George Kurian is CEO at NetApp and a member of the Board of Directors. George joined the company in 2011, bringing his passion and relentless focus on execution. He was named CEO in June 2015. In his previous role as NetApp 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. He is also an independent director on the Board of global health services company Cigna Corporation.

César Cernuda has led NetApp’s integrated go-to-market organization since July 2020, delivering on the company’s promise to meet customers wherever they are on their digital-transformation journeys by providing the superior products, specialist skills, and services they need to architect, build, and manage their data fabrics. César joined NetApp following a long career at Microsoft, where he served as president of Microsoft Asia Pacific, president of Microsoft Latin America, and global corporate vice president of the brand. Having walked in the shoes of NetApp’s enterprise customers, he brings a customer-centric perspective to all he does as president. César serves as the non-executive director and Chairman of the ESG committee at Gestamp, an international organization dedicated to the automotive industry; as an advisory board member of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business; and as an international advisory board member of IESE Business School – University of Navarra.

NetApp’s Chief Product Officer Harvinder (Harv) Bhela joined the company in 2022. Harv is responsible for leading NetApp’s product and engineering teams in our ongoing transformation into a multi-cloud, storage, and data-services leader by accelerating breakthrough innovation at scale. The next generation of businesses are digital and data-centric; this is the “age of data,” but that data is an ever-growing, increasingly diverse, multifaceted, ever-harder to manage resource that is fragmented across on-premises and hybrid multi-cloud environments. Harv and his team are focused on delivering differentiated solutions to help customers unlock enormous business value across their entire data estate. Prior to joining NetApp, Harv spent 25 years at Microsoft where he held multiple executive leadership positions. He built the company’s Exchange business, transforming Office 365 into the world’s largest productivity cloud, and was instrumental in the successful launch of Windows 10. Most recently, he served as Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft 365 Security, Compliance and Management business, which he started and grew to more than $10 billion in annual revenue, making Microsoft the largest security company in the world.

Haiyan Song is an experienced cloud, security, engineering, and database-management leader, with a track record of successfully integrating acquisitions and scaling them by connecting with and leveraging larger company ecosystem capabilities to accelerate success. Haiyan has held several leadership roles throughout her career tenure, including Splunk, HPE and Arcsight, all of which represent richly diverse technical experience. While her achievements are vast, one of the most notable during her time at Splunk includes her leadership in building and scaling a transformative business area that resulted in an increase in revenue of more than 15x over a seven-year period. Not only does she have a wide breadth of technical skills, but she has also worked in management roles within smaller companies, large-scale enterprises, and acquired businesses, and is experienced in change-readiness and organizational transformation.

Jenni Flinders joined NetApp in July 2021 and serves as SVP of the Worldwide Partner Organization. In this capacity, she advocates on behalf of NetApp’s global partner community and seeks to build a thriving, innovative ecosystem that maximizes value for customers. Whether on-prem or in the cloud, she leads by the maxim that change is good, but digital transformation is better. Jenni’s experience establishing and evolving channel strategy and programs globally helps ensure that her customers reap the benefits of cloud and emerging technologies. At some of the biggest technology companies in the world, she has developed comprehensive partner organizations that unify the power of marketing, sales, and partner development to “sell at scale.” Throughout her career, Jenni has developed and implemented channel strategy, operating models, and programs across all partner business models with emphasis on cloud and hybrid-cloud markets. She brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to NetApp as a tenured leader in the industry. Jenni has received numerous industry awards, including being named among the top 50 most influential women in technology by CRN, and she has also been recognized for her efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Nicola is an experienced sustainability professional with 20+ years of leadership at the intersection of business, technology, and sustainability. Nicola joined NetApp as its first Chief Sustainability Officer in June 2024.  In this newly created role, she focuses on integrating sustainability into strategy and operations, driving decarbonization across the value chain, and building a sustainable approach to intelligent data infrastructure. Prior to NetApp, Nicola was Chief Sustainability Officer at VMware. She completed her BS at the University of California, Berkeley, and was awarded Commonwealth Scholarship to complete a Ph.D. at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Hoseb Dermanilian joined NetApp in 2014. In his current role, he is responsible for leading NetApp’s global AI sales and go-to-market efforts. Hoseb heads a global team of sales specialists who are focused on helping customers build the right data platform for their AI and data-driven business strategies. He is also focused on developing and executing NetApp’s AI go-to-market strategies across different functions within the company, and with various technology partners, such as NVIDIA. Hoseb comes from a technical background, having previously served as the technical lead for NetApp’s Data Analytics business covering different geographies. He is the author of several publications in the domain of cryptography and machine learning at leading scientific journals.

