Nik Ansell works as an enterprise architect in sunny Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. His love of IT started with a small personal computer used at the core of a home recording studio, back when PCs really weren't powerful or reliable enough to handle that kind of thing. His passion for technology very quickly exploded, though, and over a number of years advanced to the point where Nik was leading enterprise-wide IT initiatives in many sectors and regions globally. In addition to enterprise architecture, his main interests are technology innovation, IT strategy, IT transformation, and demystifying cloud computing.

Pete Bartolik is a freelance writer and editor who has covered IT and technology for many years. He was a staff writer, industry editor, and news editor of the IT management publication, Computerworld, and editor in chief for LOTUS Magazine, a monthly publication designed for PC end-users. Over the past decade he has worked on a variety of print, online, and social media editing assignments. He began his writing career as a news reporter with a daily newspaper in Massachusetts.

Michael Dortch is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for ServiceNow, creators of software as a service (SaaS) for IT. His role and goal is to help the ServiceNow team to craft and deliver stories that engage, inform, persuade, and invite customers, partners, prospects and influencers.

Peter Ghavami is the Director of Imaging Informatics at a university medical center and trauma level-1 hospital in the Northwest. Prior to his current position, he was VP of Engineering and Chief Scientist at Hcorp and has held various executive and leadership positions in engineering and information technology management. Peter has authored several papers on software engineering, healthcare informatics, network architectures, software quality, and also a book, <i>Lean, Agile & Six Sigma Information Technology Management: New Stratagems to Achieve Perfection</i> (CreateSpace, 2008).  He received his MS in Engineering Management from Portland State University and a BS from Oregon State University.  He is a member of IEEE Computer Society, Reliability Society, and IEEE Life Sciences Initiative.

Sandra is a freelance business and technology writer in the Boston area. She is a frequent contributor to many high-tech print and online publications. Previously events editor and managing editor of online for IDG's Network World, Sandra has covered all aspects of business intelligence/analytics over the years, writing articles and in-depth issue papers. An industry educator, she moderates Webcasts and conference sessions on an array of technology topics. She can be reached at sandra@slgpublishing.net.

Michael Joseph has been working in IT for nearly 30 years, as a developer, database administrator, networks and security analyst, MIS director, and knowledge management expert. After a stint in materials handling and warehouse automation, he moved into finance and insurance and later served as Director of IT at Razorfish, Silicon Alley's first global consulting firm. Later, he developed world-class knowledge management systems for Amlaw 100 firm Shearman & Sterling LLP, for McKinsey & Co., and for UNICEF, the UN agency for women and children. Michael now lives and works in London, where he consults with local government to evolve new business processes through technology and change management. He graduated from the Dublin Institute of Technology in 1984 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He retains a pragmatic outlook and endless curiosity about the age we live in and the change and potential that technology has brought about.

Tim Kellogg is a software engineer who has worked for several years in the enterprise and in small, innovative companies. He has a passion for open-source software and its formative role in the software development community. He started OpenHatch X: Boulder, a grassroots movement to get developers involved in open-source projects through hands-on participation and mentorship. When not contributing to open-source projects or designing software on the job, Tim is interested in topics like agile in practice, software abstractions, distributed version control, and whatever else seems to be changing the landscape of software development.

Dmitry Korolev is a Team Lead for the infrastructure services management group at Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based provider of IT security and endpoint protection software. He has several years of experience in consulting, delivering, and managing IT infrastructure-related projects. His general IT background ranges from freelance software development to Website maintenance. Dmitry is particularly interested in the practical aspects of implementing and developing the services approach within enterprise IT, based on ITIL/ITSM recommendations. This emphasizes defining service models that make the value of IT more transparent while also making IT itself easier to manage and operate.

Jan Krueger has been developing software professionally for nearly a decade. He has experience in building Web applications (in Ruby and other languages) and programs for embedded platforms. By education, he is a theoretical computer scientist, with a particular focus on programming languages. This gives him a unique perspective on the software development process. For some time, Jan has been interested in agile development methods and has managed non-agile teams in adopting these techniques. He currently works at a venture-backed startup in Hamburg, managing the development of code for off-the-shelf IT-security appliances. For much of this work, he is using a new dialect of Lisp called Clojure, which is proving to be a very powerful tool.

