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I have worked at the Arsenal since 2011 where I started as a match day sound engineer. I work in the Product & Engineering team, which is a key pillar within the Commercial department, we are responsible for the development of commercial technology, specifically supporter facing digital channels, applications, and media systems.

I am a lifelong Arsenal fan so I am very much living a childhood dream.

Chris Mellor is the founder of Blocks & Files and the storage editor of its sister title The Register. He has reported and analyzed IT storage matters for 20 years, starting out in the industry coding for mainframes, then installing mini-computer software and enjoying using PDP-8 tapes and early removable DEC disk drives.

An energetic relationship builder with 15+ years of Microsoft leadership experience, David Totten is the Chief Technology Officer of the Global Partner Solution US organization at Microsoft, spanning across 2,000 partners and accountable for $35 billion in annual revenue. His team of 200 technical architects and strategists work hand-in-hand with partners of all sizes and types to build successful and sustainable businesses on the Microsoft platform. Previously, David was accountable for the United States’ go to market strategy for Office 365 across 18,000 accounts and 3,000 partners, blending all industries and verticals. He oversaw the Cloud Productivity value proposition, field and partner readiness, deployment programs, competitive intelligence, product evangelism, and the customer experience across the entire Office 365 portfolio of solutions.

Dennis covers data center storage technologies, including SAN, NAS, DAS, cloud storage, NVMe over Fabrics (NVMeOF), and software-defined storage (SDS). He has more than 25 years of broad storage industry technology experience, which includes storage systems design, product and project management, corporate and product strategy, and storage innovations development and market insight.

Specializing in storage technologies, Dennis has created winning products, such as the MetaStore SAN, which grew to $60 million in annual revenue. He also holds patents in storage systems design, data caching, and hybrid cloud data migration. He is certified in Agile development practices and cloud solution architectures.

Before joining Omdia (formerly IHS Markit) in 2018, Dennis worked at NetApp and contributed to the E-Series product line, which is worth $1 billion. He also held positions at Symbios Logic, Engenio, and LSI. Dennis earned his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering at University of Wisconsin-Platteville, US and MBA from Wichita State University, US.

Jerome Wendt currently serves as the President and Founder of DCIG, LLC, which he founded in 2007. Mr. Wendt is an avid writer who has written thousands of articles that have appeared in multiple magazines, on-line publications, and websites. Mr. Wendt is recognized as one of the foremost technology analysts in the enterprise data storage and data protection industries. Mr. Wendt covers topics related to enterprise and cloud infrastructures to include all-flash and hybrid arrays, cloud computing, cloud storage, data protection, hyperconverged infrastructures, and software-defined storage (SDS).

Since founding DCIG, Mr. Wendt originated and developed the processes and methodologies that went into the creation of the DCIG Buyer’s Guides. The first DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide was released in 2010 with millions of copies of the DCIG Buyer’s Guides being distributed worldwide. These Buyer’s Guides have assisted decision makers in properly evaluating and classifying key enterprise data center technologies. The DCIG Buyer’s Guides are widely recognized and used by information technology professionals who view them as the “go-to” source if looking to understand where a product best fits in their enterprise infrastructure.

Prior to founding DCIG, Mr. Wendt served as storage engineer working for First Data Corp. He also has written and contributed to leading publications to include ComputerWorld, InfoStor, IT Central Station, SearchStorage.com, and Storage Magazine, among others. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems in 1995 from Washburn University (Topeka, KS) and a bachelor’s degree in Theology in 1990 from Ambassador University (now merged with Azusa Pacific University) in Pasadena, CA. More recently, Mr. Wendt was certified as an Amazon Cloud Solutions Architect. When away from work, he enjoys bowling, camping, fishing and playing Sudoku.

Joe Marando is the CIO for the Jerde Partnership, a global architecture firm. Joe has 28 years of experience in the technology realm including aerospace, telecom, network hardware manufacturing and education before landing at Jerde 17 years ago. When not at work he can be seen somewhere in Los Angeles riding his bicycle.

With over 15 years’ experience in IT, across finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, Wardle is an infrastructure leader who is passionate about automation and streamlining process within infrastructure.