Sandeep Singh is a driven, passionate, creative business leader with a proven track record of leading business and product strategy, building innovative products, managing high-performance organizations, and delivering business results at startups and Fortune 500 technology companies. Prior to joining NetApp, Sandeep spent four years at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in multiple roles, including Vice President of Product Management for Data Infrastructure, Vice President of Marketing for HPE Storage, and CMO for Zerto, an HPE company. Sandeep joined HPE from Pure Storage, where he led product marketing for FlashArray, and helped the company scale from pre-IPO $100M run rate to a public company with greater than $1B in revenue. Prior to Pure, Sandeep led product management and strategy for 3PAR, an enterprise storage company, from pre-revenue to greater than $1B in revenue, including four-year tenure at HP post-3PAR acquisition. Sandeep resides in the Bay Area with his wife, two daughters, and their family dog. He has completed several marathons and ultra-marathons, including a 50-mile race, and his family has backpacked more 75 miles of the John Muir Trail.

Gagan’s team focuses on building best-in-class data protection and governance products for NetApp enterprise and cloud storage. This portfolio includes backup, disaster recovery, ransomware protection, data classification and governance and CVO. Prior to NetApp, Gagan was Chief Product Officer at Behavox, a security and compliance company where he helped guide the vision, strategy, and roadmap for their product portfolio. Prior to that, Gagan was at Microsoft for 16 years. He was partner and director for PM for Data Protection and Governance products, where he took multiple products—including Azure RMS, Azure Information Protection, Microsoft Information Protection, and Azure Purview— from incubation to their incredible growth, usage, and success.

Sheik has been in the IT industry for 30+ years. His career started with IBM, developing microcode for IBM AS/400, and then Cargill, where he deployed NetApp technology on a large Citrix environment. He has been at NetApp for 24 years, and currently leads the North America Specialist organization—highly skilled individuals in technologies like SQL, Oracle, VMware, HyperV, SAP, DB2, and Hadoop. His organization also has specialists that focus on Hybrid Cloud, ML/AI, Block, and “As a Service” models. Prior to his current role, Sheik held many NetApp positions, including SE Manager for the Midwest and MidAmerica districts, SE Manager for Major Accounts in Central Area, and Business Solutions Architect. He has been in his current incarnation for a dozen years. Sheik brings a wealth of customer experience and credibility because he understands how to map NetApp solutions to customers’ most urgent business problems. He is an expert on NetApp Vision, NDA’s, Hadoop, MetroCluster, business value, and industry trends. Sheik’s organization is currently leading Go-to-Market initiatives for ML/AI and Block/SAN Storage.

Jónsi Stefánsson serves as the chief technology officer and senior vice president of the Cloud Engineering group at NetApp, where he is recognized as an influential leader and entrepreneur in the areas of product development, software engineering, and operational management. His diverse career spans from innovative startups to established multinational corporations. As the former CEO of Greenqloud, a company acquired by NetApp in 2018, Jónsi played a pivotal role in transforming the business from an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) company into a software-centric organization specializing in orchestrating Kubernetes, now recognized as the NetApp Service Delivery Engine. Prior to his tenure at Greenqloud, Jónsi held the position of technical director at Opera Software, where he spearheaded the scaling and deployment efforts of the Opera Mini project. Under his guidance, the project flourished, attracting a global user base of 450 million. Subsequently, Opera Software achieved a successful initial public offering (IPO) and was later acquired in a transaction valued at $1.2 billion. With his vast expertise and exceptional leadership, Jónsi Stefánsson continues to drive innovation and shape the future of cloud technologies at NetApp