Mariano Maluf has been working in IT for more than 20 years, and throughout his career he has been responsible for managing mission-critical systems and geographically dispersed teams across multiple computing environments. In recent years, he led the creation of a virtualization technology platform and a datacenter server optimization practice for a major corporation. Mariano currently is the CTO at GNAX, a leading healthcare cloud computing service provider. Prior to that, he held technical, operational, and leadership positions at companies including The Home Depot, BellSouth, CTI Movil (a Verizon subsidiary), and a regional HP Partner. He also contributes time and expertise to such organizations as the Global VMware Users Group (VMUG) and LISTA's National Alliance on Health Information Technology. A passionate virtualization and cloud evangelist, he frequently speaks at conferences and events and is a three-time recipient of the vExpert Award.

Matthew Matkin has worked in information technology for more than 15 years, the majority of that time at leading enterprise IT groups, including one of Engineering News-Record's Top 10 Global Design Firms. He has managed IT projects, support, networks, and systems on nearly every continent, and has worked on-site in Australia, Canada, Chile, Honduras, Iraq, and Kuwait. He lived in Brazil for two years and participated in an international practicum in Argentina. At Arizona State University, Matthew earned Bachelor's degrees in computer science and mathematics with a minor in political science. He also has a Master's degree in business administration.

Andrei Savu is a software engineer with a passion for distributed systems, large-scale deployments, and autonomous systems. He is currently focusing his efforts on building tools for managing cloud infrastructure and on understanding how businesses can leverage cloud computing.

Mary E. Shacklett is President of Transworld Data, a technology research and market development firm. Prior to founding the company, Mary was Senior Vice President of Marketing and Technology at TCCU, Inc., a financial services firm; Vice President of Product Research and Software Development for Summit Information Systems, a computer software company; and Vice President of Strategic Planning and Technology at FSI International, a multinational manufacturing company in the semiconductor industry.  Mary has business experience in Europe, Japan and the Pacific Rim. She has a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin and an M.A. degree from the University of Southern California, where she taught for several years. Mary is a noted technology analyst and commentator who is listed in Who's Who Worldwide and in Who's Who in the Computer Industry.  She is a keynote speaker, and has over 1,000 articles, research studies and technology publications in print.

Mike La Spina has 32 years of experience in the trenches of enterprise IT. As a technical architect, his scope of professional work spans hardware, networking, operating systems, storage, virtualization, and security. He is a strong advocate of Open Storage, to which he contributes much of his personal time. Mike is well known in IT circles for crafting innovative Open Storage solutions that transcend status-quo thinking. He shares snippets of his work experiences globally through his own Web log, Ubiquitous Talk.

Terry Sweeney is a writer and editor based somewhere in the smog-laden environs of Los Angeles. He has covered technology for more than 20 years, with broad expertise in storage, networking, security, wireless, and celebrity stalking.

From October 2005 to June 2007, he was Editor in Chief of Byte and Switch (www.byteandswitch.com), storage networking's most widely read Website, which, when you think about it, is really not saying much. He was also a Founding Editor of the sinister IT security Website, Dark Reading (www.darkreading.com), as well as Storage Pipeline (absorbed in a nearly bloodless coup by the insatiable Byte and Switch). He did not leave under a cloud.

Sweeney was also News Editor at Internet Week and spent three years in Paris working for Communications Week International. When the Germans occupied the city he fled to Geneva, Switzerland, where he served as Editor in Chief of the print, online, and video content for the ITU's Telecom 99 conference. He later ran guns to freedom fighters in the Belgian Congo. Maybe.

He has contributed to The Washington Post, Crain's New York Business, Red Herring, Blue Herring, Rogue Herring, Information Week, Network World, SearchStorage, and Chicken Fancier, among other business and IT titles. He also designed a prototype flying machine and a fully functional submarine. No. Wait... That was someone else...

Sweeney surely did, however, graduate from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1982 with a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and a minor in Portuguese, for no discernible reason.

John W. Verity has been writing for many years about the computer industry, concentrating primarily on the enterprise market. He has been a staff reporter and editor at Electronic News, Datamation, BusinessWeek, ComputerLetter, and Venture Capital Analyst. As a freelancer, he has had articles published in CFO, Fortune, The New York Times, ComputerWorld, Smart Enterprise, and Technology Review. John also has written for a number of IT suppliers and consulting firms including SAP, CA, Nokia, Cisco Systems, Perot Systems, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

Amy Wohl has been observing, analyzing, writing about, and consulting to the computer industry for more than 35 years.  Today her focus is on enterprise software, cloud computing, and emerging technologies.