SPEAKERS
K E Y N O T E S P E A K E R S
Adrian Davis
President and CEO, Whetstone Inc.
Adrian Davis is a business strategist and trusted advisor for executives of mid- to large-sized business-to-business organizations. As President and CEO of management consulting firm Whetstone Inc., he has worked with organizations such as AOL, KPMG, Motorola, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Phonak, Aviva and Dupont. His highly talented team has developed a reputation for leading organizations to innovative and practical solutions that enhance customer value and dramatically increase sales and profitability. Adrian is a certified professional in Business Process Management (P.BPM) and a certified Competitive Intelligence Professional (CIP). He is a thought-provoking speaker and is frequently called upon to address senior management teams and sales groups on the subjects of corporate strategy, competitive advantage and sales excellence.
Mani Gill
VP of OnDemand, Business Objects, an SAP Company
Mani Gill is the Vice President of OnDemand at Business Objects, an SAP company; he manages the software as a service strategy, direction, and sales for crystalreports.com, Business Intelligence OnDemand and Information OnDemand products. Prior to coming to Business Objects 11 years ago, he was integrating business intelligence technologies into Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual Studio, BackOffice, Dynamics and CRM. Mani is originally from Canada and now lives in Seattle with his wife and two young daughters, and enjoys golfing and travelling in his spare time.
Sean Poulley
Vice President, Online Collaboration Services, Lotus Software, IBM
Sean Poulley is vice president of the Online Collaboration Services business unit for the Lotus software division in IBM. Sean leads the sales, design, development and delivery of software-as-a-service offerings for IBM. The Lotus Sametime Unyte web conferencing service (www.sametimeunyte.com) and the newly announced "Bluehouse" project (www.bluehouse.lotus.com) are in market today.
Prior to joining IBM in January 2002, Sean held various positions with independent software vendors dating back to 1994. Sean graduated from the University of Birmingham in the UK and holds a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering.
Dr. Werner Vogels
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Amazon.com
Dr. Werner Vogels is Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com where he is responsible for driving the company's technology vision, which is to continuously enhance the innovation on behalf of Amazon's customers at a global scale.
Prior to joining Amazon, he worked as a scientist at Cornell University where he was a principal investigator in several research projects that target the scalability and robustness of mission-critical enterprise computing systems. He has held positions of VP of Technology and CTO in companies that handled the transition of academic technology into industry.
Vogels holds a Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has authored many articles for journals and conferences, most of them on distributed systems technologies for enterprise computing.
Phil Wainewright
Director, Procullux Ventures
Phil Wainewright is CEO of strategic consulting firm Procullux Ventures and an influential commentator and strategist on Internet computing and its impact on business. He specializes in on-demand services (SaaS), services architectures (SOA) and Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0, and has closely observed the evolution of SaaS and webware ever since he founded the ASPnews.com website in 1998 to track the then nascent ASP industry. In his work, he focuses on identifying the practical business applications (or shortcomings) of emerging technology innovations. He makes his findings available via private consulting, published research, public speaking, webcasts and blogging. His blogs include the ZDNet Software as Services blog and the Loosely Coupled blog, he is a member of the Enterprise Irregulars network and a contributor to the FASTForward Blog.
C O N F I R M E D S P E A K E R S
Ulf Avrin
Senior Director, Partners and Local Software Economy, International Team, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, Microsoft Corporation
Ulf Avrin, Senior Director, heads up the Microsoft activities supporting SW Partners (ISVs, Custom Development companies and others) in the International Field Enablement group of Microsoft's Corporate headquarters for the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) Group. The DPE group helps ISVs and other partners that invest in SW intellectual property to adopt the Microsoft platform and to develop products that take advantage of .NET technologies, the Windows Server System(TM), Visual Studio(R) .NET, the .NET Framework, Microsoft Office Systems, Microsoft Dynamics and Windows client operating systems.
