Speakers

George Kurian is chief executive officer at NetApp and a member of the Board of Directors. George joined the company in 2011, bringing his passion and relentless focus on execution to his leadership roles at NetApp. He was named CEO in June 2015.

Previously at NetApp, as executive vice president of Product Operations, George was responsible for the strategy and development of NetApp’s product and solutions portfolio. Before that, George was senior vice president of the Data ONTAP Group overseeing development of the Data ONTAP operating system.

George joined NetApp as senior vice president of the Storage Solutions Group, where he was responsible for the solutions portfolio and joint partner technology integration.

Prior to joining NetApp, George was vice president and general manager of the Application Networking and Switching Technology Group at Cisco Systems. George’s diverse background also includes the role of vice president at Akamai Technologies, management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and leading software engineering and product management teams at Oracle Corporation.

George is also an independent director on the Board of global health services company Cigna Corporation.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford University.

As president of NetApp, César Cernuda is responsible for leading the company’s global go-to-market organization spanning sales, marketing, services, support, and customer success. With more than 25 years of senior leadership experience, he will help NetApp transform quickly to capture new growth opportunities in enterprise storage systems and cloud data services.

With his passion for strong results; commitment to building diverse, high-performing teams; and experience in business transformation, César will lead NetApp to consistently win in a rapidly changing customer landscape.

César’s focus is driving customer success and speeding digital and multichannel customer engagements. He is repositioning NetApp by building on and expanding partnerships with the major cloud providers and other key strategic partners to ensure NetApp’s seat at the table for the digital transformation of all enterprise companies.

Before joining NetApp, César held various leadership positions in sales, marketing, and product development. He has more than 20 years of international experience, launching and growing businesses in major markets around the world. He worked at Microsoft for 23 years in senior roles, including vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Microsoft Dynamics, president of the Microsoft Asia-Pacific region, and most recently president of the company’s Latin America and Caribbean theater and corporate vice president worldwide. He led successful market transformations and contributed to the fastest-growing parts of the Microsoft business.

In addition, César is a non-executive director at Gestamp, an international group dedicated to the automotive industry; an advisory board member of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business; and a jury member for the Princess of Asturias Awards for Technical and Scientific Research. In 2019 the U.S.-Spain Chamber of Commerce presented him the Ponce de Leon Award for Executive of the Year. In 2018 and 2019 he was among the Hispanic IT Executive Council’s HITEC 50, which recognizes the top 50 Spanish and Latino hi-tech leaders worldwide.

César is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Executive Leadership Program and the Program for Management Development at IESE Business School – University of Navarra. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from ESIC Business & Marketing School.

James Whitemore is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at NetApp. He is responsible for advancing the company’s global marketing strategy and strengthening market recognition to accelerate growth.

As a veteran of the cloud computing, networking and storage industry, James has more than 25 years of experience leading and implementing successful global sales, product management and marketing strategies. A key part of the team since joining NetApp via the SolidFire acquisition in early 2016, James has been central to the development and execution of our Marketing strategy to reposition NetApp from storage to data and the cloud.

In his previous role as VP of Field & Demand Marketing at NetApp, James built and led a modern demand engine as well as managed Field and Partner Marketing, Demand Centers, Global Campaigns, Event Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social, Influence and Community Marketing.

James holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management from Northumbria University in the UK.

Adam Selipsky is the CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. Having previously led AWS marketing, sales, and support for 11 years, from 2005-2016, Selipsky helped launch and grow AWS from a start-up into a multi-billion dollar business. Prior to rejoining AWS in 2021, Selipsky was most recently President and CEO of Tableau Software. He led Tableau through its acquisition by Salesforce, in what was the third largest software industry acquisition at the time. Selipsky has also held various leadership roles at RealNetworks, and before that was a Principal at strategy consulting firm, Mercer Management Consulting. He has an AB in government from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.  

Dr. Peter Schardt has been Chief Technology Officer of Siemens Healthineers since October 01, 2018. The doctor of physics joined Siemens in 1995 as a project manager for X-ray tubes. There he developed high-performance tubes for computed tomography before taking over the management of the entire predevelopment for X-ray tubes in 2002. In 2009, Schardt assumed business responsibility for the Mechatronics Competence Center in Kemnath. This is one of the largest integrated development and manufacturing sites of Siemens Healthineers worldwide.

