The InformationWeek 500 Conference offers unparalleled content, editorial vision and renowned keynotes from leading organizations across the globe, they convene here to discuss how they're delivering on the most critical business priorities of the day. Our past conferences have included speakers such as, Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Technology Officer, Nicholas Carr, Tim Stanley, CIO, Harrah's Entertainment, Jean-Michel R. Arès, CIO, SVP, The Coca-Cola Company, Denis Edwards, Global Chief Information Officer, Manpower, Jim Goodnight, CEO, SAS, Mykolas Rambus, Chief Information Officer, Forbes Media, and Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon.com just to name a few.
Please check back for speaker and agenda updates.
Speakers
Clay Bavor leads product management for some of Google's most popular cloud-based applications including Google Docs, Drive and Google Apps for business, education and government.
Clay joined Google in 2005, and has been involved with number of projects across the company, including in search and ads. Most recently, Clay led the integration of the AdMob acquisition. Prior to that, Clay managed Google's European product management and engineering teams for advertising products and was responsible for building key parts of Google's search ads serving systems.
A native of Los Altos, California, Clay studied Computer Science at Princeton University. When not working on Google's apps, Clay enjoys taking photos and reading books
Anthony Bettini is the CEO and part of the founding team at Appthority, The Authority in App Security.
His professional security experience comes from working for companies like Intel, McAfee, Foundstone, Guardent, Bindview and Netect. Anthony joined McAfee through its acquisition of Foundstone, where he was the research manager. After the acquisition, Anthony managed the Foundstone, Entercept (HIPS), threat intelligence (MTIS), network access control (NAC) and compliance teams with McAfee Avert Labs. Anthony's presentations have been delivered at such conferences as RSA Conference, FOCUS, NISSC, FIRST, SyScan and the CARO Workshops. Anthony has published new vulnerabilities found in Microsoft Windows, ISS Scanner, PGP, Symantec ESM and other popular applications. In addition to contributing to a handful of security books, Anthony was also the technical editor for Hacking Exposed 5th ed., the best-selling computer security book of all time, which has been used in courseware at universities such as MIT, Harvard and Carnegie Mellon.
Richard Boly is a career U.S. diplomat and currently the Director of the Office of eDiplomacy, an applied technology think tank for the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he was a National Security Affairs Fellow the Hoover Institution at Stanford University , where he launched the Global Entrepreneurship Program. He served in U.S. Embassy, Rome, where he developed and ran a program to promote entrepreneurship in Italy. Other embassy assignments include the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Paraguay. Richard is the most junior diplomat to win the Cobb Award for commercial diplomacy. Richard is a 2012 finalist for a Service to America Medal, known as the "Oscars for Federal Employees."
In a prior life, he was the first Presidential Management Fellow with the Inter-American Foundation, was a consultant with the Inter-American Development Bank, and founded and ran a shrimp hatchery in coastal Ecuador. In a stint with the Silicon Valley iconic PR firm, Regis McKenna, he helped launch the first Apple Macintosh. Richard is a graduate of Stanford University and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UCSD, where he was selected as 2011 Co-Outstanding Alumni Award Winner.
Erik Brynjolfsson is the Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, a Professor at the MIT Sloan School, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research examines the effects of information technologies on business strategy, productivity and employment. His recent work studies data-driven decision-making, the pricing implications of Internet commerce and the role intangible assets. Prof. Brynjolfsson has received numerous awards for his research and lectures worldwide on technology and strategy. BusinessWeek has profiled him as an "ebusiness visionary" and he is a director or advisor for several technology-intensive firms. His recent books include Wired for Innovation: How IT is Reshaping the Economy and Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. He received his A.B. and S.M. degrees from Harvard and his Ph.D. from MIT. You can read his blog at http://www.economicsofinformation.com, download his papers from http://digital.mit.edu/erik and follow him on Twitter at @erikbryn.
Nicholas Colisto is a senior IT executive with over 26 years of experience delivering innovative technology-enabled business solutions in the consumer products, pharmaceutical, software, and construction industries. Throughout his career, he has led large transformational initiatives using technology to drive business value. Colisto serves as the vice president and chief information officer at Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., a large national homebuilder.
Prior to joining Hovnanian, he held IT leadership positions at global organizations including Pepsi-Cola, Priceline.com, Hyperion Solutions, Boehringer-Ingelheim, and Bayer Corporation.