Neil Stewart has over 30 years’ experience in Electronics, Software Development, IT, and IT management. He is now the Global IT Infrastructure Excellence Lead at Fugro. He started his career in electronics with Plessey, a UK Defence Avionics company in 1989. He then moved to a Scottish company specializing in control systems for Distilleries, Oil, and Gas sector in 1991. Over the years he worked with Racal and Thales before moving into the IT field around 2000 with the "Millenium" bug. He started his new career as an IT manager with Fugro. First managing three offices for the company in Aberdeen, then a few more around the UK, before he became the Country IT manager in the UK in 2017. Now he is in a global position providing proven solutions, standards, and excellence to the rest of the group.

Paul Meighan is the Director of Product Management for Object Storage, spanning Amazon S3 and Amazon S3 Glacier. With a focus on Amazon S3 since 2018, Meighan has worked on projects across the service, and has a deep understanding of Amazon S3 and its roadmap. A storage industry for more than 10 years, Meighan has worked on a range of storage and data management tech, from arrays, to backup, and now to cloud.

In his role as Senior Strategist at Evaluator Group, Randy Kerns brings expertise from virtualization everywhere to very long-term archive to help end users and vendors develop strategic plans, product roadmaps and evaluate options. He draws from over 40 years in the computer industry helping storage companies design and develop storage system products for their markets as well as advising technical professionals on how to build the best storage infrastructures to streamline their business processes.

Randy Kerns spent many years in executive level product strategy and design positions. He was vice president of storage strategy and planning at Sun Microsystems; he developed disk and tape systems for mainframe attachment at IBM and StorageTek; he designed disk systems for attachment to open systems and proprietary computer platforms at Fujitsu and Tandem Computers; and he developed tape and disk systems for three start-up companies.

Prior to joining Evaluator Group, Randy served as CTO for a company where he brought products to market addressing long term archive for Information Technology and the Healthcare and Media / Entertainment markets.

Randy Kerns earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri at Rolla and a master’s degree in engineering computer science from the University of Colorado.

An educator and presenter, Randy Kerns has written numerous industry articles and papers and is the author of Planning a Storage Strategy, a book that offers step-by-step guidance on how to build an information storage strategy as part of a larger business process and most recently is the author of Information Archiving – Economics and Compliance, which is the first book of its kind to explore archiving of information in depth. Randy Kerns has regularly taught classes on storage technology in the United States and Europe.

Rohana “Ro” Meade is the President, CEO and founding partner of Synergy Technical, an award winning consulting firm. As the leader of a technology consulting firm focused on innovative and progressive technology solutions, a key component of Rohana’s role is to stay abreast of new and emerging technologies and trends.

Rohana has worked for public and private organizations across multiple industries, in organizations ranging from "mid-market" to Fortune Global 500 companies, holding CIO, CTO, and CEO roles. With experience in consulting, non-profit, retail, and manufacturing environments, Rohana is a leader with a balance of strategic insight, financial savvy, technical skills, and marketing acumen. Rohana has gained a reputation among teams, colleagues, board members, and customers alike as an executive with a that applies a clearly defined vision and strategy to achieving organizational goals.

Rohana is a widely sought speaker and consultant in the discipline of applying Information Technology to business needs. Rohana has presented at worldwide conferences for several large vendors, including both Oracle and Microsoft. Rohana has also been interviewed by NASDAQ, as well as being recognized by Microsoft on International Women’s Day as a leader to watch.

Scott D. Lowe is the CEO and Lead Analyst for ActualTech Media. Since 1994, Scott has helped organizations of all stripes solve critical technology challenges. He has served in a variety of technical roles, spent ten years as a CIO, and has spent another thirteen as a strategic IT consultant in higher education. Today, his company helps educate IT pros and decision makers and brings IT consumers together with the right enterprise IT solutions to help them propel their businesses forward.

Scott Sinclair is a Practice Director for ESG and leads ESG's Infrastructure, Cloud, and DevOps team. As part of this role, Scott advises IT technology leaders as well as emerging innovators on both product and go to market strategy, while driving new research studies into the state of IT infrastructure, operations, and application development across the distributed cloud ecosystem.