In 2011, he moved to the Laboratory Diagnostics business unit as program manager for the Atellica Solution product family. In this role, he played a key role in the final development and market launch of the new system, which is a trend-setter in laboratory diagnostics. On January 1,2018, Schardt took over worldwide management of the X-ray Technology product division.

Dr. Peter Schardt was born in Hadamar on 20 June 1965.

Bryson Koehler leads the Product and Technology organizations at Equifax, a global data, analytics and technology company. As a vision-driven, no-nonsense leader, he inspires his global technology teams to build products and services that create data insights – empowering customers and partners to make more informed decisions. Koehler is recognized for creating positive change within an organization through innovative technology and relentless relationship building.

Previously, Koehler drove efforts to bring IBM Watson together with a full suite of cloud native capabilities as a common platform aimed at providing world-class, developer-friendly cognitive tools. These efforts culminated in the relaunch of IBM Watson and Cloud Platform. Additionally, he was chief technology and information officer at The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC) before it was acquired in 2015 by IBM.

Koehler is an active member of his community. He helps shape Georgia’s technology community by serving on the boards of directors for the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) and the Atlanta Chief Information Officer (CIO) Advisory Board. Koehler also sits on the board of directors for Technology and Data Committee of Realogy, a leading provider of residential real estate services.

Koehler holds bachelor’s degrees in political science and communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Fedor has joined SberCloud team in January 2020, before that he was working for Sberbank as Managing Director (Head of the IT division for Digital Corporate Bank team).

Before Sberbank Fedor was the CIO for Cetelem Bank Russia (joined venture of BNP Paribas and Sberbank)  and CIO of Citi Corporate and Investment Bank in Russia.

Fedor started his career in technology in 1997 and has since accumulated over 24 years of IT management experience.

As for hobbies, Fedor likes to travel to remote places, both abroad and in Russia, and see the places he has never visited before.

Peter Pluim is the President of SAP’s Enterprise Cloud Services business, which includes HANA Enterprise Cloud & the SAP Cloud Application Services business. He is responsible for the end-to-end delivery, revenue and margin of this business and he leads a global team that ensures SAP delivers to its contractual commitments. Peter is part of the Global Product Engineering Group and reports directly to its President and Executive Board Member. In his first 24 months at SAP, Peter and his team have delivered an application level availability of the HANA Enterprise Cloud of 99,99+% and tripled the number of customers.

Peter joined SAP in June 2019 and prior to his role at SAP, Peter was the Executive Vice-President and CEO of Atos’ Infrastructure & Data Management Division, leading a €7.1B (2017), 50.000+ people organization to become a globally recognized industry leader in Digital Transformation, Hybrid Cloud, Digital Workplace and Managed Services. Peter was also part of the Executive Committee of Atos, a global leader in digital transformation with over 110,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of over € 11 billion.

Before joining Atos, Peter spent sixteen years at IBM in a multitude of roles and countries, spanning Sales Leadership, Operations, Delivery and Finance.

Throughout Peter’s tenure, he has proven to be a high paced, results oriented strategic leader of Digital Transformation with a track record of driving growth with relentless focus on Customer Satisfaction. Next to this, he partners strongly at C-level to personally support and sponsor strategic engagements. His additional background in Finance & Planning as well as Resource Management of a professional organization is a great asset.

Peter has a solid network in the Technology Venture Capital and Private Equity space with a focus on Europe as well as a broad C-level network in the Information Technology space globally.

Peter is married, lives both in London, UK as well as Haarlem, the Netherlands, proud father to two sons, an avid amateur chef and also the owner of a small award-winning Italian Restaurant.

Julia Palmer is a Research VP at Gartner, covering emerging infrastructure technologies and strategies. Ms. Palmer provides strategic advice to CIOs and IT leaders on infrastructure agility and innovation, addressing existing and preparing for upcoming enterprise workloads in data center, public cloud, and edge. She focuses on emerging infrastructure technologies, hybrid cloud platforms and next generation storage and data services. Ms. Palmer has more than 20 years of combined IT end-user experience in many areas of information technology such as enterprise storage infrastructure solutions and design, platform engineering and performance validation.