Colisto is very active in the education, IT, and health-care communities. He lectures at Columbia University's CIO Institute. He serves on the academic advisory boards at Rutgers University and Brookdale Community College. He taught as an adjunct professor in IT at Manhattanville College in New York at the graduate level for several years and also served on the school's advisory board.
He is a member of the governing body for Evanta's CIO executive summits in New York and New Jersey and is a regular speaker. Colisto is a repeat guest on CIO talk radio, where he shares best practices on IT leadership and innovation. He is a member of the Society for Information Management (SIM) and serves on its governing body for CIO leadership summits.
Colisto also serves on the foundation board of trustees for Bayshore Community Hospital, part of the Meridian Health Network.
He is the recipient of several industry awards, including the 2011 InformationWeek Top 250 and the 2011 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders. Colisto is the author of The CIO Playbook.
He lives with his wife and two children in Marlboro, New Jersey.
Mike Cuddy is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Toromont Industries Ltd. Toromont Industries is a Canadian public company with operations in Canada and the United States. Toromont operates multiple business units involved in the design, construction and sale of specialized industrial equipment and is the authorized Caterpillar dealer in Ontario, Manitoba, Nunavut, Newfoundland and Eastern Labrador. Toromont employs approximately 3,500 people in more than 100 locations.
Mr. Cuddy joined the company in 1995 as General Manager, IT, when the company employed approximately 1,500. During his tenure, the core infrastructure was constructed and through acquisitions, Mr. Cuddy now oversees the operations and management of 100 networked locations, 3,000 connected employees and multiple ERP and EIS management systems. Mr. Cuddy was appointed Vice President and CIO in 2005 and is an officer of the corporation.
Toromont operates through multiple independent business units, and has completed multiple ERP conversions and implementations. Toromont develops managerial reporting and analysis systems in-house, with a dedicated software team of approximately 30 staff located in Toronto, Canada. Toromont has also sold its software to approximately 40 other companies worldwide.
Prior to joining Toromont, Mr. Cuddy was Director, Systems Planning for Bell Mobility, one of Canada's two major cellular carriers. During his employment with Bell, Mr. Cuddy was responsible for strategic planning, systems assessments and project management.
Prior to Bell Mobility, Mr. Cuddy was employed for 10 years by Imperial Oil Limited, Exxon Mobil's Canadian affiliate. During this time he held positions in IT, Finance and Accounting, Logistics and Supply, and Product Marketing.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering, and an MBA, both from the University of Toronto. Mr. Cuddy's opinions have been referenced in Information Week, CIO Canada, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and Canadian Business Magazine.
Over the years, Michael Davis has earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading authorities on IT security. The list of companies that rely on his council includes AT&T, GroupOn, the US Department of Defense, and Discover Financial.
In 2005, Mr. Davis founded Savid Technologies. By 2010 it was number 611 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America.
Mr. Davis was a contributing author to Hacking Exposed, the best selling security book in the world, and has recently penned Hacking Exposed: Malware and Rootkits.
He has worked with McAfee, Inc., a leader in anti-virus protection and vulnerability management, and held the position of Senior Manager of Global Threats, leading a team of researchers investigating confidential and cutting edge security research.
You will find his advice in InformationWeek where he is a Senior Contributing Author, and in Information Week Analytics. His insights can also be found in the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Davis's particular expertise extends to topics such as the relationship between security and compliance, application security, penetration testing/ethical hacking, risk assessment, policy development, and software security development life cycles.
Much of his time is spent lecturing, and conferences and conventions know him well, including Blackhat, InfoSecWorld, FINSEC and CanSecWest. He is also an active developer in the Open Source community.
Jonathan Feldman, in his role as director of IT Services for the City of Asheville, NC, fosters innovation through the application of business technology. Asheville, a rapidly growing city, is the new home of New Belgium Brewing and Sierra Nevada Brewing, and has been recognized nationally and internationally (including the International Economic Development Council New Media and the Public Technology Institute awards) for improving services to citizens and reducing expenses through IT innovation.
Jonathan's 20 years' experience with government, military, law enforcement, financial services and healthcare technology informs his work with IT innovation. He's written, taught and consulted extensively on security, human resource management and IT soft skills, notably as co-author of Maximum Security and author of Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting. As a consultant and award-winning Network Computing and InformationWeek contributing editor, he has worked with dozens of public and private sector organizations, helping them calculate the real business benefits, risks and appropriate governance of new technologies and surrounding practices and policy.