Ulf is a non-executive board member of Maple-X, a Swedish investment company with ownership in SI and ISV businesses in the Nordics.
Before joining Microsoft in 2004 Ulf was the CEO of Mobeon, a rapidly growing telecoms ISV, and prior to that he was CEO of Ericsson Microsoft Mobile Venture, a joint venture between Ericsson and Microsoft in the area of Enterprise Messaging and Collaboration. Ulf held various management positions during 10 years at Ericsson, the last being VP of Mobile Internet Applications. He holds an Engineering Physics degree from Chalmers University in Sweden and an MBA from Warwick Business School, UK.
Martin Bittner
Managing Director and founder, SolveDirect Solutions (division of BRAIN FORCE SOFTWARE GmbH)
As Managing Director and founding member of SolveDirect Solutions, Martin built up a world leading provider for centrally hosted, web-based Service Management solutions. With the world's largest on demand IT-Service Management platform SolveDirect automated the Service Management of more than 200 major industry leading companies throughout Europe and CEE with Software-as-a-Service resulting in substantial cost- and time-savings in the service processes. Martin is also responsible for sales at SolveDirect and grew the company's turnover by 100 percent last year. Today SolveDirect Solutions is a division of BRAIN FORCE SOFTWARE GmbH (Austria). Martin has more than 15 years of experience in the international IT sector. Prior to founding SolveDirect in 2000 Martin worked for IBM in Austria where he was responsible for the Service Management business.
Mikael Blaisdell
Director, Mikael Blaisdell & Associates, Inc.
For over 25 years, Mikael Blaisdell has been closely involved with the strategy, process, people and technology of customer relationship management and retention. As a consultant, he has advised organizations across a wide range of types, locations and sizes on designing, building, re-engineering and optimizing their customer contact centers and programs. Working with support technology manufacturers, he has contributed to the design of tools and implementation procedures. He has trained support agents, supervisors and their managers, served on the boards of professional associations, done presentations on all aspects of CRM at industry gatherings, and written extensively on the subject for various publications for many years.
Ken Boasso
Founder, KeyChain Logic
As a founder of Keychain Logic, the premier Software-as-a-Service revenue acceleration company, Ken Boasso brings over 20 years' experience in building highly successful strategic business development & sales teams to the emerging SaaS sector. With broad experience marketing and selling technology services and applications, Ken's teams have generated more than $3.2 billion in profitable new contract revenue for start-ups, companies in turnaround mode, and Fortune 100 enterprises. The principle author of Transforming the Software Industry, the Software & Information Industry Association's whitepaper on SaaS adoption and acceleration, Ken is also chairs the ISV Best Practices Committee in the SIIA's SaaS Executive Council. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Davis and a masters in business administration from St. Mary's College of California.
Steve Booth
Vice President of Sales & Business Development, Aria Systems
Steve Booth is Vice President of Sales & Business Development of Aria Systems, the leading provider of on-demand billing and customer management solutions. Founded in 2002, Aria Systems provides clients with a powerful tool to accelerate revenue capture, automate business processes, and significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of billing software. Steve is responsible for setting Aria's sales strategy and driving revenue growth through enterprise customer base expansion. Steve is a seasoned sales executive, bringing over 20 years of enterprise solution sales and sales management experience to Aria. Prior to joining Aria, Steve held senior sales management positions with QlikTech, Responsys, ADP, and Portal Software. Steve holds a BS in Marketing and Finance from LaSalle University.
Barbara Coll
CEO, WebMama.com, Inc.
