Johna Till Johnson, President and Senior Founding Partner, Nemertes Research
Johna Till Johnson is president and senior founding partner of Nemertes Research, where she sets research direction and works with strategic clients. She has decades of experience in IT structure, processes, and organizations and has worked closely with senior IT executives at leading organizations across a broad range of industries. A widely regarded expert, Ms. Johnson regularly speaks at numerous trade shows, conferences, and seminars, and writes an insightful weekly column in Network World.
Ms. Johnson relates to the challenges senior executives face, as she’s managed large technology operations. Before founding Nemertes, she served as senior vice president and chief technology officer at Greenwich Technology Partners, a $60 million infrastructure consulting and engineering firm. At GTP, she secured $5 million in funding, managed strategic technology investments, partnerships, and acquisitions, and ran the technology practices to which GTP’s consultants and engineers belonged. She also managed the laboratory services, oversaw training, and performed consulting for strategic clients.
Prior to joining GTP, she headed the $12 million Global Networking Strategies Service business unit of META Group, where she advised Global 2000 IT organizations, vendors, and service providers. As senior technology editor of Data Communications magazine, Ms. Johnson managed the lab-testing program, and in the early ‘90s was one of the first experts to accurately predict and justify the rise of the commercial Internet.
Ms. Johnson also has designed and developed security, speech-synthesis, and free-space laser products at companies including Mosler Security Systems and Digitus Corp. She holds a BSEE (CS) from The Johns Hopkins University, has conducted graduate work in nuclear and particle physics at the University of Rochester, speaks three languages, and published a science fiction novel in 1995.
David B. Maislin, Senior Director of Technical Services and Strategy
Sendmail, Inc.
David Maislin is senior director of technical services and strategy at Sendmail, Inc, a leading provider of messaging security solutions. In his role, Maislin leads the company’s professional services and customer strategies for its Fortune 1000 and Global 500 customers. Maislin has more than fifteen years of experience in the messaging security area and brings a wealth of knowledge and perspective to the product management, customer service and technical sales engineering organizations at Sendmail.
Previously, Maislin served as director of sales engineering at Tumbleweed Communications. Prior to Tumbleweed, Maislin held various senior level positions at Sigaba Corporation, RSA Security and Legato Software. Maislin is well-versed in Unix Systems Administration, Email Security, and Managed File Transfer technologies.
Microsoft
Kartik Tamhane, DatabaseTechnology Specialist
Kartik has been working in the IT industry for 13 years. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked in the financial trading industry as a Database Administrator for 5 years at Townsend Analytics Trading Services, which offers world class trading and trade order management solutions to the institutional- portfolio management and broker dealer- marketplace. Since joining Microsoft, Kartik has held various roles in support, and pre sales as a Database Technology Specialist working with corporate accounts. Kartik is a graduate of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign with a BS in Business Administration.
Sally Baldauf, Industry Market Development Manager, Financial Services
Sally Baldauf is as an Industry Market Development Manager in Microsoft’s Financial Services Vertical Unit. Sally has over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry helping develop IT solutions in both the front and back office. She most recently joined Microsoft from Merrill Lynch, where she was a Director in their Global Technology Services Group (GTS). At Merrill Lynch, Sally held multiple roles in GTS including the Head of Desktop and Server Support for the Americas, overseeing a support infrastructure of over 45,000 desktops in 800 branches for their Global Wealth Management division, trading support and investment banking. In her most recent role at Merrill Lynch, Sally led the Vendor Savings Initiative which eliminated millions of dollars of technology expense annually and revised the sourcing strategy for their major IT services.
