, marketing, support and development organizations in the US and Latin America and specifically founded an Information Management development team at the IBM Brasil Software Lab, where his team connected the IM community - sales, partners and clients to expand the use of DB2 Data Warehouse, Cognos, Informix and Netezza.

Brad Hopper is a member of the CTO office at TIBCO. In this role, he helps customers apply visual, computational and event-driven analytics to solve challenging business problems. During his 13 year tenure with Spotfire and TIBCO, Brad has held positions in Product Management, Marketing, and Professional Services, with a special focus on cross-pollinating problem solving ideas across industries. From Manufacturing to Marketing, Insurance to Oil & Gas Exploration, Brad has seen it all, and can help any organization move from insight to action.

Bill Hostmann is a research vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on business intelligence.

Carlie Idoine is the Research Director for Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics in the Data Management Strategy team of Gartner Technical Professionals. She is an accomplished IT professional with more than 25 years of experience in BI and analytics. Ms. Idoine provides a unique blend of business and industry knowledge, leading successful efforts to integrate new technologies into effective business solutions. Her experience includes design, implementation and communication of an enterprise business intelligence strategy and comprehensive BI program, evaluating and managing the enterprise BI and analytics software portfolio, business needs analysis, BI tool and process support, custom solution analysis, design and development, and training development and instruction.

Chris Iervolino is a research director covering corporate performance management (CPM), performance management (PM), business intelligence (BI) and analytics. His research focuses on performance management processes, systems and other related areas of concern for the CFO and CIO. He has an extensive background in CPM and BI consulting, project management and application design and implementation.

Lisa Kart is a Research Director focusing on advanced analytics, including predictive and prescriptive capabilities and big data uses in multiple industries. She has more than 20 years of experience in applying advanced analytics to solve complex business problems.

Dave Kasabian is responsible for developing and executing Tagetik’s global positioning and go-to-market strategy. He has over 20 years of experience in the performance management software market. Most recently as the founder of the Pervasive Performance Group (PPG) and as Research Director with AMR Research (now Gartner) where his coverage area included performance management and business intelligence technology and processes. Before joining AMR Research, Dave was a Director at Alvarez and Marsal Business Consulting and spent 13 years at software vendors Cartesis (now SAP) and Hyperion Solutions (now Oracle) in various management positions including Product Marketing, Product Management, Implementation Services, and Channel Alliances.

Doug Laney is a research vice president for Gartner Research, where he covers business analytics solutions and projects, performance management, and data-governance-related issues.

Anne Lapkin is a Research VP in Gartner Research, where she provides clients with advice on how to realize value from enterprise information. She has experience in a variety of industries, including financial services and banking, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, distribution, and telecommunications. Ms. Lapkin manages the research agenda for Information Management, which includes MDM, information governance, DBMS and data warehousing, metadata management, and data quality and integration. Ms. Lapkin joined Gartner in 2003.

Patrick Lowry serves as the Director of Product Management at HealthTrust. In this role, he is responsible for managing the product life cycle, product support, and sales functions serving over 1,400 hospitals nationwide. He ensures that HealthTrust enters the market with best-in-class class offerings through identification of the product strategy and market requirements by coordinating market research, competitive analysis and capturing requirements from customers and prospects. Patrick holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, an MBA from Lipscomb University, and a Masters of Pharmacy from the University of Florida.

Thomas has over 16 years of experience in the Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse. He started his career in the design and implementation of reporting and dashboard solutions of Data Warehouses and OLAP systems. Data and lots of it (ok, we’ll call it Big) is one of Thomas’ passions and he spends his time working on different ways to provide visualization, analytics and collaboration. With a focus on bringing relevant solutions to customers globally, Thomas now leads Product Marketing at Cubeware Gmbh.

Meghan Maze is SVP/Director of Financial Reporting for Rabobank, N.A., managing all technical accounting, and financial and statutory reporting. She started out her career in general ledger conversions and has been in Contollership-type positions focusing on fast-growing and start-up companies for over 18 years. She holds a degree in Applied Economics. One of her professional passions is focusing on the intersection of finance and technology for creating efficient, meaningful analytics.