Barbara Coll came to California from Canada after earning a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Systems. She was drawn to the growing opportunities in the Silicon Valley-and wanted to get into the industry while it was still young. For many years, she worked as a product and program marketer for companies including Sun Microsystems, Qualix Group, and Ipsilon Networks. In 1996, at the beginning of the Internet boom, she started her own SEO consulting company: Webmama.com
To say WebMama has been a success may be one of the biggest understatements in the industry. Since its inception, Barbara's company has grossed over $4 million annually, and worked with companies such as Hewlett Packard, Verisign, eLance, WeddingChannel.com, Imperva, Saint-Gobain, and many more. In 2005, WebMama ranked 4 th in San Francisco Business Journal's list of 100 top-growing companies in the area. It's also been ranked 27 th largest woman-owned business in the Silicon Valley.
Barbara is active in her industry. She helped to found the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), served as president, and remains a chairperson to this day. She's on the ad:Tech advisory board and can be found speaking at Search Engine Strategies and the Local Search Conference in her area.
Barbara worked from home in Palo Alto, California, for most of her business's history. She had to move to an office space in 2002 as her company grew. Most of her employees are subcontractors, and many work remotely. Despite the increased growth, Barbara loves the challenge and flexibility of her job-and working with clients large and small.
Mark Darby
Principal, Alliantist
Mark Darby is the author of ALLIANCE BRAND: Fulfilling the Promise of Partnering, the leading book on Amazon published by Wiley that demonstrates how to get a positive reputation and results from partnering & alliances.
Said by its critics to be the most comprehensive and pragmatic fieldbook on partnering to date Alliance Brand is endorsed and used by many of the worlds leading organisations.
Mark is also Founder and Principal of ALLIANTIST (www.ALLIANTIST.com), a specialist alliance solutions provider that enables organisations to get measurable benefits from their partnering and alliance activity.
ALLIANTIST offers training, and advisory solutions as well as a software application called PAM™ Partner & Alliance Manager. ALLIANTIST clients include BT, National Offender Management Service (NOMS), Reuters, UKTI, National Probation Service, Ernst & Young, Vodafone, Reckitt Benckiser, SEEDA, Veredus, Tribal Resourcing, Henley Management College, and FDM Group.
Paul Daugherty
Chief Technology Architect, Accenture
Paul Daugherty is Accenture's Chief Technology Architect. In this role, Paul oversees the development and deployment of Accenture's suite of leading technology architectures. He is responsible for more than 2,000 technology architects who work around the globe and across industries implementing complex, leading-edge technology solutions for Accenture's clients. His current focus areas include Service Oriented Architectures, Software as a Service, Web 2.0, Legacy Renewal, Open Source, and Mobility.
Prior to this role, Paul led Accenture's Technology business in the Resources operating group, which serves clients in the utilities, energy, natural resources, and chemicals sectors. Paul has also been instrumental in leading Accenture initiatives in areas such as eCommerce, and more recently, CIO Agenda, which is focused on rapidly growing the architecture and innovation areas of Accenture's business.
Fraser Davidson
Investment Director, August Equity
Fraser joined August Equity in 2002 and is responsible for investment origination and execution in the media and technology sector. Fraser led August's recent investment in SaaS document collaboration business 4Projects and has also invested in Boat International, Hat Trick, Healthcare Homes Group, Imagine Publishing, InterMed and Rixonway Kitchens. Fraser is a non executive director of both 4Projects and Boat International.
Fraser has an honours degree in International Business and Modern Languages, specialising in Marketing and French, from the University of Strathclyde.
Richard Dym
Chief Marketing Officer, OpSource, Inc.
Mr. Dym brings to OpSource 25 years of successful marketing, business development, and technical operations experience gained from the senior executive positions he has held at fast-paced technology companies ranging from venture backed start-ups to global public enterprises. His broad experience includes active involvement in successful liquidity events including IPO, acquisitions, and sale.
Prior to re-joining OpSource, where he previously served as Chief Marketing Officer, he held the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at AXS-One Inc., a leader in the records compliance management space. At AXS-One, Mr. Dym was responsible for Marketing, Technical Support, Documentation, QA, Training and IT. He has also served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Metromedia Fiber Networks (now Abovenet); Senior Vice President of Marketing and Vice president of International Operations at ParcPlace; General Manager of the Multimedia Division at Autodesk; and Director, Graphics and Decision Support products for Ashton-Tate.
