Agenda

Jim is well known in the local market for delivering on his promise and his entire career has been spent connecting the right people at the right time in roles across Europe, China and Australia.

He founded ADAPT to deliver quality outcomes with integrity and now in our 8th year, growth has been consistent. Jim is still positioned across sales and account management where he delivers innovative results and programs and leads by example.

He also runs entrepreneurial product development and the evolution and clear differentiated value of ADAPT’s offerings. As well as a NSW Small Business Excellence nomination, ADAPT were 55th in BRW’s 2014 Top 100 Start Ups – Jim’s 3rd time there – previously as Founder of Strategic Path, an award-winning ICT publisher, he steered the company to make the list in both 2009 and 2010.

As Director of Strategic Research at ADAPT Matt Boon, is responsible for directing and developing ADAPTs research content and positions. In his role at ADAPT Boon advises C-Suite executives across the end-user and technology provider landscape. Boon is also responsible for bringing together groups of C-Suite leaders to discuss and prepare for the myriad of challenges and opportunities they face.

ADAPT host’s numerous industry leading IT focused events annually and Boon is responsible for hosting, chairing and delivering ADAPT independent content and positions to help attendees make informed IT decisions.

Chris Halstead is Vice President of Infrastructure and Cloud Services at Starbucks Coffee Company. Chris and his team are responsible for foundational technology service delivery across the worldwide Starbucks enterprise, which includes private data centers, corporate offices, manufacturing and distribution locations, Starbucks Reserve Roasteries, and integration with public cloud partners.

In addition to engineering and operating core technology infrastructure services, the team plays an instrumental role in financial management and strategic technology alignment to deliver on critical business initiatives, leveraging on-premises capacity and integrating an expanding footprint of cloud environments.

Chris joined Starbucks in 2007 and has been leading infrastructure teams there since 2011. Prior to Starbucks, Chris held both individual and leadership roles at John H. Harland Co., Delta Air Lines, SourceLabs, and Amazon. He contributes to industry advancement and improvement through membership in Infrastructure Masons and participation in Customer Advisory Boards for Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud Business Application Platform.

Ben Peterson leads IBM A/NZ’s Garage for Hybrid Cloud Services. Garage is IBM’s co-innovation engagement methodology which has seen clients experience 10x more innovative ideas, 66% faster speed to outcomes and 102% ROI.

Ben has spent the last 20 years working across the Australian Tech and Innovation Ecosystem in various roles including Startup Founder/Co-founder, General Manager, Tech lead, Marketing Manager and Innovation Lead. Ben led IBM’s Developer Ecosystem team for a number of years, working with Enterprise De-velopers and Engineering teams, Academia and Startups on topics such as skills programs, innovation and open source contribution frameworks.

Ben sits on the NSW Board of the AIIA and Chairs the Digital Skills PAN, work-ing with the Government and the broader Ecosystem on strategies to help build the skills needed in order for Aus-tralia to achieve its potential on the Global stage.

Andreas is leading the Cloud Strategy & Transformation topics for Red Hat across Australia & New Zealand. His hands-on experience in startups as well as large scale enterprise transformation programs has given Andreas a solid understanding of business drivers and value creation.

Andreas has worked on a wide range of initiatives across different industries in Europe, North America and APAC including full-scale ERP migrations, HR, finance and accounting, manufacturing, supply chain logistics transformations and scalable core banking strategies to support regional business growth strategies.

Since joining Red Hat in 2015, Andreas is focussed on helping Red Hat customers to build the necessary capabilities and to make the best-fit technology, methodology and architecture choices to be a successful digital competitor. Andreas got his first Commodore 64 when he was 12 years old and started to work as a software developer in 1996 with Krauss-Maffei in Munich building full mission simulators.

Andreas holds an Engineering degree from the University of Ravensburg, Germany.

Dean Nelson is a seasoned technology executive with 32 years of experience deploying $10B of digital infrastructure projects across 3 continents.
Dean is currently the CEO of Virtual Power Systems, a software platform that unlocks stranded power in datacenters, the Founder and Chairman of Infrastructure Masons, a professional association of industry executives and technology professionals uniting the builders of the digital age, and the Founder and CEO of Dean Nelson Inc, a strategic advisory and consulting company serving startups, fortune 500 companies and investment firms.