Ken McGee is a VP and one of only 14 Research Fellows at Gartner. Mr. McGee has extensive experience helping clients deal with IT budgets, IT cost-saving efforts, and other financial and business-related matters pertaining to IT. He also focuses on issues challenging CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives in order to help clients determine the information and information technology solutions these leaders require to perform their jobs optimally. Additionally, Mr. McGee works with other CIO research team members to analyze emerging trends having the greatest impact on the IT industry. He has also authored the book "Heads Up," which analyzes how individuals and organizations can effectively use real-time information to achieve a competitive advantage. In his role as a Research Fellow, Mr. McGee serves as the managing editor, primary author and project manager responsible for creating "The Gartner Scenario," Gartner's annual report on the current state and future directions of the IT industry.

Stuart Nisbet directs the development of a wide range of SAS products: SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence and Visual Analytics suite, iOS mobile applications, statistical and business graphics and the SAS Retail Space Management suite. Nisbet joined SAS in 1987 in the Computer Graphics division where he developed his passion for data visualization. His depth of knowledge, keen business sense and commitment to meeting customers' needs have been integral to building the market's leading business analytics platform. Nisbet earned his bachelor's degree in computer science from North Carolina State University; before joining SAS, he worked for the IBM testing lab.

Jack has over 20 years of enterprise software marketing experience. He has demonstrated success from defining new markets for small companies to increasing sales of new products for large public companies. Jack’s broad experience includes launching and establishing analytic, virtualization, and storage companies and leading marketing and business development for an early-stage cloud storage software provider. Jack has also held senior executive roles with EMC, Rainfinity, Brio Technology, SQRIBE, and Bain and Company. Jack earned an MBA from UCLA Anderson and a BA in economics with honors and distinction from Stanford University.

Karen is the Director of Marketing & Customer Insights, for WinField Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Land O'Lakes. Her “Data-to-Insights” group is charged with developing mechanisms for capturing and integrating insights, as well as delivering to the bottom-line of partners, customers and Land O'Lakes. In addition to the EMERALD EXTRAS Equinox Tool based on the Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Platform, Karen is responsible for WinField’s CRM application and strategic market information. Karen’s experience spans more than 20 years in the Agriculture industry, including Ag policy in the public sector and strategic marketing in the private sector.

Ian has over 10 years of experience working in data services management and institutional research, the business analytics arm of higher education. Prior to his current position, he worked as a field geologist coordinating gold exploration teams in remote parts of Alaska, with a specific focus on geochemical data and analysis. Ian holds BS degrees in geology and mathematics and is currently working on an MBA. He currently serves on the executive board for the Pacific Northwest Association for Institutional Research and Planning. Using data to inform decision-making in university management is an emerging field for some institutions and a well-treaded path for others. During his years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Ian has fully developed the Office of Planning, Analysis, and Institutional Research from its inception and is now exploring how to move the University of Alaska into advanced business intelligence for the higher education environment. Ian maintains a client-focused service model in his office and seeks out ways to convert data into information, especially for the data-adverse and the math-phobic.

Arvind Parthasarathi serves as President of YarcData, a Cray company, focused on delivering business solutions for the growing Big Data market. Mr. Parthasarathi joined Cray from Informatica Corporation where he was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company's Master Data Management business unit. There he led a global team delivering business-focused data management solutions for life sciences, financial services, retail, manufacturing, healthcare and government. Previously, he served as Vice President of Product Management for Informatica's data quality products, and as Senior Director responsible for data migration and data integration solutions. Prior to joining Informatica in 2005, Mr. Parthasarathi was Director of Product Management at i2 Technologies where he was responsible for data-centric supply chain applications including RFID and Event Management. Mr. Parthasarathi holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology and a master's degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

James (Jamie) M. Popkin is the managing vice president of the Gartner for Technical Professionals Data Management Strategies team. He is also a Gartner Fellow Emeritus and chairman of Gartner U.S. Symposium/ITxpo. Mr. Popkin is currently covering sentiment analysis, text analytics, e-discovery, business analytics and information modeling topics with a background in search, enterprise content management, business intelligence and social software topics. He previously managed the IT Leaders Business Intelligence and Information Management Research group and was involved in the development of the Pattern-Based Strategy (PBS) research theme. Mr. Popkin can discuss business intelligence, performance management, data management and integration, and PBS topics. He also ran Gartner Research in Asia/Pacific and Japan, is the co-author of "IT and the East: How China and India are Altering the Future of Technology and Innovation" and was the founder of the Gartner China Outsourcing Summit. From this experience Mr. Popkin can discuss the ICT industries of China and India.