Prior to working with technology and technology-related services companies, Mr. Dym was a Senior Economist and regional manger with Chase Econometrics, Inc. (a subsidiary of Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A.), as well as a cofounder of Dym, Frank & Company, a quantitative money management firm.
Mr. Dym holds a B.A. in Economics from the Franklin & Marshall College and a M.A. in Economics from American University.
Lluis Font
CEO, NTRglobal
Lluis Font's vision for making IT simpler with NTRglobal's portfolio of enterprise-grade SaaS for remote support and remote systems management, is driving momentum for the software-as-a-service industry around the globe. Under his leadership and focus on meeting customer needs with a choice of SaaS and SaaS hybrid models, he has doubled revenue year-over-year since 2002. More than 12,000 businesses in 60 countries subscribe to NTRglobal on-demand solutions for remote support with NTRsupport™ and remote administration and IT task automation with NTRadmin™. Prior to leading NTRglobal, Mr. Font held numerous executive positions with top consulting companies, including Price Waterhouse, and was CEO of AGM, The Global Company, one of Spain's biggest internet consulting firms, at which he grew revenue from 3 million Euros to 15 million Euros in one year.
Jérôme Fougerat
Regional Director, Corum Group International
Jerome Fougerat joined Corum in 2006 and now serves as Regional Director in Paris.erome's entrepreneurial and IT management career began in the mid-1990's when he co-founded Tribelt, an IT service company for telcos and large banks. He then co-founded Solsoft, a network security software company, for which he raised more than 20M€ from international top tier VCs. Established in France and in the USA, Solsoft sold its solutions to more than 50 of the Fortune 500 companies in the world. Jerome also served as CEO of NetSecureOne, an IT security group he created when merging Zencod and NetSecure Software, and as Sales and Marketing Director for Delia Systems, a scheduling software company.
Jerome began his professional career in financial journalism (Capital Finance) before joining the investment firm Renovaction (Rockefeller Foundation's investment vehicle in France).
Jerome holds an Executive MBA from HEC as well as History and English degrees, and is fluent in both French and English.
John Garratt
Editor, IT Europa and 8020 Europa
John Garratt has a BSc in engineering and an MSc in management. After building a few bridges (literally), he trained as a journalist on Fleet St, and edited trade publications before embarking on a new career as an IT salesman. He successfully ran an IBM/HP dealership in South London before moving, with his family, to live in California, where he worked as a salesman and lecturer on computer-aided design. Back in the UK after a couple of years, he freelanced, writing for several IT trade and consumer titles before helping launch Channel Business in 1995 as Editor. He is now Editor of IT Europa, and plays in a rock and jazz band when he can.
Conor Halpin
SVP EMEA, OpSource, Inc.
Jim Howard
CEO, CrownPeak
As CEO, Jim is focused on advancing CrownPeak's leadership in the software-as-a-service market. Under Jim's leadership since its founding in 2001, CrownPeak has become the market leading company in on-demand web site management software. In the past seven years, CrownPeak has experienced explosive growth, with over 90% year-over-year revenue growth and 97% customer retention. Among the companies in the CrownPeak client roster today are Staples, 3M, Home Depot, Crain Publishing, Miller Brewing, Hyundai Motors and the State of Virginia. CrownPeak has been named as one of the 100 most influential companies in Online Content by Econtent Magazine, one of the top 25 ASPs in the world by ASPNews, and was chosen as an SIIA Codie Award finalist for Best Content Management Solution three years in a row. Jim was named by CMSWatch as one of the 20 People to Watch in Content Management.
Jim's professional background combines extensive startup experience with years of software development and professional services delivery and management. He has spent the past eleven years working with web content management and search technologies. Jim previously held senior executive positions in professional services management, sales, and operational management with companies such as USWeb, MarchFIRST, and successful startup, W3-design.