Pravjit (Prav) Tiwana is a technology executive with more than two decades of experience building highly scaled, cloud-powered products, services, and businesses. He is senior vice president and general manager responsible for accelerating NetApp’s Cloud Storage business across hyperscalers Azure, AWS, and GCP. He is responsible for product, engineering, and PnL of NetApp’s cloud business. Before NetApp, Pravjit was Global CTO and CEO of APAC for Gemini, a Web3 company, where he transformed the technology organization into a world-class product and engineering company. Prior to Gemini, Pravjit was a senior executive at Amazon Web Services leading AWS Edge Services, which included Amazon CloudFront, AWS Edge Computing, and AWS Data Transfer Operations. Earlier in his career, he held product and engineering leadership roles at Microsoft and Disney, spanning close to 10 years.

Krish Vitaldevara is a passionate product leader and engineer with demonstrated success at building compelling multiyear strategies for large platform and product teams and delivering significant impact for large enterprises and billions of consumers. Krish is the SVP for Shared Platform at NetApp, responsible for unified storage platform, manageability platform, Customer eXperience Office (CXO), and Chief Design Office (CDO). His team enables delivery of various NetApp offerings across On-Premise, Hybrid Cloud, and Data Services. Prior to joining NetApp, Krish spent six+ years at Google in multiple roles, including leading product for Android and Plays Trust and Safety and Product for Google Maps. Krish joined Google after a long stint at Microsoft where he led product teams for O365 Foundations, Outlook.com, and Microsoft Consumer Trust and Safety teams. Early in his career, Krish worked at startups such as LoudCloud, started by Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreesen, and Brience, which enabled enterprises to customize customer experiences on mobile. Krish is also a proven innovator and hacker with more than 30 patents, primarily in distributed systems and spam-detection models, using graphs and networks for anomaly detection.

Gary brings over 25 years of experience in Financial Services to his role as FICO’s Vice President of SaaS DevOps. Throughout his career, he has developed and supported hybrid cloud originations, fraud, and collections solutions for multiple Fortune 500 companies. His responsibilities are pivotal in ensuring round-the-clock operations, managing the seamless integration of infrastructure – including network, compute, and storage – as well as database and data management services.

Sameet Agarwal is VP/GM for Storage at Google where he leads the teams for Cloud storage and internal storage infrastructure for all Google products. Prior to joining Google, Sameet was VP of Engineering at Snowflake. Earlier in his career Sameet held multiple executive and technical leadership positions at Facebook and Microsoft focused on databases, analytics and storage systems. Sameet has a Masters in CS from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelors from IIT Bombay.

Balaji Alahari is Manager of Infrastructure Enigneering at DreamWorks Animation, where he oversees the strategies and direction of storage allocation for all feature films and TV production along with the daily operations of the studio’s data center. Balaji is focused on uptime and ensuring both the datacenter and storage remain at the cutting edge of technology with constant innovation.

In his role, Balaji assesses daily trends, monitors existing farm capacity, and forecasts studio trends, tracking capacity management and analytics in order to support studio initiatives. Balaji’s team trouble shoots performance issues and effectively mitigates I/O inactivity and latency on key storage volumes to ensure highest performance and decreased artist wait time.

Balaji started his career at DreamWorks more than 10 years ago as an intern in Digital Operations. In his time at the studio, he has contributed to the expansion of six unique data centers around the world, one of which received the 2013 Technical Achievement Award. He is a Certified Data Center Design Professional (CDCDP).

In addition to these achievements, Balaji has been integral to the studio’s efficiency increase in the data center. Without any physical expansion or impact to storage space, the data center has increased its capacity from 50 watts per square foot to 250 watts PSF in the last 15 years, maximizing the capability of existing infrastructure in order to maintain the speed and scale of dynamic production pipelines and growing studio ambitions.

