Main Tent Keynote Speaker
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Adalio T. Sanchez
General Manager, IBM System x
IBM Systems and Technology Group
Adalio Sanchez is General Manager of IBM’s System x server unit responsible for all facets of IBM's multi-billion dollar x86 server business, including product development, marketing, sales, operations, and overall financial performance. He is also a member of the IBM Performance Team, a group of the company's highest senior executive officers.
Mr. Sanchez has over 27 years of experience in the information technology marketplace. Mr. Sanchez held the positions of General Manager of IBM Microelectronics, General Manager of IBM’s UNIX server business, General Manager of Storage Networking, General Manger of Manufacturing Operations and Business Transformation for the IBM Personal Systems Group and General Manager of IBM’s Mobile Computing unit.
Mr. Sanchez holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Miami and a Masters of Business Administration from Florida International University (FIU). He was named the 2007 U.S. Hispanic Engineer of the Year and has frequently been named to the list of the Top 50 Hispanics in Technology and Business. He is a member of the FIU Foundation Board of Directors, Chairman of the FIU Engineering School Executive Advisory Council, and serves as Chairman of SHPE Advisory Board. -
Jeffrey (Jeff) Howard
IBM Vice President, System x Platform
IBM Systems and Technology Group
Jeff Howard is the Vice-President for IBM PureFlex System Marketing in IBM Systems and Technology Group responsible for launching and marketing IBM PureFlex System offerings. Jeff is based in Raleigh, NC at the IBM Research Triangle Park campus.
Jeff is responsible for managing the category and product marketing teams for the IBM PureFlex System members, including the IBM Flex System building blocks, of the new IBM PureSystems family of expert integrated systems, The IBM PureSystems family includes capabilities and expertise from across IBM's systems, software and services teams and integrates them into an entirely new class of systems that include compute, storage, systems networking, virtualization and management. Jeff's teams manage the marketing positioning, messaging, go-to-market plays, digital marketing strategies, and more for these offerings.
Jeff has been with IBM for over 27 years and most recently spent 8 years leading Power Systems marketing, having launched POWER5, POWER6, and POWER7 generations of Power Systems as well as the operating systems, virtualization, and management software that supports them. Jeff holds 7 US patents including on packaging and networking technologies that enable integrated systems. Jeff has previously led marketing teams for Tivoli in IBM Software Group, IBM Software Small and Medium Business marketing, and the market management team for several of IBM's personal computer operating system products. Jeff is a published author and has been a leader in multiple marketing areas within IBM.
Jeff has been featured in IBM Systems Magazine as well as in pieces on CNN and the NY Times, along with being quoted in many industry publications. Jeff is a member of the Auburn University Mechanical Engineering External Board of Advisors having graduated from Auburn in 1984.
Featured Speakers
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Dr. John Shedletsky
Vice President of Competitive Technology
IBM Software Group
Dr. John Shedletsky has driven innovative change and business growth at IBM in a career spanning over 30 years. His successful contributions include:
- Leading IBM to adopt a technical strategy based on open software standards,
- Leading the design team for the first release of AIX, the operating system still in use on IBM Power Servers
- Senior development executive for new software products, including WebSphere Commerce
- Creating an effective technical evangelism organization in IBM Software Group
Dr. Shedletsky created a unique technical evangelism team in IBM Software Group. The Competitive Project Office is a team of developers that creates competitive information to prove the advantages of IBM software, hardware, and solutions over competitors. The work requires hands-on lab construction, evaluation, and benchmarking of solutions for various business scenarios.
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Egan Ford
Growth Solutions Executive IT Specialist, WW Cloud Computing Team
IBM Systems and Technology Group -
John Borkenhagen
CTO for System x and Blade Center
IBM Systems & Technology Group
John Borkenhagen’s current role is Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for System x and BladeCenter modular servers. He is also the architect for Enterprise X-Architecture (EXA). He was appointed IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2004. Previously, John was chief engineer for the EXA chipsets used on IBM’s x86-64 High End servers. Now in its fifth generation, called X5, the custom IBM memory, I/O, and node controller chipset is driving industry leading performance within the successful x3950 and x3850 servers. EXA technology was introduced into blade servers with X5.
Prior to joining the xSeries chip set design team in 1998, John worked on architecture and design of PowerPC processors used in iSeries and pSeries servers. John led the architecture and implementation of hardware multi-threading on the North Star PowerPC server processor. North Star was the first processor in the industry with hardware multi-threading.
During his 26 years with IBM, John has filed 76 patents. These patents have been in the area of processor cache design, high speed DRAM memory interfaces, symmetric multi-processor scaling, hardware multi-threading, chip test, and Instruction Unit design, and memory compression. He holds the title of Master inventor at both the Rochester and Raleigh IBM sites.