Nasser Ansari is the principal product manager at CA's Enterprise Management Systems business Unit. His primary focus is on CA's Virtualization Management products. Nasser has been with CA for 10 years working in different roles in Software Development, Technical Architecture, Product Strategy and Product Management for Enterprise IT Management products. His areas of interest include Systems Management, Virtualization Management, IT Service Management, ITIL, etc.

Prior to CA, Nasser worked for Platinum Technologies and John Deere in Enterprise Management, Medical Records Management and Document Management software products. Nasser has a Master's in Engineering from Ohio University and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Rebecca Austen is director, IBM System Software in IBM Systems and Technology Group, responsible for systems management and virtualization. Previously she led strategy, marketing and operations for IBM's high performance computing business, delivering innovative solutions for data- and compute-intensive applications in scientific research, engineering design, life sciences, digital media, and analytics. Ms. Austen has held a wide range of leadership positions in marketing, strategy, product management and development at IBM, including software developer and architect, manager for Unix systems management and AIX strategy, and marketing manager for Linux clusters. Ms. Austen received a B.A. degree in mathematics from Vassar College. She serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including Austin Gifted (president), Association for Women in Technology Austin (vice president), and Girlstart (technology advisory board).

Chris Barclay brings a very hands-on, real-world perspective to how companies are deploying and leveraging server virtualization to accelerate and maximize its benefits. At Virtual Iron, he is responsible for the full product lifecycle, including market requirements gathering, synthesis, product direction, and technology partnerships. In this role, he also works closely with Virtual Iron's customers and channel partners in the planning and deployment of their virtual environments. This enables him to keep a close eye on what's happening in customers' data centers to help determine the features and capabilities that get built into Virtual Iron's server virtualization platform.

Chris started his career developing software at Bolt Beranek and Newman and later signed on as product manager for eRoom, a collaboration software startup. Chris has a range of technical accomplishments, including a patent for a method of speech recognition over the Internet.

Prior to joining Transplace, Mr. Biddlecombe held the positions of vice president of Information Technology at Ruan Transportation and director of System Architecture at US Freightways Corporation. He has over 15 years of experience in IT consulting with an emphasis on Transportation Management Systems. Mr. Biddlecombe earned a Bachelor of Commerce in Economics and Business Administration from the University of South Africa.

Tom Bishop is the chief technology officer of BMC Software, Inc. (NYSE: BMC), a leading provider of enterprise management solutions that empower companies to manage IT from a business perspective.

Bishop joined BMC in 2005 from VIEO, Inc., in Austin, Texas, where he served as CTO and was named one of the top 25 CTOs by InfoWorld magazine in 2004. Bishop pioneered the architecture and design of an applications-focused, quality of service-oriented enterprise systems management solution.

For more than 20 years, he has served in senior technology and strategy roles at UNIX International, Tandem Computers and CompuCare Management Systems. Bishop was an early employee of Tivoli Systems, serving first in key development roles before being named CTO and general manager for IBM Tivoli's Embedded Solutions business unit. Bishop received Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees, both in Computer Science, from Cornell University.

Scott Davis is the chief data center architect in the Office of the CTO. Scott has more than 25 years of extensive management, engineering, technology, entrepreneurial and leadership experience. A recognized expert in virtualization, clustering, operating systems, file systems and storage, Scott has held senior engineering and business management roles with both startup ventures and established industry firms. He most recently served as a strategic consultant to Fidelity Investments and before that as president, CTO and founder of Katana Technology/Virtual Iron. Prior to co-founding Virtual Iron, he was CTO at Mangosoft, an Internet software and storage company with pioneering peer-to-peer clustering, caching and file system products. Earlier, Scott was technical director for Digital's industry acclaimed VAXCluster and VMS Volume Shadowing products. Scott holds 14 U.S. patents for clustering, storage and virtualization technologies. Scott has a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from SUNY at Albany and he graduated Cum Laude.

Doug is responsible for InfoWorld's product reviews and testing projects. In addition to overseeing Test Center coverage of enterprise IT products, Doug also helps plan and produce technology analyses and test-driven feature articles. He holds a bachelor's of science degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Steve Fink is a senior infrastructure architect in the Americas CTO Organization at Avanade, where he is responsible for managing opportunity pipeline with Accenture's Technology Consulting, Data Center Technologies & Operations organization. Steve also plays a role in defining Avanade's Next Generation Data Center strategy, particularly around physical data center design. Steve joined Avanade in June, 2007. Prior to joining Avanade he briefly was a client engagement manager RampRate Sourcing Advisors, and prior to that, a manager with Accenture's Infrastructure Consulting - Data Center Technologies practice, focusing on Data Center design, build, project management, operations, and optimization disciplines. His 13 years of professional experience started in Enterprise Network and Systems Management.

