Open Data Center Alliance Announces First Forecast 2013 Speakers

PORTLAND, Ore., March 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) today announced the first group of speakers, presenters and moderators for Forecast 2013, ODCA's second annual conference where global IT managers and services and solutions providers come together to discuss cloud adoption based on ODCA requirements. The speakers are leaders in shaping conversations on cloud computing and join Mario Mueller, BMW's Vice President of IT Infrastructure, Chair of the Open Data Center Alliance, and Forecast 2013's keynote speaker at this year's event. Forecast 2013 is taking place in conjunction with GigaOM Structure in San Francisco on June 17 and 18.  Registration information, including information about early bird registration which runs through April 30, is available on the Forecast 2013 website.

Forecast offers a unique opportunity for participants to engage with peers on best practices for adoption of enterprise ready cloud deployments and to learn about the latest ODCA developments from ODCA leadership. The event includes interactive sessions on ODCA Master Usage Models and ODCA deployment success stories as well as panel sessions that include Software Defined Data Center, Business Transformation for Enterprise IT, Getting Value out of all of that Data, and Is Private Cloud here to Stay? The complete two-day agenda is published here. ODCA welcomes the following group of experts to the Forecast 2013 speaker lineup:

Reyk Bederke, Portfolio & Solution Design, T-Systems, will discuss T-System's ODCA cloud implementation.

Winston Bumpus, Director of Standards Architecture, VMware, President, DMTF, will participate on the Software Defined Data Center panel.

Herb Congdon, Associate Vice-President of Technology & Standards, Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), will participate on the Is Private Cloud Here to Stay panel.

Denis Curran, General Manager Strategy and Innovation, National Australia Bank (NAB), will discuss NAB's ODCA cloud implementation.

Matt Estes, Director of Architecture, Disney Technology Solutions and Services, will participate on the Getting Value out of all of that Data panel.

Mike Gualtieri, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, will moderate the Getting Value out of all of that Data panel.

Phil Harris, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of the Cloud & Systems Management Technology Group, Cisco, will lead the Cisco Q&A session.

Marcel Heilijgers, Executive Director, Cloud Credential Council, will participate on the Business Transformation for Enterprise IT panel.

Das Kamhout, Intel Principal Engineer, Director of IT Cloud Strategy and Architecture, will serve as Master of Ceremonies for the ODCA U session and will moderate the ODCA U Q&A.

Ben Kepes, Founder and Principal of Diversity Limited, will moderate the Is Private Cloud Here to Stay panel.

Eric Kristoff, Independent Enterprise IT Leader, will discuss ODCA Compute IaaS and Workload Migration and VM Interoperability usage models.

Ian Lamont, IT Security Specialist, BMW, will participate on the Security in the Cloud panel.

Matt Lowth, Principal Security Architect, National Australia Bank and Chair of the ODCA Security Workgroup, will discuss ODCA's Security Assurance and Monitoring and Security Data Protection usage models. Lowth will also participate on the Security in the Cloud panel.

Robert Mahowald, Research Vice President, IDC, will moderate the Business Transformation for Enterprise IT panel.

Jo Maitland, Research Director for Infrastructure/Cloud, GigaOM Research, will moderate the Software Defined Datacenters panel.

Eric Pulier, CEO, ServiceMesh and representative from the TM Forum, will participate on the Software Defined Data Center panel.

Ryan Skipp, Deutsche Telekom/T-Systems, Portfolio & Solution Development and Chair of the ODCA Manageability and Services Workgroup, will discuss the ODCA Service Orchestration and Interoperability Across Clouds usage models.

Chris Swan, CTO at CohesiveFT, will participate on the Software Defined Data Centers panel

Marvin Wheeler, Executive Director, Open Data Center Alliance, will serve as Master of Ceremonies for Forecast 2013.

ODCA is also announcing today that Kingston Technology Corporation has joined Forecast 2013 as a breakfast sponsor, SNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association has joined as a collaboration sponsor and Web Host Industry Review and WHIR Magazine have joined as a media sponsor. Kingston, SNIA and Web Host Review are the newest Forecast 2013 sponsors. Last month ODCA announced that Cisco, a leader in cloud solution delivery, will serve as a Forecast 2013 platinum sponsor, and Intel, the technical advisor to the Alliance, will serve as the conference's underwriting sponsor. In addition to corporate sponsors, ODCA announced Cloud Security Alliance, Cloud Credential Council, OASIS, Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and TM Forum as collaborating sponsors and CloudTimes and Security Stock Watch as media sponsors. ODCA will issue media alerts about new Forecast 2013 sponsors and speakers on a regular basis.

About The Open Data Center Alliance
The Open Data Center Alliance^SM is an independent IT consortium comprised of global IT leaders who have come together to provide a unified customer vision for long-term data center requirements. The Alliance is led by a twelve member steering committee which includes IT leaders BMW, Capgemini, China Unicom, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., National Australia Bank, NTT Data, T-Systems, Terremark, Disney Technology Solutions and Services, and UBS. Intel serves as technical advisor to the Alliance.

In support of its mission, the Alliance has delivered the first customer requirements for cloud computing and big data documented in Open Data Center Usage Models which identify member prioritized requirements to resolve the most pressing challenges facing cloud adoption. Find out more at www.opendatacenteralliance.org. Latest developments from the Alliance can also be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Twitter, and YouTube.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Russ DeVeau
Open Data Center Alliance
[email protected]
Mobile/Text: 908-251-1549

SOURCE Open Data Center Alliance