Sean Phuphanich leads SA engagements in the AWS world-wide public sector. A former Vice President of eCommerce & IT, Sean has over a decade of leadership and hands on experience transforming organizations through people, technology and culture. Currently, he works with AWS partners, government, and regulated industries to achieve success in the cloud.

Tony is an IT operations guru. As an ex-IT manager with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, his extensive vendor briefing agenda makes him one of the most well informed analysts in the industry, particularly on the diversity of solutions and approaches available to tackle key operational requirements. If you are a vendor talking about a new offering, be very careful about describing it to Tony as ‘unique’, because if it isn’t, he’ll probably know.

To keep everything balanced and grounded, Tony is intimately involved in Freeform Dynamics’ Community Research Programme, through which he stays in close touch with how needs are evolving within the IT and business community around IT service delivery. This includes all aspects of systems infrastructure and management, from desktop, through servers, storage and network, to mainframe, with particular attention paid to alternative delivery models – cloud computing, managed services, IT financing, etc.

From an advisory perspective, Tony’s comprehensive knowledge of the solution and best practice landscape makes him ideal for those who want help in understanding their options rather than having a canned set of recommendations thrust at them. His focus on core principles and his forthright but open-minded views on technology also make Tony one of the most sought after speakers in the industry for keynotes, roundtables, webinars, and so on.

Tony has a strong IT practitioner background, having held IT management positions at companies such as BP and BT, and has also worked on the vendor side of the equation at Amdahl. He became an industry analyst in 2000, has been with Freeform Dynamics since 2007, and is currently based in Germany, but also spends significant time in London and other locations around the world.

Nasuni Founder and CTO Andres Rodriguez brings passion and energy to his role refining and communicating Nasuni’s technology strategy.

Andres was previously Founder and CEO at Archivas, creator of the first enterprise-class cloud storage system. Acquired by Hitachi Data Systems, Archivas is now the basis for the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). After supporting the worldwide rollout of HCP as Hitachi’s CTO of File Services and seeing the Archivas team and technology successfully integrated, Andres turned his attention to his next venture, Nasuni (NAS Unified). Delivering value-added enterprise file services on top of cloud object storage was the natural progression of Andres’ cloud storage vision.

Before founding Archivas, Andres was CTO at the New York Times, where his ideas for digital content storage, protection, and access were formed. He joined The Times through its acquisition of Abuzz, the pioneering social networking company Andres co-founded. Andres has a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering and a Master of Physics degree from Boston University. He holds numerous patents and is an avid swimmer.

Anne Blanchard is a product marketing leader with extensive background in storage and cloud solutions. Anne is the Senior Director of Product and Customer Marketing at Nasuni. With over 20 years of storage experience at Limelight Networks, Ascential Software (acquired by Informix and IBM), Data General, (acquired by EMC), and Digital Equipment (now HPE), she brings a wealth of storage market expertise. Anne holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA from Dartmouth College.

Barrie Kuza leads Nasuni's Customer Experience team whose goal is to be the voice of the customer within Nasuni. We work cross functionally to make sure that every customer interaction with the product and people of Nasuni is great.

Barrie has been a tireless advocate for Nasuni customers since joining the company in 2011 as a Senior Technical Support Engineer. Her role has grown steadily, mirroring Nasuni's growth, and she has taken on a variety of customer-facing positions including Manager, Technical Support; Senior Director, Technical Operations; Vice President, Customer Success; Vice President, Product Management; and Vice President, Customer Experience.

Barrie is known as a technically skilled, customer-focused executive with a track record of building support and technical relationship management teams that enhance customer success. Before Nasuni, she built and launched the technical support programs at Idiom Technologies and several other early-stage companies. Barrie began her career as a software developer before realizing she loved working with and supporting customers more.

An avid hiker and traveler, Barrie is also a mother of four. She holds a BS degree in Computer Science from Brandeis University.

David Grant is responsible for all field operations, which include sales, marketing, alliances, professional services, customer success and experience.