Adam Gray, chief technology officer, founder, and member of the board of Directors of Novacoast, Inc. has over 13 years experience as a senior network engineer and is an expert in virtualization technology. Mr. Gray and his team have implemented systems running both VMware and XEN for many companies including the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and Tropitone to name a couple. Recently Mr. Gray finished implementing a XEN cluster spanning several blades and 30 plus virtual machines with both full virtualization and para virtualization technologies in use. Mr. Gray has worked on projects to virtualize and cluster applications utilizing web technologies, SAP, asterisk systems, and several other enterprise applications.

Christofer Hoff is Unisys Corporation's chief architect of security innovation. Hoff develops strategies for innovation and success as well as unlocking maximum value for the corporation and customers in the area of information security, survivability and assurance.

Prior to Unisys, Hoff served as Crossbeam Systems' chief security strategist, responsible for the company's overall security strategy and product management efforts. Prior to joining Crossbeam, Hoff served as the chief information security officer and director of Enterprise Security Services for WesCorp, a $25 Billion Financial Services Cooperative and used his expertise gained as founder and CTO of a national security consulting company which provided services to the Fortune 500 and service provider customers.

He is a prolific blogger (rationalsecurity.typepad.com,) a featured speaker at numerous information security conferences, holds several security credentials and is an accomplished and accredited instructor in multiple security disciplines.

Eric Knorr is editor in chief at InfoWorld. He brings 20 years of technology journalism experience to the planning, development, and execution of feature articles that serve the needs of enterprise IT managers. Eric is the former editor of PC World magazine, the creator of the best-selling The PC Bible, a founding editor of CNET, and a veteran of several dot-com follies. A winner of the Neal and Computer Press Awards for journalistic excellence, he has written hundreds of articles on desktop and enterprise technology. He has a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Andi Mann is a research director with Enterprise Management Associates, the leading IT analyst firm specializing in management software. Andi has over 20 years experience in IT, across four continents, with large-scale enterprise systems including mainframe, midrange, server, and desktop environments. Andi has worked in technical and management roles for many local and global organizations, including several Fortune 1000 companies, managing their diverse enterprise IT systems. He has also worked in technical, marketing, and product management roles with several enterprise software vendors, providing problem analysis, solution design, product development, and implementation services. Andi's experience spans a wide range of industries, including finance, insurance, outsourcing, government, primary industry, manufacturing, utilities, telecommunications, and retail. Andi's focus at EMA is on the management of enterprise systems - including virtualization, system lifecycle management, and Data Center Automation - providing EMA and its clients with a unique and extensive range of knowledge in Enterprise IT Management solutions.

Ron Oglesby is director of architecture for virtualization services at GlassHouse Technologies, Inc. Oglesby's background includes a long history of Wintel architecture and design, application deployment and application virtualization technology implementations. In addition to virtualization work with VMware ESX, he has experience with Xen-based VirtualIron and Microsoft Virtual Server. Since 2004, Oglesby's practice has focused on the design and implementation of virtualization technologies and large scale data center consolidation projects. He is a sought after speaker in the virtualization and server-based-computing space, and he is a published author of a number of technical books including the best selling ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide that focuses on designing virtual environments using VMware's ESX 2.5.

Dan Pollack was introduced to UNIX in 1988 and has been a system administrator since 1990. He has worked in the financial, government and online service industries. For the past ten years he has designed and implemented numerous storage systems for large scale database applications. In the last six years most of these systems have been based on SANs. In 2001 he authored a book based on the knowledge gathered from this work called Practical Storage Area Networking. He currently resides at AOL LLC in Northern Virginia where he is an operations architect for the Storage Operations group.

Specializing in virtualization architecture and high-end storage implementation, Matt has a true passion for enterprise IT solutions. With more than ten years of experience in the IT industry, Matt has done everything from large-scale internetworking, to developing complex LAMP-based web applications. Over the past eighteen months, Matt has been instrumental to the adoption of virtualization technologies as a means for his clients to decrease both their disaster recovery windows and overall TCO.

Matt is a senior network architect with the SymQuest Group.

David Reilly is a managing director of Credit Suisse and the head of its Technology Infrastructure Services group, based in New York. In this capacity, he oversees the bank's global network of data centers and a sophisticated technology infrastructure used by Credit Suisse's more than 47,000 employees based in over 50 countries offices worldwide.

Previously, Mr. Reilly was responsible for global technology infrastructure for the Investment Bank. Mr. Reilly joined Credit Suisse First Boston in July 2004 from Goldman Sachs where he was a managing director in Global Technology Operations. Prior to that, Mr. Reilly worked in Enterprise Technology Services at Merrill Lynch in several different positions, including director of engineering infrastructure services and head of debt site and account management.