David Warm, Chief Technology Officer, Financial Services, Platform Computing
David has over 20 years experience in Financial Services, working at major investment banks like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, where he managed many large and innovative technology projects prior to joining Platform. Most recently at Merrill, he was responsible for infrastructure architecture solutions design and service delivery, supporting the Fixed Income, Prime Brokerage and Global Markets Transactional Clearing and Settlement businesses. He held management positions at Goldman, ranging from managing data center resources for the entire North American Fixed Income Sales and Trading Division to managing the design and development team responsible for producing the first distributed Sales Trading System. His vendor side management experience includes: Fortent, an Anti-Money Laundering software vendor and Egenera, a virtualization hardware vendor – both serving Financial Services customers. He also has expertise in Knowledge Management, Market Data and Project Management. David holds a Masters Degree in Technology Management from NYU Polytechnic.
Kathy Perone, President, First Element Technologies, LLC
Kathy Perone is the newly appointed President of First Element Technologies, LLC. Prior to joining First Element , she was the President of XLNT Technologies, a management consulting firm specializing in technology investments. Ms. Perone has 30 years experience in pioneering telecommunications firms, including leadership positions at Cable &Wireless, MFS Communications, and Level 3 Communications. She was formerly President & CEO of Focal Communications , and also served as President & CEO of WestCom. She has held numerous Board seats in private and publicly traded companies, including Infocrossing ( now WiPro), Focal Communications( now Level 3), and Con Ed Communications ( now RCN ), amongst others.
Mickey S. Zandi, Ph.D. , Managing Principal, Consulting Services, SunGard Availability Services
Dr. Zandi is a recognized international expert in data center design and architecture, with more than 15 years of experience in working with organizations – from small businesses to fortune 50 clients – address key issues such as how to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) in their data center physical infrastructure, how flexible infrastructure impacts data center operations, and why companies should consider new technologies to support their Green initiatives.
Ronald H. Bowman, Jr., Executive Vice President of Tishman Technologies Corporation, has over 20 years of experience in all facets of up-time critical data and telecommunications centers, having served as a key executive on major projects worldwide. Throughout his career, Mr. Bowman has managed 50 trading floor and 100 data center installations for companies such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of NY Mellon, Merrill Lynch, Cantor Fitzgerald, Verizon, Mitsubishi, AT&T, Charles Schwab and others. He is the author of two relevant books: Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers & Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide and The Guide to Green Power: Thinking Outside the Grid, which ranked #1 in the energy-book category for several weeks on Amazon.com.
Brian Tolly, Global Services Business Development Manager
Spirent Global Services
Brian Tolly is responsible for Business Development with Spirent Global Services. He has extensive experience with fundamentals of testing, test methodology creation and risk mitigation. In addition he has spent the last several years focusing on automation concepts and bringing automation solutions to Service Providers and NEMs. He has extensive experience in testing enterprise and carrier grade systems in mixed vendor environments. He brings a strong combination of experience in the following networking technologies:
- IPv4, IPv6
- MPLS
- Multicasting
- L2/3 switching, L4-L7 switching
- ATM
- Gigabit Ethernet / 10 Gigabit Ethernet
- 802.x Wireless
- Firewall / VPN
- VoIP
- Intrusion Detection/Prevention
His experience in independent testing, network design and project management of multi month projects and interoperability events provides him with a solid understanding of the needs that are required for successful testing best practices as well as on time deployment of multi-vendor converged networks.
In 2004, Brian was the technical project coordinator for the Multiservice Switching Forum's GMI 2004 event which included 50+ participants in a carrier grade VoIP environment running interoperability testing for two weeks in 4 countries across 3 continents.
Brian also serves on the Board of VoIPSA (Voice Over IP Security Alliance) where he chairs the Testing Committee.
Joseph T. Fuccillo, President & Chief Technology OfficerJuma Technology, Premier Brocade Business Partner
Joseph Fuccillo is a seasoned technologist with a range of experience in telecommunications, data networks, storage solutions and systems integration. With deep roots in network engineering, he has worked to bring converged networking to the forefront of the industry. Fuccillo has been influential in shaping the IT infrastructure for hundreds of organizations, including NASDAQ. He was formerly Vice President for managed services provider Xand Corporation and Director of Technical Services for Westcon. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Manhattan College and multiple vendor certifications
