Peter Amstutz is the chief of Network Design for the DCMA Information Technology Customer Service Organization. He is responsible for leading research and design efforts for new technologies and information systems within DCMA. He is also responsible for providing recommendations to the agency’s senior IT leadership for the acquisition of computers, peripherals, software applications and systems. Mr. Amstutz is also a voting delegate, representing the U.S. Government, at the United Nations Center for Facilitation of Electronic Commerce (UN/CEFACT).

Mr. Amstutz began his career with DCMA in 1997 at the Defense Contract Management District West Headquarters in El Segundo, California. Beginning in 2000, he became a member of the Network Design Team where he assisted in the design and deployment of web proxy servers.

Mr. Amstutz attended the University of California, Berkeley from 1992 to 1994, where he studied Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Linda Burek is the program manager of the IT Infrastructure Transformation Program for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The goal of the program is to transform the FDA IT environment into a modern, utility-based operating environment supported by standard operating procedures resulting in cost savings, operational efficiencies, and defined service levels.

At the FDA, Ms. Burek served as the director of the Office of Information Technology and director of the Office of Information Management for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. As the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the State of Maryland, her organization received the 2002 Pioneer Award for development of a state-wide internet portal. She was also the deputy assistant Attorney General for Information Resources Management and the deputy CIO at the Department of Justice.

Ms. Burek holds a B.S. in Information Systems Management from the University of Maryland, University College.

Alan Chhabra has a decade of experience assisting enterprises in solving complex IT problems. Chhabra has been with Egenera for over five years in various management positions. Most recently, he served as the manager of Egenera IT operations and the consulting principal on Egenera's Technical Program Management team. Today, he manages the Systems Engineering team for Egenera's Public Sales sector, one of the fastest growing business units within the company. Chhabra works with clients on designing their application and infrastructure requirements for high availability, server consolidation, on-demand capacity, just-in-time provisioning, scalability and operations readiness.

Prior to Egenera, Chhabra founded 4SLICE Consulting, an Internet consulting firm focused on innovative hosting solutions to both large- and medium-sized businesses. Chhabra is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and his Masters in aerospace engineering.

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.

Tom Ferris is manager of the server and storage team in the Technology Infrastructure Division of the IMF. He is responsible for ongoing server and storage engineering and operations and is currently managing a High Availability (HA)/Disaster Recovery (DR) project aimed at implementing redundancy for critical systems at the IMF. He is also leading a utility computing initiative focused on improving server/storage asset utilization through consolidation and the implementation of a shared server and storage environment.

Mr. Ferris previously worked at Computer-Aided Design Systems. He has broad experience, spanning 15 years, managing projects related to network switch/router deployments, operating system deployments and upgrades, file server migrations, enterprise backup system implementations, server and storage consolidation, utility computing, and identity management. Mr. Ferris holds a B.S. in Business Management from the University of Maryland in College Park and a MBA in Management Science from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Steve oversees day-to-day editorial operations for InfoWorld Media Group and is responsible for managing strategic development and implementation of editorial initiatives. He brings 28 years of publishing experience to the job, including, most recently, two-plus years as editorial director of CNET, where he directed coverage for both CNET.com and ZDNet.

Steve is no newcomer to IDG. Previously, he held positions of editor-in-chief at pcworld.com, editor at PC World magazine, and editor-in-chief at The Web Magazine. Steve also worked for Omni magazine (where he was Managing Editor for four years), Popular Mechanics, and the IEEE. He graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in English.

Von Harrison has served the federal government over 29 years, with over 11 years in the GSA Office of Governmentwide Policy. In the Office of Technology Strategy she was designated the program manager for the IT Infrastructure Optimization (IOI) Line of Business (LoB) in October 2006. She is responsible for the government-wide, common approach to improving infrastructure cost efficiency and service levels. There are 23 government agencies participating in this effort, with plans to reduce spending by approximately $24 billion dollars over five years. Von also managed the development of three new LoBs initiated by OMB in 2006: IT Infrastructure Optimization, Budget Formulation and Execution, and Geospatial.