A senior editor for the InfoWorld Test Center, Ted Samson has been with InfoWorld since 1999. Passionate about environmental issues and technology, he tracks green tech trends in his Sustainable IT blog. Ted works out of his home office in Sacramento. His kitchen appliances are all Energy Star-compliant -- but he does not currently own a hybrid.

Dr. Gregory O. Smith is the director of Dynamic Services for T-Systems responsible for Dynamic Computing, Application and Virtualization Services in North America. Gregory has an extensive background in solution design, architecture and deployment of enterprise applications in virtualized environments. Prior to joining T-Systems, Gregory was the global manager of Sun Microsystems SAP Competency Center Organization and a core designer of Sun's N1 for SAP Solutions virtualized delivery platform.

Jim Smith is the vice president of Engineering at Digital Realty Trust. Mr. Smith is a long term veteran of the data communications industry, including being a co-founder and chief technology officer of Colo.com. Prior to joining Digital Realty Trust in 2004, Mr. Smith was a datacenter consultant providing technical and feasibility assessments for corporate clients evaluating datacenter acquisitions in North America and Europe.

Christopher M. Steffen came to Factual Data Corp in 1997 as the corporate system administrator. He has held numerous positions within the company, and helped Factual Data through their IPO and acquisitions. After being acquired by Kroll, Chris has served Kroll Factual Data as the Network Operations Center manager and the manager of Information Security and Compliance. He has provided leadership in business continuity planning and standards based change management. Chris currently serves as the principal technical architect, overseeing the company's technical infrastructure and vision, while evaluating and implementing new technologies. Chris also holds several technical certifications, including CISSP and CISA.

As Director of Virtualization and Infrastructure Software Product Management for HP, Nick van der Zweep has shaped a number of ground-breaking solutions for enterprises who seek to build a flexible IT infrastructure that can keep pace with rapid business change. Because of his work pioneering innovative offerings like the HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE), van der Zweep now spearheads all virtualization efforts on behalf of HP Technology Solutions Group. He is also responsible for product management for HP Infrastructure Software, including HP Systems Insight Manager, the HP Virtual Server Environment and selected HP ProLiant and Integrity Essentials offerings.

Van der Zweep draws on his strong technical, sales and marketing knowledge to build innovative solutions to IT challenges. He built the business case for usage-based pricing models, and in September 1999, introduced Instant Capacity, a first-in-class solution. He subsequently introduced several related groundbreaking initiatives, including HP's Pay-per-Use utility pricing program in July 2001.

Recently Alex Vasilevsky founded his newest company, a stealth mode venture funded company that is going to drastically improve distributed computing through the use of advanced virtualization technology. Prior to that he was founder and CTO of Virtual Iron Software. Previously, Alex was CTO at Ucentric Systems (acquired by Motorola), a leading provider of home media software for media centers. An expert in virtualization, open source, parallel processing, video systems, and advanced optimizing compilers, Mr. Vasilevsky held senior engineering and management roles in leading technology companies, such as Avid Technology and Thinking Machines.

He is author of numerous papers, patents (six granted and sixteen pending) on a number of datacenter and networking topics including security, network and server virtualization, resource optimization and performance. His educational background includes a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Boston University.

Paul Venezia is an InfoWorld senior contributing editor and a veteran consultant with over a decade in the trenches. Perl, PHP, SQL, FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, high-end internetworking - he's been there, done it, and has the scars to prove it. Paul is also a contributor to many open source projects including NeDi, Cacti, and relaydelay.

As president and CEO, Ed Walsh sets the strategic direction for Virtual Iron, the leading independent provider of enterprise-class server virtualization software solutions. By providing easy-to-use capabilities on a next-generation architecture, Virtual Iron is reducing the obstacles to mainstream market adoption and enabling companies of all sizes to leverage the significant benefits of server virtualization. Walsh has a strong track record in both start-up and public companies delivering value to customers through innovative product development, establishing market leadership, driving effective channel go-to-market strategies and developing strong partner ecosystems with companies such as CA, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp and Symantec. Most recently, Walsh was CEO at Avamar Technologies, Inc., a venture-backed software firm acquired by EMC in late 2006. At Avamar, Walsh established the company as the leader in the next generation data protection and data de-duplication software market and led it to 700% revenue growth over 18 months.

Tom Yager has been working in IT and as a hands-on technology journalist for over 25 years. He has published three books, hundreds of reviews and hands-on print articles, and has worked as a columnist for UNIX Review and Windows NT Systems, among others. Today, Tom is the chief technologist for InfoWorld's Test Center, author of InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve column and author of the Enterprise Mac blog.