Guillermo Ramas has primary responsibility for hospital-facing source-to-settle applications, analytics and mobile strategies leading the product innovation process at Novation, the health care industry’s largest supply contracting company, with over $43 billion in contracted spend. Ramas is responsible for the development and design of the most robust and innovative medical /surgical price benchmarking applications in the healthcare industry. He has extensive experience in technology deployments at large healthcare systems and design of innovative analytics applications. Prior to joining VHA and Novation, Ramas was program director, Global Health Solutions ERP Provider for CSC Consulting, Manager, Lawson eServices at EYT Technologies (formerly Ernst & Young Technologies) and Healthcare Systems Consultant at Shared Medical Systems (currently Siemens Healthcare). He has 17+ years of health care experience. Ramas holds a B.S. in Economic Sciences and Business Studies, from the Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

Paul Rodwick is the vice president of product management, Oracle Business Intelligence at Oracle Corporation. Paul is responsible for product strategy and go-to-market for the Oracle BI products, including BI tools and infrastructure, prebuilt analytic applications, and predictive analytics technology and applications. Paul has over twenty-five years of diverse marketing, product development, and executive business leadership. Prior to Oracle he was at data warehousing, business intelligence, and customer analytics leaders and innovators, including Siebel Systems, E.piphany, Red Brick Systems, and Metaphor.

William Ruh Vice President, Global Software Center, GE Mr. William Ruh is vice president of GE’s software and analytics center. Mr. Ruh is responsible for setting and leading the software services and solutions portfolio strategy, development and operations across all of GE. His team develops software to power the Industrial Internet, a living network of intelligent machines and systems designed to advance industry and improve lives. These systems and solutions put data to work for GE’s customers, giving businesses intelligent insight to make more sustainable and safe products. Mr. Ruh has more than 25 years of industry experience in enterprise applicationintegration and object oriented technology. Previously, he was vice president at Cisco where he held global responsibility for developing advanced services and solutions. Before that, Mr. Ruh served as executive vice president and chief technology officer of Concept Five Technologies, Inc. Prior to that, he served as the chief technology officer and senior vice president of Software AG, Inc. where he was responsible for the growth and expansion of the solutions and consulting services team to provide customers with customized and industry-specific solutions. Mr. Ruh has also held various management roles at The Advisory Board, The MITRE Corporation, IBM and AkroMetrix, LLC. He is an accomplished author and a frequent speaker on such topics as emerging business models, cloud computing, analytics, mobile computing, agile development, large scale distributed systems and m2m communications. Mr. Ruh earned a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from California State University, Fullerton.

Rita Sallam is a research vice president at Gartner, where she focuses on business intelligence (BI) and analytics. This includes writing about and advising organizations on market trends, vendors and best practices. Of particular interest is advanced analytics on diverse data and decision management and optimization including collaborative decision making, which is the convergence of technologies that improve the quality and transparency of decisions.

Peter is the VP of Products at Platfora where he is responsible for development, product design, and the roadmap for Platfora’s innovative business intelligence platform for Hadoop. Peter joined Platfora in October 2011. Prior to Platfora, he was VP of Products and Marketing at Solera Networks, building network security analytics products to store, search, and analyze every packet traversing 10 GigE networks. Early in his career he lead Products for IronPort Systems -- the first company to solve spam at Internet scale -- which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007.

Kurt Schlegel is a research vice president at Gartner studying how organizations report and analyze data for performance management and decision support.

Guido Schroeder has served as Splunk’s Senior V.P., Products since April 2012. Prior to that, Mr. Schroeder was with SAP Labs, an enterprise application software company, as Senior V.P. Development, Technology Innovation Platform BI from 2008 to 2012, as V.P. Development, SAP NetWeaver BI Client Suite from 2007 to 2008, as V.P. Development Suite Optimization Analytics from 2006 to 2007, as V.P. Development, SAP NetWeaver Imagineering from 2004 to 2006 and as Director Development, BI Advanced Technologies from 2000 to 2004. Mr. Schroeder holds a M.Sc and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Kiel (Germany).

W. Roy Schulte works on real-time analytics, event processing and message-oriented middleware (MOM). He is co-author of the McGraw-Hill book, Event Processing: Designing IT Systems for Agile Companies. Mr. Schulte was lead author of the 1996 report that introduced the term SOA to the industry, and initiated research into message brokers, event-driven architecture (EDA), business activity monitoring (BAM) and the zero-latency enterprise. He covers related issues including high-performance messaging grids, continuous-intelligence systems, complex-event processing (CEP), real-time decision management and dashboards for situation awareness.