Prior to GSA, Von spent 18 years working for the Department of Defense. She has a Master's of Science in Information Resources Management from Syracuse University, a Master's of Social Work, and a Bachelor's Degree in Communication and Psychology, both from the University of Washington.

James Houghton is the head of Utility Product Management in the Corporate Investment Banking Technology group of Wachovia Bank. In that capacity he is responsible for implementing and supporting a dynamic Utility environment that provides the scalability, availability, and flexibility required to enable Wachovia's SOA strategy in an efficient manner. This environment is comprised of advanced virtualization and proactive performance management technologies presented seamlessly to business consumers in a variety of pattern-based application frameworks.

Mr. Houghton possesses over 15 years of IT strategy and execution experience. Prior to joining Wachovia he led an IBM Global Services consulting practice providing On Demand Infrastructure Services. In that role he led a team of top practitioners and worked with multiple IBM organizations to develop cost effective end-to-end solutions that enable enterprises to solve business problems by leveraging technologies around resource virtualization, services oriented architecture, and IT Service Management.

Chuck Kausch is currently the BCS consolidation director for HP Federal in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Chuck has been with HP for 19 years in various capacities, including enterprise architect, and currently focuses on HP’s industry-leading Business Critical Server architecture. Chuck regularly presents to both Government Agencies and Federal Systems Integrators about HP’s latest technologies - like virtualization. He has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics from Loyola College in Baltimore.

Shawn P. McCarthy is director, research, Government Vendor Programs, including US IT Opportunities in Government & Education, US IT Spending Guides, US LOB Budget Guides. Shawn is responsible for analyzing primary end-user data and budget data collected from officially published sources and through surveys of IT managers in government and university offices. Shawn determines IT investment priorities for the public sector and identifies and forecasts emerging opportunities for IT vendors.

Prior to Government Insights, Shawn was program manager for Government & Education for IDC’s Vertical Industry Research Group. McCarthy has also served as a group product manager for four years at Lycos, the Internet search engine. Prior to that, he was a senior editor at Government Computer News. Shawn graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University with a master's degree in educational technology leadership. He received a bachelor of arts degree in journalism/mass communication from St. Bonaventure University.

Mariano Pernigotti is a senior systems engineer with the applied research and engineering company CSSI, Inc. In addition to managing a multi-million dollar contract with the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center, Mariano is also responsible for administering the data center and the myriad software engineering projects that support his government client. He is a proponent of virtualization and is leading the adoption of this technology to reduce hardware and environmental costs and simplify the data center.

Mr. Pernigotti received his B.S. degree in Aeronautical Science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL and his M.S degree in Information Management from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. He began his career with CSSI in 1993.

David Siles serves the citizens of Kane County as the Chief Technical Officer for the information technologies department. For over three years, David has been responsible for architecting technical strategy and management of technical operations for the county. David has over 13 years of experience working in the information technology field ranging from Internet startups to large corporations. Over the last three years, Kane County has been recognized as a leader in the use of emerging technology in the public sector. In 2006, Kane County was chosen as a runner-up in the Computerworld 2006 best practices award program for infrastructure management for data center consolidation.

David currently serves as the president of the Chicago VMware users group. He is frequently quoted on the use of emerging technology in government and has appeared in Computerworld, Government Technology, State Tech Magazine, Byte and Switch, Information Week, the Wall Street Journal, and SearchServerVirtualization, among others.

John has over 15 years of experience designing and implementing large, complex business solutions. He currently serves within the Operating System Branch, and is considered to be a subject matter expert in the areas of Operating Systems, Active Directory, and system security. His major responsibilities are consolidation, resource allocation, disaster recovery, and business resumption. John's broad range of experience working in the information technology field ranges from ISPs where he designed messaging architecture and add-on collaboration products for ASP applications. He served as a senior technical consultant for large corporations, as a senior technical manager of a large trading company, and has many years of experience with the Federal Government and DOD.