Henrik Jeberg
Chief Strategy Officer, IT Factory
As Chief Strategy Officer, Henrik has the overall responsibility for the company's strategic direction and the global business development.
Henrik joined IT FACTORY in April 2007 and comes with more than 15 years of experience in the international IT industry.
He has held a wide range of top-management positions, incl. CIO with the Danish Ministry of Finance, Director with Gartner in Paris, and a 6 years tenure with Navision Software (now Microsoft) where he held a series of directorships in Denmark, France, Australia, and finally the position of MD for Asia.
Henrik holds a masters degree in Electrical Engineering and a bachelor degree in Business Administration.
He has also attended Executive Education programs at the French business school INSEAD and at the University of Oxford in the UK.
Jon Kruse
Senior Investment Manager, Intel Capital
Jon Kruse is an Investment Manger for Intel Capital responsible for leading investments in the OnDemand and IT Services sectors. He has executed equity and business development deals around the world in firms as varied as Skype (VoIP telephony), Panorama Software (Business Intelligence), OpSource (SaaS enabling), Certisign (Brazil - Service based workflow tools), and Star SoftComm (PRC - service based manageability). Prior to joining Intel Capital, Jon spent 10 years in a variety of marketing, strategic planning, and finance roles at Intel. He led the strategic planning effort which ultimately led to Intel's Digital Home vision, as well as several emerging market based programs and products (PRC Education and Internet Café PCs). Jon also led Intel's European business client marketing team, which delivered several of Intel's initial Central European and Russian specific marketing programs.
Paul Lightfoot
Director of Managed Services, The Bunker
Paul is responsible for the development of The Bunker Managed Services division heading up a dedicated team of experienced sales, technical pre-sales and marketing professionals. Previously The Bunker Technical Services Director Paul boasts a wealth of knowledge and experience of Bunker operations across all sites, including implementation and maintenance of company security and technology. Prior to joining The Bunker's management team, Paul served for 15 years in the Royal Air Force in secure communications and IT based roles.
Frank McCracken
Founder and Professional Services Director, Saaspoint
Frank is a 20 year industry veteran. He has held technical consulting
and management consulting positions with IBM, Cap Gemini Sogeti and was
a key member of the team which founded and launched Salesforce.com EMEA.
Frank has successfully managed Software-as-a-Service projects for
hundreds of customers and thousands of users. Frank is a founder of
Saaspoint. At this stage in his career, Frank is widely accepted to be
one of the most experienced consultants in the worldwide on-demand
marketplace.
William S. McNee
Founder & CEO, Saugatuck Technology
Mr. McNee is the President and CEO of Saugatuck Technology, a strategy consulting and subscription research and advisory firm focused on emerging IT markets. Most recently, Mr. McNee has helped spearhead the firm's research into evolving business models as a result of the shift to software-as-a-service (SaaS), open source and utility computing - published through the firm's complimentary Research Alerts as well as its' premium research deliverables. Prior to founding the firm in 1999, Mr. McNee spent eleven years with Gartner, Inc., most recently as Group Vice President and Research Fellow, responsible for guiding the firm's overall research strategy. A recognized expert in enterprise software and related business/IT services, Mr. McNee spent five years leading Gartner's Business/IT Management practice as its Director of Research, focusing on CIO governance, IT sourcing models and e-commerce management strategies. A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Mr. McNee has published hundreds of articles and consulted with thousands of user and vendor clients over the years, throughout the world. Prior to Gartner, Mr. McNee held strategic planning, business development and marketing positions at CBS, HBO, Comshare and the Institute for Social Research. Mr. McNee is a Board or Advisory Board member for a number of emerging and established technology companies as well as the Westport Public Library. Mr. McNee is a University of Michigan alumnus and has completed graduate work in economics at New York University.