Brad Anderson is the executive vice president and general manager (GM) of the NetApp Hybrid Cloud Services and the NetApp Foundational Data Services business units. He is responsible for driving the strategy and execution for delivering NetApp’s portfolio of offerings that helps customers modernize IT with cloud-integrated flash solutions, and build private and hybrid clouds to deliver the same services and experiences as public clouds.

Brad spent nine years at HP Compaq as the senior vice president and GM of Industry Standard Servers, where he led the company’s $8 billion x86 server business. He spent seven years as president and GM of Dell’s $12 billion Enterprise Solution Group leading servers, storage, networking and software businesses. He helped Dell acquire EqualLogic, Compellent, and Force10, and he grew each business significantly to enable Dell’s transition away from a mostly OEM model in storage and networking. Just before joining NetApp, Brad served as president and chief operating officer of Gravitant, a cloud service brokerage platform company, where he played an instrumental role in growing the business and in selling the company to IBM.

Brad holds a Bachelor of Science degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Phoebe Goh has over a decade of experience implementing, integrating and helping people and companies capitalize fully on their enterprise technology investments. Her role in the Technical Team Enablement Office at NetApp spans the globe and drives collaboration, innovation and excellence across the technical presales team.

Phoebe has held a variety of roles in the IT industry, from system administrator to solutions architect. She has a passion for technology and making complex topics approachable, with a particular focus on “the cloud” and the myriad of opportunities that it brings. She’s open to discussing enterprise IT topics with everyone she meets: as a change-agent with an empathetic lens, Phoebe provides a fresh perspective to an industry that is moving faster than ever before.

Phoebe loves sharing knowledge and her enthusiasm for the NetApp software and data management portfolio. When not connecting with technical experts, learning about the newest technology, or planning a worldwide enablement strategy, you’ll find Phoebe creating content for her video series “Phoebe on the Go(h)”!

James Holden is responsible for NetApp’s enterprise monitoring and reporting solution Cloud Insights. Ensuring the offering allows customers to troubleshoot performance, accurately place workloads and protect their data, whether that be on their premises, out in the public cloud, running on NetApp or using 3rd party technology.

Holden started with NetApp as a technical marketing engineer over 8 years ago and has been a familiar face at the Insight conferences over those years being involved in scores of sessions.

Outside of life at NetApp, Holden dreams of being the Captain of a Martian frigate, but in reality the expanse of his time cycling, skiing and fishing are his go to activities.

I started way back in the 90s with a Mechanical Engineering education, and an offer from a random friend to pull Ethernet cables through plenum ceilings in an office park for $10/hr. This led to some lucky opportunities, a lot of lessons-learned the hard way, and eventually an MCSE 2000 certification, all before getting dropped head-first on the doorstep of virtualization, 10G Ethernet, and shared enterprise storage.

Every day, I spend time with customers, partners in the channel, and our technical partners across the industry. In my role, I take it on-board personally to help educate the NetApp field, partners, and our customers on how best to take advantage of our powerful portfolio of cloud products and services.

Anthony Lye is executive vice president and general manager of the Public Cloud Services business for NetApp. He is responsible for the strategy and execution to further NetApp’s cloud innovation across public cloud, hybrid cloud, and hyperscaler models and to establish the company as the undisputed leader in managing data in a cloud-integrated world.

Anthony brings more than 25 years of diverse leadership experience to NetApp, spanning roles in development, product management, marketing and sales, and as a high-tech CEO twice. He has focused primarily on cloud innovation for the past 15 years, most recently as the executive vice president and chief cloud officer at Guidewire Software, and at Oracle where he was the senior vice president and general manager of CRM. His background includes leading teams worldwide and hands-on experience building applications and platforms working directly with the developer community.

Earlier in his career, Anthony served as president and CEO for HotSchedules, a vertical cloud company building applications for the restaurant, retail and hospitality industries. He was previously the global president of Digital Platforms, Customer Relationship Management and Channels at Publicis, the world’s largest digital agency. He also held senior leadership positions at Siebel Systems and Remedy Corporation.