Jonathan is a frequent speaker at venues including Interop and Cloud Connect, and holds an MS degree from Georgia Tech.
Steve Garrity, an expert in developing scalable enterprise software solutions, Steve Garrity is the CTO and co-founder of Hearsay Social, which provides a platform to achieve regulatory compliance, build stronger customer relationships, and bolster brand presence across all the major social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Mr. Garrity was recently highlighted in The Start-up of You, a new book by LinkedIn founder and chairman Reid Hoffman, as exemplary of the entrepreneurial spirit, and was most recently featured on Jon Sakoda's blog as an example of a great founder. Before founding Hearsay Social, Mr. Garrity worked as aan engineer at Microsoft Corporation in Seattle where he developed the Azure.net services platform. He is a graduate of Stanford University with a BS and MS in Computer Science. At Stanford, he was selected as a Mayfield Fellow while studying Computer Science.
Mr. Garrity has spoken at large Microsoft events (MEDC, PDC) about everything from mobile app development to cloud infrastructure.
Additionally, he and Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih spoke together at Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series in 2010. For the upcoming year, Mr. Garrity is confirmed to share presentations at the 2012 UC Berkeley Tech Talk as well as the MIT TECH Fair.
Dr. Ron Hira is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at Rochester Institute of Technology where he specializes in policy issues on technological innovation, offshoring, high-skill immigration, and the American engineering workforce. Ron is also a Research Associate with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC.
Hira is co-author of the book, Outsourcing America (AMACOM 2005; 2nd edition 2008), which was a finalist for best business book in the PMA's Benjamin Franklin Awards. The Boston Globe called Outsourcing America an "honest, disturbing look at outsourcing." The Washington Post described the book as a "thorough and easy to grasp primer on the wrenching outsourcing debate." Hira is an expert on offshoring, testifying before the U.S. Congress twice on its implications. Ron is frequently quoted and interviewed in many major media outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Journal, NPR, CNN, CNBC, NBC Nightly News, Fox Business News, Time, and Newsweek.
In 2007, Ron served as a consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science & Technology helping to organize a series of hearings on the Globalization of Innovation and Research & Development.
In 2010, Hira worked with NY State Assemblyman Joseph Morelle to organize the Rochester & the Innovation Economy lecture series which explored how the Rochester region can best leverage technological innovation for job and economic growth.
Previously, Ron worked as a control systems engineer and program manager with Sensytech, NIST, and George Mason University (GMU). He has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Treasury, Rand Corporation, Commission on Professionals in Science & Technology, National Research Council, Enterprise Integration Inc., and Deloitte & Touche.
Ron completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Columbia University's Center for Science, Policy, and Outcomes. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University (GMU), an M.S. in Electrical Engineering also from GMU, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University. He is a licensed professional engineer and served as Vice President for Career Activities of IEEE-USA, the largest engineering professional society in America. Ron is past chair of IEEE-USA's R&D Policy Committee. Hira participated on the Council on Foreign Relations' "Research Roundtable on Technology, Innovation and America's Primacy" and the Council on Competitiveness' "National Innovation Initiative."
Drew Hylbert is Engineering Director at Opower, a big-data-powered customer engagement platform for the utility industry. Using smart-meter data, Opower offers bill analysis, prediction and comparison capabilities help utility customers use energy more efficiently and ultimately save money on their energy bills.
Drew oversees Opower's architecture team and overall software and systems design from the company's San Francisco office. He was the evangelist behind the adoption of the Hadoop-based data storage infrastructure for time-series and event data, allowing Opower to scale data storage and processing infrastructure quickly and cost-effectively. Prior to Opower, Drew was Vice President of Engineering at hi5.com, a social gaming and virtual good transaction platform where he was responsible for architecture and infrastructure teams. Prior to hi5, Drew was a member of Yahoo's map / reduce and data warehousing infrastructure team. He earned his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Jerry Johnson is Chief Information Officer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
PNNL, operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the U.S. Department of Energy, is a multi-program laboratory conducting basic and applied research to deliver energy, environmental, and national security for our Nation. With nearly 4,800 employees and hundreds of visiting scientists each year, PNNL has a research business volume of over $1.1 billion.
