Recent Contributions

Keywords: Startups, M&A landscape, Cloud ecosystem, Trends
Authors: Krishna Subramanian, Senior Director, Corporate Development, Sun Microsystems.
Abstract:
Cloud computing is changing the infrastructure landscape, and both large companies and new startups are rushing in to capture marketshare. Who will ultimately win? Will it be the entrenched large players (the Goliaths), or the emerging young startups (the Davids)? In this session, Krishna will explore the unique characteristics of cloud computing that make it disruptive, and discuss areas of opportunity where emerging companies can have a leg up.

Keywords: SOA, SaaS, PaaS, Cloud Computing, Dorado
Authors: Dain Ehring, Founder & CEO Dorado Systems
Dain Ehring has served on Dorado’s executive management team since the company’s inception in 1998, and has led the company through a decade of rapid growth. In 2006, the company was listed as one of the nation’s fastest growing companies by INC. magazine, and today, the company’s enterprise SaaS lending platform is being used by top ten banks in the U.S. and Canada. Before founding Dorado, Mr. Ehring was Director of Market Development and Strategic Sales for JavaSoft, Sun Microsystems’ Internet company. Prior to joining JavaSoft, he was Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Service at Lighthouse Design Ltd., an applications developer later acquired by Sun. Mr. Ehring has also held a variety of senior management roles at NeXT Computers, IBM, and Unisys. He holds a Master’s degree in Space Physics from UCLA and worked at NASA before moving to the private sector.
Abstract:
While most large financial institutions are moving towards the adoption of SOAs (Service-Oriented Architectures), cultural, political and other issues often get in the way. In fact, the larger the institution, the greater the resistance to change. Loyalty to long-time vendors and vested interests in maintaining entrenched legacy systems can often present both political and implementation mine fields for the bank management seeking to create a more agile enterprise via SOA. The solution? Think globally, but act locally. Plan for an overarching cloud strategy while implementing and realizing this strategy one business unit, or one set of processes at a time. One of the greatest advantages of the SaaS model is its flexibility – it can be organized in modules that are vendor-agnostic and that can work with any number of legacy vendors and outside data suppliers. Mr. Ehring will discuss how Dorado is socializing and implementing its PaaS and SaaS solutions at some of the world’s largest banks using this modular approach.

Keywords: storage as a service
Authors: Carter George, VP of Products at Ocarina Networks.
Carter George owns the product roadmap, product strategy and target market selection.
Prior to Ocarina, George was VP and co-founder of PolyServe. He drove product strategy, helped raise funding, defined product roadmap and early release schedules and helped close customers prior to the sale of Polyserve to Hewlett Packard. George played many roles including VP of Business Development where he closed several OEM deals with HP and Novell. He was also the VP and GM of Polyserve's scalable fault tolerant NAS storage division and was responsible for finding paths to market , managing OEMs, marketing ecosystem partnerships, and the P&L for the business.
Prior to PolyServe, George was at Sequent Computer. He was the Chief Enterprise Architect for Sequent and led a team focused on large deals in major accounts. He also ran Professional Services for Sequent and grew their consulting business from scratch to $100M rapidly. George also ran M&A for Sequent and orchestrated several strategic deals with Dell, IBM and others prior to the acquisition of Sequent by IBM for ~$1Billion.
Abstract:
Cloud storage is one of the fastest-growing segments in the storage industry due to its potential for lowering costs, removing the burden of managing and protecting data, and ultimately creating a new “virtual” tier of online storage. It has given rise to multiple innovative architectures, and could well be a harbinger of larger nearline storage trends. In this talk, we'll look at cloud storage architecture across multiple cloud providers, offering a detailed look at the architectural trends and innovations in cloud storage platforms, discussing how the various architectures differ from what end users have in their own data centers. We will also discuss the rise of some of the biggest breakthroughs in cloud storage, integrated content-aware compression and dedupe, which are ways of drastically reducing the space taken to store data, and also to move it across the WAN. The cloud offerings we will take a look at will be from Amazon AWS, Nirvanix, Microsoft, IBM, EMC and others.

Some take-aways include:

• A thorough introduction to the newest architecture innovations and features in cloud storage, helping participants make better informed business decisions regarding the most appropriate types of storage in the cloud for their specific needs.
• For cloud storage vendors and those in related businesses, an understanding of the emerging potential of dedupe and content aware compression in the cloud and how these can enable vendors to offer even more aggressive and compelling pricing to cloud storage customers, as well as to leverage finding duplicate and redundant data across much larger pools of data.
• New insights on ways that each vendor is, or could be, offering integrated data reduction as part of their overall value proposition to customers interested in cloud storage options.

Keywords: Private cloud, Virtualization, Internal cloud
Authors: Dave Malcolm, Sr. Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Surgient.
Dave is responsible for product management, software development, and datacenter operations for Surgient's products and hosted solutions. Prior to Surgient, Dave was the Vice President of Product Group at Motive where he built the software development organization from its early beginnings and was responsible for product marketing and development of the entire Motive product line that grew from $2 million to over $65 million in annual revenue during his tenure. Prior to Motive, Dave was the Vice President and General Manager of the Internet Business Unit at Tivoli Systems. While at Tivoli, Dave founded Tivoli's internet management business and launched its first generation of products. Dave held a number of management positions in the product group at Tivoli during his seven-year tenure in which Tivoli had a successful initial public offering, was acquired by IBM and grew from under $1 million to over $1 billion in annual revenue. Prior to Tivoli, Dave held management and software development positions at Locus Computing Corporation and Texas Instruments. Dave graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor's degree in computer science.
Abstract:
Clearly, the current darling of the IT infrastructure technology world is the “cloud.” Industry analysts are predicting wide adoption of cloud computing, and in particular private clouds. However, with a wide spectrum of definitions and best practices emerging, a clearer understanding of how the cloud can specifically benefit your organization is critical.

In this session, Surgient CTO Dave Malcolm will explore the key considerations that must be made before a company plans to implement a private cloud. Attendees to this session will learn:

• Five pillars that define cloud computing
• Specific use cases for the private cloud in your organization
• Critical elements and considerations of the private cloud
• Best practices for implementing a private cloud