Anthony earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering with honors from the University of Bath in Bath, United Kingdom. He serves on the board of Spoken Communications and is a member of the board of trustees for Bath University and an investor in both startups and venture funds.

Gadi Oren is director of product management and strategy at NetApp’s Cloud Volumes business unit. He is responsible for leading the FSx for ONTAP and Cloud Volume ONTAP product lines and partner collaboration. Before NetApp Oren was vice president of product at LogicMonitor, leading the company’s product strategy and teams. Oren joined LogicMonitor through the acquisition of ITculate where he was a co-founder and CEO.

Gadi Oren has over 20 years of industry experience delivering B2B data center software solutions, and holds a Master’s degree in management from Sloan school of business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Electrical and Computer Science Engineering degree cum laude, from the Technion – Technological Institute of Israel.

Amiram Shachar is a hands-on technical leader with significant experience leading DevOps and software engineers to build and maintain large-scale cloud architectures and infrastructure.

Before Spot by NetApp, Shachar was th e Director of DevOps at a leading tech company and was responsible for migrating its internal data center to the Cloud.

While serving in the Israeli Military, he played a key role in managing and operating the IDF’s data center. As part of his role, he implemented VMware and virtualization for the first time ever in the IDF.

Ronen Schwartz is senior vice president and general manager of NetApp’s Cloud Volumes business. He is responsible for accelerating NetApp’s Cloud Volumes business, building the robust Cloud Volumes Platform across Hybrid and multi-clouds and expanding NetApp Cloud Data Management Services.

Before joining NetApp, Schwartz was executive vice president, Technology and Eco-System, Operations and Strategy at Informatica and senior vice president and general manager of Informatica Cloud, leading Informatica Cloud product strategy, product management and go-to market. During his 14 years at Informatica, he helped lead the company through its own transformation from on premise to the public cloud, from license revenue to recurring revenue.

Schwartz joined Informatica from the acquisition of Itemfield, where he managed sales operations, services and support. Prior to Itemfield, Schwartz managed international large-scale EDI implementations, SWIFT gateways and payments hubs.

Schwartz holds a Bachelor of Science cum laude, in Information Technology from Technion – Technological Institute of Israel and a Master’s in Business Administration from Tel Aviv University – Recanati Graduate School of Business. Ronen was born in Haifa, Israel and lives in Palo Alto, CA. He and his wife Sigal have a full house with their three kids: Carmel, Daniel and Liam. In his spare time, Ronen likes to run, travel the world and read. Ronen is also a fanatic soccer fan and a whiskey enthusiast.

Now on his 2nd tour at NetApp across 9 years, Matt is a Senior Technical Marketing Engineer with a primary focus on ransomware prevention and recovery as well as portfolio Security. This includes but is not limited to Data Governance, Data Privacy Frameworks, Security Tools, and Security Best Practices. He has 22 years of IT experience with 16 of those years coming in the storage industry.

Praveena Vajja is product leader who spent over two decades innovating and creating products that operate at a global scale. She is responsible for NetApp’s ONTAP portfolio across on premise and cloud. Prior to NetApp, Praveena was the Vice President of Products & Engineering at Oracle Application Cloud building leading applications and platforms deployed in Oracle’s public cloud.

After a brief stint as a mechanical engineer, Kim has spent over 2 decades helping companies realize their strategies for storage and data management. In her time as a solutions engineer, architect, evangelist, and leader – including 19 years working for NetApp — she’s helped many customers, NetApp teams, and partners embrace technology shifts like SAN, virtualization, and now hybrid cloud to drive business value. She’s enjoyed presenting at industry conferences like VMworld and Grace Hopper – and has delivered sessions and main stage segments at NetApp INSIGHT. Kim currently leads NetApp’s South Area solutions engineering team – a technical community that strives each day to bring differentiated solutions and outcomes to customers.

Mekka Williams is a Principal Engineer for NetApp, Inc for the Office of the CTO. Mekka has a wide range of experience in cloud, storage and data management services, from SAN integration to hybrid cloud engineering. Her current focus is on finding creative and innovative ways to use the NetApp cloud portfolio to help customers achieve their DevOps and DevSecOps goals.