Chris Selland is vice president of Marketing for HP Vertica. In this role, he leads global marketing for the HP Vertica Analytics platform. Selland has more than 20 years of experience in online, search and inbound marketing programs. He also has led strategic alliance and corporate development initiatives for entrepreneurial, high-growth companies. Selland is an established thought leader, speaker and author on customer strategy-related topics, including social media analytics and marketing, customer relationship management, customer analytics, metrics and loyalty. Earlier in his career, Selland was vice president of CRM and Internet Research at the Yankee Group, and later he founded Reservoir Partners, a customer strategy research firm that merged with Aberdeen Group. He received a bachelor’s degree in operations research and industrial engineering from Cornell University and a master’s degree in business administration in international business and economics from the New York University Stern School of Business.

Vi Shaffer is research vice president and global industry services director for healthcare providers at Gartner. As an analyst, she covers the office of the CIO and CMIO, including IT governance, strategic planning, and changing strategies and structures, and the key initiative of electronic health records. She also evaluates healthcare megasuite vendors and covers major innovations and changes in healthcare business/clinical applications and business/clinical analytics, including corporate performance management/cost accounting, revenue management, ERP, and awareness platforms.

John Sheridan is the Manager of Business Technology and Development at Insperity. As the Application Manager for Corporate Information at Insperity he addressed corporate and client reporting needs and was instrumental in launching Insperity’s WebFOCUS initiative. Prior to joining Insperity, John managed upstream accounting and information technology teams at ExxonMobil for 25 years. Throughout his career, John has optimized technology for solving business problems. John Sheridan has been a guest speaker at Information Week roundtables, the International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM), a member of Information Builders’ Tech Summit ROI panel, Tech Summit and IDC’s Business Intelligence and Business Process Forum. He is a frequent WebFOCUS User Group and webinar presenter. John Sheridan is a graduate of Austin College and holds an MBA from Texas A&M Commerce, Texas.

Svetlana Sicular has a uniquely combined experience of Fortune 500 IT and business leadership, product management at world-class software vendors, and Big Four consulting. She primarily handles inquiries in the areas of data governance, enterprise information management strategy and big data.

Nate Silver has become today’s leading statistician through his innovative analyses of political polling. He first gained national attention during the 2008 presidential election, when he correctly predicted the results of the primaries and the presidential winner in 49 states. Today, Nate runs the award-winning political website FiveThirtyEight.com, where he publishes a running forecast of current elections and hot-button issues. Now published in the New York Times, FiveThirtyEight.com has made Nate the public face of statistical analysis and political forecasting. His new book is titled The Signal and The Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t. Data-based predictions underpin a growing sector of critical fields, from political polling and hurricane watches to the stock market and even the war on terror. That means it’s important to ask — what kind of predictions can we trust? What methods do the most reliable forecasters use? What sorts of things can be predicted — and what can’t? Nate takes us on a tour of modern prediction science, uncovering a surprising connection among humility, uncertainty and good results. It’s an essential read for anyone interested in how data can be used to understand the future. Before he came to politics, Nate established his credentials as an analyst of baseball statistics. He developed a widely acclaimed system called PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm), which predicts player performance, career development, and seasonal winners and Losers. He is the author of a series of books on baseball statistics, which include Mind Game, Baseball Between the Numbers, and It Ain’t Over ‘til It’s Over. Nate has written for ESPN.com, Sports Illustrated, Slate, New York Sun, New York Times. His work has been reported in such publications as the New York Times, Newsweek, Huffington Post, and Vanity Fair. Nate Silver has been honored by a series of accolades, from Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2009 to Rolling Stone’s 100 Agents of Change. FiveThirtyEight.com won Best Political Coverage in the 2008 Weblog Awards.

Michael W. Smith is a VP Distinguished Analyst in Gartner Research, focusing on the value of IT. Mr. Smith's principal responsibilities include the development of business performance frameworks and methodologies to help organizations evaluate IT-enabled business initiatives. Mr. Smith's published research covers topics involving how to use business methodologies such as Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard and Six Sigma to demonstrate the business value of IT. Mr. Smith conducts workshops and assessments for Gartner clients and prospects.