Balaji has credits on more than 20 DreamWorks productions including Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3, Trolls and the How to Train Your Dragon franchise. Balaji earned a B.E. from Anna University and an M.S. from California State University, Fullerton.

Girish Bablani is President of Azure Core. He oversees the engineering and product/program management teams delivering infrastructure offerings that power the world’s workloads. Spanning from general purpose, to workload-optimized, to SaaS, the combination of compute, storage, networking, and management services deliver customer choice and flexibility in current and future application hosting needs.  

Previously, Girish was the Director of Development for Active Directory where he worked on cloud and other on-premises offerings like Active Directory and Azure Active Directory, RMS and FIM. He was instrumental in helping the team move its engineering rhythm and practices to the cloud paradigm. Girish also served as the Director of QA and Engineering with Bing. He helped lead the change in engineering practices including the combination of the dev and test roles into a “combined engineering” function. 

Girish is a 30-year veteran of Microsoft, joining as a developer supporting a number of versions of Microsoft Project and as the Development Manager of the SharePoint incubation team. Girish also served as General Manager for several versions of the Commerce Transaction Platform, Windows Live OneCare and Forefront Server and Forefront Online. 

His expansive experience is evident with his passionate approach to building engineering systems and a culture which makes it easy for engineers to innovate. 

Girish earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a master’s degree in computer science from University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Stuart started his career at a Formula One team in 2001, spending almost a decade in the sport until leaving for Australia in 2010. His work to follow included time at News Corp Australia, the Commonwealth Bank, NetApp and State and Federal government. He returned to the UK in January of this year to take up a role with Aston Martin F1® Team, as Head of Infrastructure.

Bill Ballew has a passion for computer science, graphics, animation, and working with artists to provide them with tools that inspire creativity. After receiving his degree in Computer Science in the early 90’s, he worked in the Aerospace industry in Southern California for 5 years.

From there Bill followed his passion toward computer animation and joined a then startup studio, DreamWorks Animation. After over 25 years and more than 30 credits on feature animation films, Bill now serves as the CTO for the studio, overseeing all aspects of technology supporting both the Feature and TV businesses.

In his tenure at DreamWorks, he has worked on and managed projects that have contributed to the creative ambition and scale of the studio that tells amazing stories through beloved characters and state-of-the-art computer graphics imagery.

Byron Baynham is Senior Manager of Cloud and Infrastructure at AGL Energy, Australia’s leading energy provider and retailer. He is responsible for Enterprise Cloud Operations, Infrastructure Observability, Network, Storage, Telephony and

Contact Centre resilience across multiple continents.
Byron is driven by combining disparate technologies and teams to deliver best of breed FinOps and Cloud Optimisation capabilities, inspiring cultural change to ensure the journey and benefits of FinOps are not just cost driven but also provide sustainable outcomes.

Originally from Wales, Byron has lived in NSW, Australia for the past 20 years with his wife and three children. He is passionate about rugby, enjoys long distance running, bush-camping and playing saxophone.

Roberto Canè is head of e-mobility at Ducati and has the important task, alongside his team, of exploring how electrification and new technologies can support the company’s future growth, in both racing and on the road. As you would expect, he’s passionate about motorcycles and racing in general, but even more so about engineering and embracing technological innovations.

Tobias, who has more than 15 years experience in top-level motorsport, was recruited by Porsche Penske Motorsport to form and develop an FIA World Championship team from the ground up. This rare opportunity enabled this creative and agile thinker to start with a blank sheet of paper, drawing on and building upon best practices from across the industry.

As well as ensuring the team was equipped with the world-leading staff and facilities to achieve sporting success, Tobias has taken a holistic approach towards both social and environmental sustainability. This will not only ensure motorsport remains relevant for years to come but offers a test bed for developing technologies and methodologies of the future.

Working closely with technology partners, Tobias has helped build the foundations of a team that is, in just its second year of competition, leading the World Endurance Championship but he knows that when it comes to sustainability the race is never over.

She is currently the Chief Information and Data Officer at the IEO Group.