Jerry joined PNNL in 1978 after graduating from the University of Washington with an MBA and B.S. Electrical Engineering. After serving in technical and leadership roles in IT operations, application development and cyber security, he was named CIO in 2004.
As CIO, Jerry is accountable to the Laboratory Director to continuously improve the deployment, use, management and protection of information resources to increase research productivity and operational effectiveness of PNNL. Under his leadership, PNNL was recognized as a CIO 100 award winner in 2008 and 2009 and was named to the InformationWeek 500 in each of the last five years.
Jerry is a past Chair of the DOE National Laboratories CIO Council, served on the Washington State Information Services Board as an appointee of Governor Gregoire, and serves on the board of several charitable organizations. He has been twice named to the InformationWeek Government CIO 50 and is a member of the InformationWeek Editorial Advisory Board.
George Kurtz is a serial entrepreneur who is co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike, a cutting edge big data security technology company focused on helping enterprises and governments protect their most sensitive intellectual property and national security information. George Kurtz is also an internationally recognized security expert, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He has almost twenty years of experience in the security space and has helped hundreds of large organizations and government agencies around the world tackle the most demanding security problems. His entrepreneurial background and ability to commercialize nascent technologies has enabled him to drive innovation throughout his career by identifying market trends and correlating them with customer feedback, resulting in rapid growth for the businesses he has run. His prior roles include McAfee's Worldwide Chief Technology Officer and General Manager. Prior to joining McAfee, Kurtz was Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Foundstone, Inc., which was acquired by McAfee in October 2004. He also authored the best selling security book of all time, Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions.
Michael Lock oversees the Americas Sales and Operations organization for Google's Enterprise division. Since joining Google in 2005, Michael has helped rapidly expand Google's footprint within the global Enterprise marketplace. Currently, he is responsible for teams driving customer acquisition of Google's Enterprise offerings in the product areas of Search, Maps, Earth, Apps and Postini.
A 25-year veteran of the enterprise information technology industry, Michael began his career at IBM where he held roles in the general systems and enterprise systems divisions. He moved to Silicon Valley as a sales and marketing executive for Oracle in the 90's and subsequently, took positions in several Silicon Valley start-ups. Michael played a pivotal role in the success and eventual acquisition of Virage, a pioneer of multimedia search and content management software.
Michael holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Gaurav Manglik, CEO of CliQr Technologies, a cloud application management company with investors that include Google Ventures and Foundation Capital, has been a driving force behind many key principals that make-up cloud computing today. Gaurav was a senior engineer at VMware where he created their Cloud Policy Engine for virtualized applications. Prior to VMware, Gaurav was a key architect at Oracle where he developed their workflow engine for the automated Oracle's Distributed Database lifecycle management. Gaurav received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and a MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Matt Manzella has more than 20 years of experience spanning the practices of finance, technology, consulting and innovation. Currently Matt is a director at Allstate Insurance Company and leads the Technology Innovation group, which is responsible for engaging employees to develop innovative solutions to big problems by leveraging game mechanics, crowdsourcing, and rapid prototyping and testing of concepts. Prior to joining Allstate in 2005, Matt worked for Capgemini Consulting for 12 years. Matt earned both a BA and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Paul Mascarenas is chief technical officer and vice president, Ford Research and Innovation. He leads Ford's worldwide research organization, overseeing the development and implementation of the company's technology strategy and plans.
Prior to his current role, Mascarenas served as vice president of Engineering for Global Product Development, with responsibility for engineering the car, truck, SUV and crossover vehicles for Ford Motor Company brands. He also was instrumental in the development and implementation of the global Ford brand 'DNA'.
Since joining Ford in 1982, Mascarenas has amassed extensive experience in product development, having held various positions in product planning, program management, body engineering and powertrain while on assignments in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. He was appointed a company vice president in January 2005 and has held his current position since January 2011.
Mascarenas holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of London, King's College in England. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, an SAE International Fellow and serves as a member of the FISITA Honorary Committee.
Randy Mott is GM Vice President and Chief Information Officer, effective February 27, 2012. His most recent position was executive vice president and chief information officer of Hewlett-Packard, where he was responsible for the global information technology (IT) strategy and all of the company's IT assets. This included company-wide application development, data management, technology infrastructure, data center operations and telecommunication networks worldwide.