Dave is a veteran marketer with 20 years of experience in senior leadership roles at software companies – from startups to multibillion-dollar operations. He joined Nasuni from Veeam Software, where he was the senior vice president of global marketing. Prior to Veeam, he served as the vice president, marketing at VMware. Dave also served as the CMO at two startups. Desktone, acquired by VMware, and Watchfire, acquired by IBM.

Dave has a master’s in finance from Dalhousie University and a bachelor’s in marketing from Saint Mary’s University.

Jason DePardo is responsible for global customer support and professional services at Nasuni. He is charged with delivering world-class service and achieving top ratings in customer satisfaction as we add the world’s largest enterprises to our customer roster.

Jason has an extensive track record leading and growing successful customer service teams for mission-critical IT and cloud infrastructure vendors. After spending 9 years in Engineering and Customer Support at EMC, Jason became Director, Global Technical Support at Isilon Systems, where he helped grow the support organization by a factor of 10, expanding the team to 8 support centers and over 300 employees. When EMC acquired Isilon, Jason led the integration of the Isilon support team into the EMC support organization

Jim was previously the founder and CEO of Storage Made Easy. Prior to Storage Made Easy, Jim was European Sales and Operations Director for GigaSpaces after joining the company in 2006 to help expand its European operations.

Before GigaSpaces Jim was the European General Manager for Versata, a NASDAQ listed business process and rules management company. During his 6 years at Versata, Jim also worked in technical, product management, and product marketing roles. Jim has over 25 years experience in Storage, Big Data, Middleware and Cloud technologies for high growth technology companies over the last 25 years.

John Capello plays an instrumental role directing Nasuni’s product strategy, and can often be found working with customers and technology partners to understand their requirements and identify new use cases for Nasuni’s global file system.
Before joining Nasuni, John was Vice President of Product at fast growing startups Abuzz (acquired by The New York Times) and Tabblo (acquired by Hewlett-Packard). He also served as a general manager for The New York Times Digital and as a consultant for McKinsey and Company.

Nick Burling is the Vice President of Product Management at Nasuni where he is responsible for defining and executing on the roadmap for Nasuni’s innovative File Data Services offerings.

Nick is an accomplished entrepreneur and IT product executive with experience in managing all phases of the product lifecycle. He has a proven track record in identifying new market opportunities, defining strategic vision, and executing on that vision to capture market share. Nick’s background includes broad experience building and leading winning product teams with Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft and IBM, and in leading startups from launch to successful exit.

Paul Flanagan is responsible for all aspects of Nasuni’s global operations. He is focused on building a world-class team of innovators whose common goal is to leverage the cloud to reinvent enterprise file storage. Paul has a wealth of experience building and leading high growth companies. As an operating executive, he has raised over a billion dollars of financing and has taken two companies from start-up to IPO with capitalizations over $1 billion. Paul has served as CEO at Rave Mobile Safety and StorageNetworks (IPO: Nasdaq), CFO at VistaPrint, now Cimpress (IPO: Nasdaq), and VP of Finance at Lasertron (Acquired: Corning) and Vitol Gas and Electric (Acquired: Coral Energy).

Paul has also spent 12 years as co-founder and managing director at Sigma Prime Ventures and as a managing director at Sigma Partners, where he led investments in Wordstream (acquired: Gannett), Bionx (acquired: Ottoboch), ReThink Robotics, High Street Partners (acquired: HG Capital/Nair), Contently, and NS1. Paul is also a founding investor and board member for Nasuni.

Paul started his career at Ernst & Young and is a graduate of Bentley University. He is Boston, through and through.

Ryan Miller is a Solution Architect at Nasuni, with over 20 years of field experience implementing and consulting on data storage, data protection, and virtualization solutions for customers.

Tom Rose is Nasuni's Vice President of Technical Solutions, responsible for technical documentation, white papers, competitive intelligence, and reference architectures. His team also works closely with Nasuni's cloud partners to build value propositions that help enterprise IT organizations validate the financial advantages of the Nasuni File Data Platform versus alternatives. Tom can often be found working with Nasuni's sales team and customers as a field resource and product evangelist. Previously, Tom was CMO at Unidesk through its acquisition by Citrix, CMO at AppIQ through its acquisition by HPE, and VP Product Marketing at several other successful IT infrastructure software companies.