She has been working for the healthcare industry for more than 20 years, always focused on process streamlining, data capture at the point of care, to be orchestrated through integration systems with the purpose of extracting value for the stakeholders: physicians, nurses, managers, care givers and above all patients.

She is currently in charge of the digital transformation of the core processes, enabling a faster and data driven approach through the adoption of digital platform and the collection of big and real-world data, powered with AI

Fabrizio Garrone is Enterprise Solution Director at Aruba Enterprise, the Aruba Group division dedicated to complex IT projects for large companies and Public Administration. He manages the Enterprise Solution Team where he is responsible for Public Affairs and Strategic Innovation for the Datacenter and Cloud business. He left the University of Pavia with a degree in Electronic Engineering in 1994 and began his professional career as a software developer and system engineer in open-source environments, subsequently focusing on projects relating to enterprise solutions, team coordination and business management. He was at Dell Technologies for over 10 years, where he was a member of the Italian Senior Management Team, overseeing business strategies for digital transformation.

Mauro Guzelotto is the Vice President of Cloud Services at T-Systems North America. He is a technology executive with extensive experience in managing global IT services for regional and international clients across diverse industry verticals in the United States and Latin America. Mauro has successfully led the delivery of mission-critical services in sectors such as energy, automotive, and healthcare, demonstrating a strong track record of driving innovation and operational excellence.

Matt Hull serves as Vice President Global AI Solutions at NVIDIA, with responsibility for global sales of the NVIDIA DGX Platform portfolio of AI Solutions and DGX Cloud. Matt and his team are responsible to create the market conditions to allow AI to thrive in the enterprise.

Prior to joining NVIDIA in 2017, Matt spent 10 years at Hewlett-Packard and then Hewlett Packard Enterprise where he held various management roles in sales, product management and engineering. Prior to Hewlett-Packard, Matt held several management roles at Seagate Technology. Matt started his career as an executive recruiter.

He holds a Bachelor of Communications from The University of Colorado at Boulder and an MBA fromThe University of Washington Foster School of Business.

A Data Science leader with 14+ years of experience driving innovation across industries. Currently, at Johnson & Johnson, I lead the R&D Data Science central technology hub, leveraging cutting-edge technologies and Generative AI models to transform drug development, clinical operations, and real-world data analytics. Proven track record in mastering clinical operations data, developing large language models, and pioneering AI/ML approaches for site selection and clinical documents. Expertise includes advanced analytics, digital transformation, process enhancement, and innovative solution development using the latest Gen AI capabilities. A seasoned leader with a unique blend of technical expertise and leadership skills, driving impact in healthcare on commercial and R&D, both and beyond.

Alex Larson is Group Chief Technology Officer of Healius, a leading healthcare company that provides diagnostic, pathology, and day hospital services across Australia. He is responsible for overseeing the technology strategy, innovation, and digital transformation of the company.

Previously Alex held Executive Chief Information Officer positions across Manufacturing and Resource organisations, where he has undertaken global technology and digital transformations. Alex is passionate about leveraging emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, security and analytics across diagnostic applications to create value for the healthcare industry and improve patient care.

Alex holds a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering from Curtin University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Western Australia. He lives in Sydney with his wife and two children and enjoys ultra-trail running and marathon swimming in his spare time.

Skottie Miller is a Technology Fellow for Systems Architecture at DreamWorks Animation, where he guides the technical direction of the studio’s infrastructure technology. Scott is focused on operations and implementing long-term strategies for high performance computing, high performance storage and networking. He is responsible for the computational visualization infrastructure required for creating computer generated 3D animated films.

In his role, Scott provides technology expertise and advanced systems architecture strategy. Working with HP, he implemented the first offsite grid computing for feature animation rendering on Madagascar and Shrek 2, including a wide-area NFS caching approach to enable offsite computing without pipeline or software modifications. This work continues today to empower DreamWorks’ use of the cloud for compute, storage and analytics.