Mott's vision and leadership approach has garnered him global recognition in leading transformational initiatives focused on optimizing IT as a business. In June 2007, he received the "Roger Milliken Career Achievement Award" from the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions Association for his dedication and contributions to enabling the retail and consumer-focused industries through the creation and implementation of supply chain standards and best practices.
Previously, Mott was senior vice president and chief information officer for Dell, Inc., which he joined in 2000. He was responsible for managing that company's global IT infrastructure, which included the backbone of its extensive Internet and web-based capabilities. Mott significantly enhanced the company's IT executive talent and focused the organization on global, scalable and common systems.
Prior to Dell, Mott spent 22 years at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., where he held a variety of technical and management positions and pioneered retail and supply-chain systems automation. In 1994, Mott was named senior vice president and chief information officer. For the next six years, Wal-Mart almost tripled in revenue and its IT group earned a "best-of-class" reputation as it cost-effectively leveraged global and common IT systems. In 1996, Mott was promoted to Wal-Mart's executive committee and in 1997 InformationWeek named him "Chief of the Year."
Mott has a bachelor of science in mathematics from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. In 2005, he was named in the Fulbright College Alumni Academy as a Distinguished Alumni.
Filippo Passerini is Group President, Global Business Services (GBS) and Chief Information Officer responsible for delivering more than 170 services and solutions to Procter & Gamble's employees worldwide.
Under Filippo's leadership, the GBS organization has created a business model that is considered unique and progressive in the Shared Services industry. The organization's focus is on transforming the way business is done, driving growth, value, and competitive advantage for P&G. Innovative in structure, scope, and philosophy, GBS has saved the company more than one billion dollars to date.
GBS has been recognized three times as one of the Ten Most Admired Shared Services Organizations. In 2009, the Shared Service and Outsourcing Network awarded GBS as the Best Mature Outsourced Services Delivery. Filippo has also received numerous awards for CIO excellence and IT leadership, including the 2006 and 2008 Shared Service Thought Leader of the Year, the 2010 NASSCOM Excellence in IT award, Information Week's Chief of the Year, as well as being named a Breakaway Leader by CIO Executive Summit. In 2010, he was inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame. Most recently, Filippo was presented with the George Washington Carver Leadership Award by Tuskegee University.
Filippo has more than 30 years experience with P&G and has held leadership roles in the UK, Latin America, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and the United States. Filippo attributes his business and personal style to a lesson learned while playing competitive chess as a teenager: "You can think and anticipate as much as you want, but you can only think so long, and the clock is ticking. At some point you have to make a move."
A native of Rome, Filippo earned his Doctorate in Statistics & Operating Research. Filippo sits on the Board of Directors for United Rentals, the largest equipment rental company in the world. He resides in Cincinnati with his wife and has three children.
Seth Ravin Mr. Ravin is a 25-year enterprise software industry veteran who pioneered the third party enterprise software support industry. In 2005, The Enterprise Software Observer named Mr. Ravin one of the 25 next-generation leaders of the enterprise software industry. In 2010, Mr. Ravin was featured in Deal Architect CEO Vinnie Mirchandani's new book, The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations , where he is credited with enacting a visionary, disruptive strategy for dramatically reducing the cost of information technology and ushering in a new era of customer choice.
In September 2005, Mr. Ravin launched Rimini Street, Inc. with a mission to redefine enterprise software support using innovative, next-generation support services delivered at more than a 50 percent savings in fees compared to a software vendor's annual support program. Rimini Street currently offers support services for Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and SAP products.
Prior to his success launching third-party maintenance and support programs, Mr. Ravin was an executive with PeopleSoft, Inc., where he served most recently as vice president of the customer sales division. Earlier in his PeopleSoft career, Mr. Ravin held several senior roles of increasing global responsibility, including corporate director of customer services and programs and corporate manager of upgrades and installations. Mr. Ravin's PeopleSoft responsibilities included worldwide release support policy; release retirement programs; account management; Y2K software update and readiness program management for thousands of licensees; and development and delivery of special support programs for customers with unique needs. To meet the needs of customers who wanted to run a mature software release for many additional years beyond the official supported life span of a release without mandatory upgrades, Mr. Ravin successfully designed and launched the enterprise software industry's first specialized extended support programs for Fortune 500, public sector and midmarket organizations.