Dan Sommer is a Principal Analyst in Gartner's Technology & Service Provider Research group, where he is a member of the Software team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), with his prime responsibility being the worldwide lead for business intelligence markets, including trends, competitive dynamics, forecasts and market share. Mr. Sommer joined Gartner in January 2005 and is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Paul Sonderegger is Senior Director of Oracle’s Business Analytics. Prior to joining Oracle, he was Chief Strategist at Endeca, a discovery analytics company. Before Endeca, Paul was a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, specializing in search and user experience design. Paul has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wake Forest University.

Joao Tapadinhas is a research director at Gartner, focused on business intelligence (BI), analytics and performance management, and covering Mobile BI in detail. He also helps Latin America organizations create, implement and evolve their BI strategies.

Laura Teller is the Chief Strategy Office of Opera Solutions, leading the development of go-to-market strategies, messaging, and positioning for all of Opera Solutions’ products and services. Before joining Opera Solutions, she was President of TellerGroup Consulting, which served clients in financial services, media, consumer goods, and retailing in the areas of market opportunity assessment and branding. She began her career at McKinsey & Co. Laura holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard University, where she was a Baker Scholar (top 5%). She is the author of Small Business, Big Savings (Harper Reference).

Vice President - Corporate Performance Management and Financial Management Systems. As part of the administrative applications, compliance and business intelligence teams, I look after the research areas for everything that is CFO-related. I am the North American lead for these areas and focus on how to bring a technology solution into an enterprise, including the software, services and change management that will be required to achieve business value.

Anand Venugopal or "AV" has been instrumental in building the Big Data Analytics consulting services practice at Impetus Technologies over the last three years. With a diverse 17 year long techno-business background in Telecom, Interactive entertainment and Hi-Tech industry verticals, AV with the rest of the Impetus team, has been helping IT and line-of-business executives in large enterprises understand and extract the enormous value embedded in their static and "in-motion" Big-Data assets.

Jim is a recovering developer, professional marketer and amateur photographer with nearly twenty years experience building products and developing emerging technologies. During his career, he has brought multiple products to market in a variety of fields, including data loss prevention, master data management and now big data. At Hortonworks, Jim is focused on accelerating the development and adoption of Apache Hadoop.

Michael Warner is the Lead Business Intelligence and Technology Analyst for the Juvenile Welfare Board, the nation’s first Children’s Services Council, based in Pinellas County Florida. His design and deployment of mobile Business Intelligence has been a featured case study by Roambi. He is sought out for his policy and architecture knowledge regarding collaborative data environments for small to medium governments, and he has led the collection and authored the State of Florida’s first-ever children’s budget. Michael’s career started as a volunteer in Namibia for Worldteach and was followed by an MBA in e-commerce. He has worked with diverse organizations such as technology startups, local governments and non-profits to focus their business practices through the effective use of technology.

Steve draws from more than 30 years industry experience to his role as leader of our client services team—bringing value to Domo customers through consulting, education and ongoing engagement. For more than seven years, Steve was with Omniture leading pre-sales engineers, consulting, education, solution architecture and operations, and was part of the team responsible for the company's record growth. In those rare moments when Steve's not singularly focused on improving the customer experience, you'll find him at Reliant Stadium, keeping up with his other number one team, the Houston Texans.

Andrew White is a Research VP, and his primary research focus is information governance and master data management (MDM). He specializes in the drill-down topic of creating the "single version of the product" using MDM of product data. Mr. White has a strong background in supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and multienterprise collaboration. His roles include key initiative lead for information governance and MDM programs, as well as backup agenda manager for information management, and he also chairs the U.S. MDM summits. Mr. White received the Gartner Thought Leadership Award in 2006 for his effort in pioneering Gartner's research in enterprise information management that led to MDM.

Wynn White is Birst's Vice President of Marketing. Wynn joined Birst from Dell where he was Vice President of Dell KACE Worldwide Marketing, overseeing the marketing of the Dell KACE product family. Prior to its acquisition by Dell, he led KACE's marketing and product management and was instrumental in driving the company's growth from 300 to more than 3,000 customers. Wynn has two decades of marketing and product management experience in the areas of business intelligence, system management, security, and networking. Previously he was Vice President of Security and Systems Management Marketing at Oracle and has held senior marketing roles at Oblix and BEA. Wynn enjoys cooking with his family and friends and mountain bike riding whenever he gets the chance. Wynn holds a BA and MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

With over 20 years of experience in technology, Chris has helped hundreds of companies around the world develop and deploy solutions in business intelligence, analytics, CRM/SFA and virtualization technologies. Chris is now leveraging his extensive BI background as Senior Director of Enterprise Solutions at Domo.