Jeff Miller
VP of Strategy, Cast Iron Systems
Alastair Mitchell
Co-Founder & CEO, Huddle.net
Alastair has spent the last 10 years in the online services industry and is a passionate advocate of the power of the internet to drive better collaboration.
After graduating with a Masters in Engineering from Southampton University in the UK Alastair spent the first 2 years of his career building the first online market place for global food commodities; providing auction & logistics capabilities to buyers and sellers across EMEA. Alastair then moved to dunnhumby where he launched the Shop, their now industry-standard web-based marketing intelligence suite, and grew it to £20m in three years. Alastair joined dunnhumby's Board in 2005 to head up the group's Shopping Experience practice, a $60m+ business globally.
After a majority purchase by Tesco in 2006, Alastair left dunnhumby to start Huddle.net in an effort to solve the problems he and his teams had experienced collaborating in global virtual teams, serving clients, managing projects and sharing information. Huddle - work better together.
Marc Moens
Associate Partner, Pentech Ventures
Worked at the University of Edinburgh in document management, including annotation standards like XML, text classification, information extraction, and text summarization. Left the University in May 2000 to co-found text-to-speech company Rhetorical Systems, and became its CEO. Sold Rhetorical to ScanSoft (now Nuance), a US-based speech company.
Took it easy for a while, but remained involved in startups as advisor or co-founder. Recently joined the executive team at Pentech Ventures. Pentech is a venture capital firm, specializing in seed or series A investments in software companies
Penny O'Roarke
Managing Director, Bluewolf Europe
Penny O'Roarke is the Managing Director of Bluewolf's European operations. She has over 20 years of technical experience in solution delivery, customer services and operational management. She also has deep expertise in the high tech and financial services industries as well as in the SaaS space. Prior to working at Bluewolf, Penny worked at SurfControl as the Director of Business Services overseeing the global roll-out of Salesforce.com to its sales, marketing and technical support operations.
Penny has a BSc (Hons) in Mathematical Engineering and an Advance Professional Diploma in Management Studies from Bracknell and Wokingham College.
Chris Rolison
Chief Executive Officer, Comply Serve Ltd
With a background in electronic engineering, Chris has had a career in IT and software sales, sales management, marketing and general management for over 22 years. Chris has had significant experience in establishing new markets for leading-edge technology companies including GEC Plessey, Racal Electronics, Zuken, Gemstone Technologies and Telelogic AB. He is the principle founder of Comply Serve Ltd and CEO.
Tony Ryan
CEO, Asite
Tony has worked in information technology since 1989 and has a wide range of experience in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and E-Business solutions. Tony brings with him the experience of working with large publicly-held corporations as well as small entrepreneurial start-up companies. Tony specialises in helping emerging businesses succeed. Tony joined Asite in December 2003. Prior to joining Asite, Tony worked for a number of successful business start-ups, after heading up sales for EMEA at Renaissance Worldwide, a global E-Business consulting practice. Tony is a member of the Asite Executive Committee.
Stephan Schambach
Executive Chairman and Founder, Demandware
Stephan Schambach is Executive Chairman and Founder of Demandware, provider of the leading on-demand eCommerce platform for consumer brands. Prior to founding Demandware in 2004, Schambach was CEO of Intershop, an eCommerce company he founded in 1992, built to market leadership, brought public in 1998 on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange's Neuer Market, and led to a successful NASDAQ listing in 2000. Long an eCommerce visionary, Schambach was among the first to recognize eCommerce as a major software market. He is the developer of a number of industry standards for the technology and also produced the first integrated eCommerce software package, enabling major global brands to sell and service over the internet. Schambach also currently serves as a board member of the SIIA (Software Information Industry Association of America) Software Division and regularly speaks in the industry about emerging technologies. Earlier in his career, Schambach studied physics at Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany, and was among the first to found a company in East Germany after the Berlin Wall came down.