Mr. Ravin also served as vice president of customer sales for Saba Software, Inc., worked in Russia on defense conversion programs, and worked in Washington, D.C. assisting the Clinton Administration with Congressional passage of the GATT global trade agreement in 1994.
Mr. Ravin holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California.
Jim Hagemann Snabe was appointed co-CEO of SAP alongside Bill McDermott in February 2010. In this capacity, and as a member of the SAP Executive Board and Global Managing Board, Jim Hagemann Snabe focuses on developing and executing SAP's strategy together with Bill McDermott. The co-CEOs strengthen relationships with customers and partners, drive SAP's innovation portfolio across all markets, and ensure operational excellence across the company.
Jim Hagemann Snabe joined SAP in 1990 and has been a member of the SAP Executive Board since July 2008. Since 1990, he has held various management roles in consulting, sales, and development. Beginning as a consultant with SAP Denmark, he quickly went on to lead the local consulting practice. Jim Hagemann Snabe briefly moved to IBM Denmark in 1994 and rejoined SAP in 1996 as managing director (MD) of SAP Sweden, successfully developing this market over the following three years. He was then appointed MD of the SAP Nordic region, and became a member of the SAP EMEA management team.
In 2002, Jim Hagemann Snabe was asked to join the company's global development unit to bring product development efforts closer to the market. As senior vice president and chief operations officer of SAP's business solution group, he was responsible for the design and creation of the flagship enterprise resource planning software, SAP ERP, as well as SAP solutions for financial and public services industries. Later, Jim Hagemann Snabe led SAP's industry business unit, and was responsible for creating industry-specific solutions for more than 24 industry segments. In 2006, Jim Hagemann Snabe was appointed corporate officer of SAP AG, and subsequently was named a member of the Executive Council.
Jim Hagemann Snabe's views about the role which leaders and IT need to play in creating sustainable growth and responsible business strategies has been strongly shaped by his commitment to environmental and humanitarian issues. His management style is influenced by his interest in classical music, and inspired by leaders like the famous conductor Benjamin Zanders. Long distance running keeps him fit in body and mind, as a way to clear his thoughts and allow new ideas to form.
He is a member of the board of Thrane & Thrane A/S in Denmark - a role which keeps him abreast of new trends in IT, globalization and leadership. In addition, he has also joined the board of directors of Bang & Olufsen Holding A/S in Denmark - a globally well recognized company for high end technology and outstanding design.
Snabe received a master's degree in operational research from the Aarhus School of Business in Denmark. He lives with his family in Copenhagen, Denmark.
As the world's leading provider of business software, SAP is an over €64 billion company with more than €14 billion in revenue in 2011. SAP's more than 55,000 employees and its vast ecosystem enable 183,000 customers of all sizes in more than 24 industries and 120 countries worldwide. SAP AG is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, where Snabe is based.
James Staten, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. James serves Infrastructure & Operations Professionals, providing insights and best-practice use of emerging infrastructure technology and services trends, including cloud computing (IaaS and public and private clouds), strategic rightsourcing, infrastructure consolidation, and application-specific infrastructure optimizations. James is the author of best-practice analysis on maturing your virtualization practices, building a cloud computing consumption strategy, and optimizing website infrastructures for blazing-fast performance. He also advises clients on IT's role in business empowerment and HERO enablement.
James has more than 20 years' experience in the industry, having served as a reseller, vendor strategist, chief marketing officer, journalist, and analyst for companies including Autodesk, Azul Systems, Gartner, Rockwell International, and Sun Microsystems.
He is a frequent speaker at industry, corporate, educational, and Wall Street events and has guest lectured at leading business schools. James has been named the top cloud computing analyst by Web Hosting Industry Review (2009) and Apollo Research (July to September 2010). He is also the 2011 recipient of the Forrester Bill Bluestein Award, given to the analyst whose body of work continually inspires our clients and guides their decisions to be great.
Working out of Silicon Valley, James holds a master's degree from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California and a bachelor's degree from the University of North Texas.
Lynden Tennison was named senior vice president and chief information officer of Union Pacific Corporation in February 2005. In his position, Tennison is responsible for organizing and managing the development, implementation and operation of Union Pacific Railroad's information and telecommunications technologies.