In his many years in the entertainment industry, Scott has credits on more than 40 productions including the Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon franchises. Prior to joining DreamWorks, Scott was a Senior Staff Engineer in Visual Effects at Walt Disney Feature Animation. He also worked in the aerospace industry for 11 years as a Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell Aerospace/Hughes Aircraft.

Scott received a B.S. and a M.S. from California State University, Fullerton.

Focused on cloud technologies, data processing, data visualization and event streaming within the motorsport domain to enhance the efficiency and performance of racing teams through innovative software solutions.

Kris Suter is a seasoned technologist and currently a Senior Manager for Technology Infrastructure at Fortune Brands Innovations (FBIN) with nearly 25 years of experience in IT infrastructure. His expertise spans storage, virtualization, networking, and cybersecurity. Kris has been instrumental in FBIN’s technology growth, dedicating a decade of service since joining in 2014, initially with Moen Incorporated. In his previous roles as Manager of IT Infrastructure and Lead System Architect, Kris developed automation processes for Moen’s SAP environments, utilizing new technology concepts to help advance and support FBIN’s world-class operations.

Kris’ professional IT career began at Applied Industrial Technologies, where he sharpened his skills as an IT Operations Supervisor. His deep understanding of Linux systems and enterprise storage solutions has made him a trusted leader in the field.

Kris holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, where he was actively involved in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). His technical acumen and leadership are vital to FBIN’s mission of delivering innovative, smart, connected home solutions and critical business solutions. Kris is a native Clevelander and a persistent Browns fan. He has spent most of his free time lately dabbling in projects such as archery, boating, brewing and fermentation, and raising his three children.

Kate Swanborg is SVP of Technology Communications and Strategic Alliances for DreamWorks Animation. She is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the studio’s worldwide technology communications and business-to-business alliance efforts on behalf of the studio’s technology partners.

In her role, Kate promotes DreamWorks’ dedication to leveraging innovative technologies that enable the studio’s filmmakers and artists and provide the foundation for new technology business initiatives. She is responsible for identifying and managing technology alliances and integrated co- marketing and branding campaigns with the studio’s technology partners. Collaborating closely with the studio and strategic alliance partner executive leadership teams, Kate ensures that DreamWorks delivers consistent and compelling technology messages through a variety of mediums including presentations, press collateral and studio showcases. A practiced public speaker, Kate is frequently requested to provide keynote addresses to further DreamWorks’ business messaging.

Prior to her current role, Kate served as the studio’s Technology Production Manager where she helped develop strategies and action plans for producing animated feature films. She also managed the integration of major production technology solutions, such as stereoscopic 3D and a full re-architecture of the studio’s proprietary tool sets.

Kate earned a MFA from the University of California, San Diego and a BA from Western Michigan University.

Adam Thier is our Chief Product and Technology Officer and an experienced senior software engineering executive. He oversees our global product and solutions portfolio and ensures we deliver even greater value to our global customers as they accelerate their own digital transformation journeys.  

Adam previously served as Head of Applications at Vianai Systems and as Chief Technology Officer at Avetta. While at Avetta, he was named the 2019 CXO of the Year from Utah Business for leading the creation of the Avetta platform and integrating IT and development staff after its acquisition of BROWZ. Adam has an exceptional track record at multiple startups and SaaS leaders, including Dynatrace, SAP, Hyperion Solutions, and Adaytum. He currently serves as the executive sponsor for Anaplan Neurodiversity, an employee resource group at Anaplan. Adam has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Arts from Marist College.

Matt is the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence products at AWS. In this role, he works closely with customers, partners, and internal AWS teams to drive effective use of AI across every industry. Matt has been at Amazon for 14 years, and has worked across the cloud business (including helping to launch Lambda, Kinesis, SageMaker, DeepRacer, Athena, and EMR), with a special focus on data, analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. His passion is working with AWS customers (such as the NFL, Cerner, Intuit, Pinterest, GE, FINRA, Celgene, and NASA) to bring their ideas to life. Before joining Amazon, Matt attended medical school in the UK, completed a PhD in machine learning, and was post-doctoral fellow at Cornell University.