Previously, Dean led Uber’s Metal as a Service function supporting Uber’s ridesharing business delivering over 100 million trips a week in more than 600 cities spanning 6 continents, as well as UberEats, UberFreight, UberHealth, UberForBusiness, and Autonomous vehicle and UberAir development.

Prior to Uber, Dean worked at eBay Inc for 7 years as the Vice President of Global Foundation Services, which served over 300 million active users enabling over $250B of enabled commerce volume annually. At the end of his tenure, his team successfully integrated, then split eBay and PayPal infrastructures into two independent internet companies. Prior to eBay, Dean worked at Sun Microsystems for 17 years in various technical, management and executive leadership roles. His final project was the consolidation of Sun’s multi-billion dollar global technical infrastructure portfolio of over 1,000 facilities. Dean holds four US patents.

Mike is the Senior Director of Cloud at VMware. He has a strong passion for driving business transformation through technology and has been doing so since 1996 – always maintaining a key focus on the leadership of emerging technology solutions to market and helping customers on their digital transformation journeys.

At VMware, Mike leads the cloud sales team and go-to-market efforts across Australia and New Zealand, as well as having a particular focus on the continued acceleration of VMware’s Multi-Cloud strategy and growing VMware’s Cloud Provider Program.

Prior to VMware, he has held leadership roles including Head of Cloud in Australia for the Singtel/Optus group, CTO for Broadreach, advisory roles at Citigroup UK, and previous roles in several IT organisations. Mike has strong experience across many different technology domains including Cloud, Digital Workplace, Security, Networks, and Applications; with core focus on leadership, driving business growth, and exceptional commitment to high quality customer outcomes.

VMware software powers the world’s complex digital infrastructure. The company’s cloud, app modernisation, networking, security, and digital workspace offerings help customers deliver any application on any cloud across any device. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to being a force for good, from its breakthrough technology innovations to its global impact.

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With a 20-year background in the IT sector delivering IT and technology strategies to uplift operations and drive service excellence at all levels through automation processes and change programmes, Scott is a passionate and solutions-focussed leader committed to driving efficiencies through automation and new technology developments. His career in insurance, finance, trading, and transport specialising in IT services has enabled him to deliver improved strategies for dynamic, transformative change through Digital Programmes and automation.

At Scott’s core, he is a collaborative, people-focussed leader – one who is committed to establishing high-performance teams to not only foster positive, empowered cultures but to ensure team members at all levels are connected with projects and business objectives.

Scott thrives in environments where he can take a deep dive to analyse strategies and design solutions that add value to operations to achieve outcomes and where he can take up impossible challenges and deliver strategies that optimise performance at all levels to achieve outstanding outcomes.

John Roese is Global Chief Technology Officer at Dell Technologies. In this role, John is responsible for establishing the company’s future-looking technology strategy and fostering innovation to make sure Dell Technologies is at the forefront of the industry with ground-breaking technologies that anticipate customers’ needs across the portfolio.

John joined Dell EMC in the fall of 2012 and was instrumental in shaping Dell EMC’s technology strategy as the company embarked on new growth and leadership across three of the most transformative trends in the history of IT – Cloud, Big Data and Trusted IT.

Prior to joining Dell EMC, John was the CTO, GM, and leader of several technology companies including Nortel, Broadcom, Futurewei, Enterasys, and Cabletron systems. In addition to his roles as CTO, John has been a Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Information Officer in publicly traded companies.

John is a published author and holds more than 20 pending and granted patents in areas such as policy-based networking, location-based services, and security. John has been active in numerous boards, including ATIS, OLPC, Blade Networks, Pingtel, Bering Media, and the Cloud Foundry Foundation. He currently serves as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council, NYU Wireless Industry Advisory Board, and the Purdue Research Foundation / Purdue University Lab to Life Technology Leaders Advisory Board.