Before his promotion, Tennison was vice president of Information Technologies and chief technology officer for Union Pacific Railroad. Tennison was named to that position in 2001 and had responsibility for the application systems and architectures for the entire company. From 1998 through 2001, Tennison was president and chief executive officer of Nexterna, a technology subsidiary of Union Pacific. Nexterna develops applications and hardware solutions for the mobile asset marketplace.
Prior to joining Union Pacific in 1992, Lynden spent five years with American Airlines' SABRE division and was responsible for the Knowledge Systems organization. From 1979 through 1987, Lynden worked on various management and technical capacities for AT&T and Southwestern Bell Telephone.
Tennison has a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is married to Sue Tennison and has one daughter, Victoria Tennison. He is a member of the Board of Directors for several Corporation Boards and is involved in both church and community activities.
As Chief Information Officer (CIO), Richard Thomas is responsible for leveraging technology to grow Quintiles business around the world. With an extensive portfolio of innovative internal and customer solutions, he is responsible for the company's global technology strategy, development, operations and all aspects of IT for 26,000 employees in over 60 countries. Richard is based at Quintiles' global headquarters in Durham, North Carolina, USA.
A 25 year veteran of the technology industry, Richard joined Quintiles in 2005, serving as Chief Technology Officer until being named CIO in 2010. He has played a key role transforming Quintiles' technology group into a growth engine which has gone on to receive numerous industry accolades and patents for innovation and is recognized as one of the best places to work in IT. In 2011, Quintiles was named the #1 technology innovator across the pharmaceutical industry in the prestigious InformationWeek 500 technology innovators rankings, and #4 across all industries. Quintiles was also named to Computerworld magazine's "100 Best Places to Work in IT" list for a third time.
Before joining Quintiles, Richard held increasingly senior leadership positions across a variety of industries including technology, marketing information, financial services and aerospace/defense. Most recently he served as Executive Vice President and CIO for Telephia Inc in San Francisco, a startup which went on to become the world leader in marketing information and benchmarking for the mobile consumer and wireless industry.
Prior to Telephia Richard was Vice President, Global Systems at Nielsen; the world's largest consumer and media marketing information company where he delivered award winning technology and innovative analytics products to retail and consumer package goods companies around the world.
Richard has lived in several countries around the world, hails originally from Wales in the United Kingdom and holds an honors degree in Computer Science. As well as serving on several boards/committees
Chenxi Wang, Ph.D., VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. Chenxi serves Security & Risk Professionals. She is a leading expert on mobile security, endpoint security, application security, and cloud security. Chenxi leads the effort at Forrester to build the research portfolio that addresses how enterprise mobility, consumerization, and emerging threats affect security strategy, policy, architecture, application development, and operations.
Chenxi's research builds on her in-depth technical insights and her years of research experience. Chenxi has also written extensively about global data privacy laws and the China technology market and closely follows the technology adoption trends in that market.
Prior to Forrester, Chenxi was the chief scientist for KSR, a risk management service provider startup in Silicon Valley. Previously, Chenxi was an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She was an instrumental faculty member behind the inception of CMU's Cylab. At CMU, Chenxi led a number of high-profile research projects, including multimillion-dollar projects from the Department of Defense and National Science Foundation. Chenxi was a consultant to the Emerson, FTC, HP Labs, Lucent, and a number of venture capital companies.
Chenxi has been frequently quoted in the press, including such media outlets asInfoworld and The New York Times. An accomplished public speaker, Chenxi also has delivered keynote and highlighted speeches at many events, including Chevron's IT conference, Forrester Leadership Boards events, and other customer events. In her previous role as an academic, Chenxi delivered many research talks at top academic conferences and institutions such as Stanford University and the University of Cambridge.
Chenxi received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Virginia. Her Ph.D. thesis work was awarded an ACM Samuel Alexander award for excellence in research. She received a B.S. from Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.
Ben Werther is the Founder & CEO of Platfora - the company focused on harnessing the potential of Hadoop so that any business user can explore, interact with, and derive insight from massive data sets, and all via an intuitive and richly interactive web interface. Prior to Platfora, Ben was VP of Products at DataStax, the commercial leader in Apache Cassandra. Before that, Ben spent a number of years as head of products at Greenplum (through the EMC acquisition), and drove product strategy, prioritization and product definition for the company. Ben is an industry veteran and big data thought leader, and frequent speaker on big data topics.