Bill Soward
President & CEO, Adaptive Planning
Bill Soward is president and CEO of Adaptive Planning. Prior to Adaptive Planning, Bill was an Executive in Residence at Accel Partners. Prior to Accel, he was General Manager of FRS, a business unit of S1 Corporation. While at S1, Bill transformed FRS into the company's most successful business unit, more than doubling revenues while building profitable and sustainable customer relationships with global financial institutions. As a member of S1's executive team, Bill helped spearhead the build out of S1's European operations and served as the interim CEO of both S1 Europe and S1's Edify business unit. Prior to joining S1, he held a variety of executive roles at Edify Corporation.
Bill holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Edward Sullivan
Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Aria Systems
Ed Sullivan is the CEO and Founder of Aria Systems. As CEO, Ed brings leadership, vision, and valuable insight to the needs of the marketplace to bear on Aria's strategic direction. His entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas have led him to build several successful companies. Prior to Aria, Ed was the Founder and President of LaserLink.net, the World's first and largest Virtual Internet Service Provider. LaserLink provided billing and Internet services to over one million end users and operated the Internet Services for several ISP's including American Express, Compaq, Gateway, Amway and IBM. LaserLink was acquired by Covad Communications in March 2000.
Milan Thanawala
Director Platform Products, Oracle Corporation
Milan leads the Oracle SaaS Program Office which helps partners get educated and enabled on the Oracle SaaS Platform. Milan also has responsibility for ISV technology partnerships leveraging the Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, and Enterprise Manager products focusing on the Telecom, Utilities, Media, Public Sector & Security segments. Prior to Oracle, he worked in business development, product marketing, and engineering roles at Sun Microsystems, AMD, and a couple of startups. He received an MBA from Santa Clara University, and an MSEE from Virginia Tech.
David Thomas
Executive Director, Software Division, SIIA
Thomas provides strategic market consultation, research and analysis for senior industry executives on varied issues relating to the software industry, publishes wide industry knowledge and strategic insight for member companies on the latest trends, business issues and visionary topics as well as fosters partnership and alliance opportunities. He works with executives to develop showcase industry thought leadership and increase industry exposure.
Richard Vertigan
Managing Director, 4Projects
Richard Vertigan has been involved in the development of collaborative working since the early 1990's. He was responsible for developing and implementing the concept of 3D Building Information Modelling at Taylor Woodrow, and with clients including BAA, Tesco and Railtrack. Richard was also a working participant in research projects involving Salford University, Reading University and the London School of Economics. In answer to the challenges arising from traditional means of information distribution, Richard founded 4Projects with an ambition to bring affordable collaboration and document management solutions to construction and related industries. His ability to match practical solutions to traditional problems has led to the development of systems that benefit all parties involved in a supply chain. Richard remains committed to automating business processes transcending organisational boundaries. Qualified as a Quantity Surveyor and holding a Masters degree in Information Systems, Richard bridges the gap between business requirements and the technology experts at 4Projects who deliver the solutions.
Derek Ward
Executive Vice President, UK Markets and Accounts, Atos Orgin
Derek Ward is Executive Vice President, UK Markets & Strategic Relationships at Atos Origin – A leading Business Consulting, Systems Integration and Managed Operations organization with annual revenues of more than EUR 5 billion. Drawing on 20 years of experience dealing with both Public and Private Sector organisations around the world, Derek reports directly to the Main Board of Atos Origin and is responsible for all UK markets, from Financial Services, Health, Enterprise, Transport and Government
Derek’s exceptional insight into the IT services industry has led him to become involved as a past Chairman of Intellect’s Private Sector Council, a member of the Government’s Strategic Suppliers Board, CBI and the Princes Trust Technology Groups as well as frequently cited by industry analysts, national and trade press. In his role as a non executive board member and Foundation Partner of ASAPTech Derek is also recognized as a keen supporter of the development of Ecosystems in support of increasingly diverse and complex demands from customers.