Speakers at the Backup and Recovery Strategies Conference

Dick Benton

In his role at GlassHouse, Dick helps clients to understand the concepts driving the Service Provider Model; he conducts capability maturity assessments and risk assessments of storage management practices, and develops infrastructure and governance strategies. Dick focuses on governance issues such as COBIT key performance indicators, ITIL based policy and procedure, and the capability maturity rankings required to transition an organization to the full service provider model. Dick has completed many assignments developing Disaster Recovery Strategies, Storage Strategies, and Email archiving and electronic records management strategies. Prior to joining GlassHouse, Dick worked as Director of Consulting services for CNT, and as Consulting Services Manager for Avnet Computer; Dick also held the position of CIO with worldwide responsibilities for GenRad, Inc., Shipley Company, and Prime Computer International. Dick immigrated to the USA some 22 years ago and is now a US Citizen. He came to the USA with Prime Computer where he ran the International IT function across Asia Pacific and Western Europe for some 5 years. Dick has had numerous articles published in Storage Magazine, InfoStor, DR Journal, and other magazines as well as in on line publications such as SearchDisasterRecovery.com.


Mike DeVito

Michael DeVito joined LSI Corporation in 2008. Mike has extensive experience in the computer industry with 29 years providing total software, hardware and services solutions for business, education and government entities. Most recently, he was worked on disk arrays, remote replication and mirroring, disaster recovery, business continuance, data migration, virtualization and complete data life-cycle management. Prior to joining LSI, Mike held positions with Silicon Graphics (SGI), CA, IBM, Hyperion, Computer Tec and Micro Database Systems. Mike graduated from St. Joseph's College, 1980, where he earned a B.S. in Business Administration. Mike is a certified Martial Arts Instructor in Hapkido, a Korean Martial Art and he trains and practices in Chicago's southwest suburbs.


Thomas F. Janssen

Thomas manages the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery efforts for Horace Mann Corporation headquartered in Springfield, Illinois.  Horace Mann is the largest multiline insurance company focusing on the nation's educators and their families. The company's overarching strategy and business purpose is to provide lifelong financial well-being for educators and their families through personalized service, advice, and a full range of tailored insurance and financial products.  Thomas manages a team of Mainframe engineers, Open Systems engineers, Capacity Planning and Performance Monitoring, and Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR).  He has been active in Information Technology (private sector, public sector, and consulting), for the past 23 years.  Focusing on the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery program at Horace Mann for the past 6 years, Thomas is responsible for overseeing the management of the Corporate Emergency Management Plan, as well as 35 individual Business Resumption Plans.  His recent accomplishments include the complete buildout of a new 4,600 square foot Data Center, Network Operations Center (NOC), and Print / Copy Center.  Thomas is also liaison between the corporate office and the remote site where hardware resides to support the synchronous data replication model presently employed.


David Kluger

David Kluger is StorCOM's principal technology architect. StorCOM's primary focus is aiding the clientele through a consultative approach on such topics as; overall data protection, management of data and disaster recovery strategies. Having worked in the IT industry for over 20 years he has gained an extremely wide range of experience. Additionally, David has public sector experience in consulting and providing leadership to an array of projects, managing and deploying data protection, as well as disaster recovery solutions for such organizations as; US Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin Corporation and Fireman's Fund Insurance. David also spent many years working as a senior consultant and systems architect at Microsoft, XIOtech and NetApp. David attended Arizona State University, where he also acquired his Masters Degree.


Eric Ledyard

Eric Ledyard steers Ahead’s technology vision and is responsible for defining the company's evolving technology strategy. Eric works directly with Ahead customers to understand their current environment and assist in designing solutions that address current needs while keeping an eye on future requirements. Prior to joining Ahead, Eric was the Sr. Systems Engineer for the Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery team, managing 20 states in the Midwest. Eric was a key member of the technical competitive analysis team at EMC providing expert insight on Hitachi Data Systems and IBM virtualization products. Prior to working at EMC he held engineering roles for Sun Microsystems as storage specialist as well as two technology resellers specializing in storage solutions as well as high-performance systems architecture. Prior to transitioning into a pre-sales architecture, Eric has significant end user experience where he was hands utilizing the technology and managing data center environments, this experience provides him with a profound understanding of all aspects of the value chain. Eric attended the Purdue School of Engineering with focus on Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering Technology.


Mike Peebles
Mike Peebles is the Product Marketing Manager at Hewlett-Packard responsible for the Information Management suite of products in the America’s region. This includes solutions for business continuity and availability, governance and ediscovery as well as document workflow transformation. He has extensive experience in architecting storage and data protection solutions.  Since joining HP in 1997, Mike has held technical and management positions within HP’s storage and software businesses focusing on current as well as future storage issues. Mike has applied his expertise within the Americas as well as Europe. Prior to joining HP Mike held hardware design engineering and engineering management positions focused on HP-IB and SCSI storage device development.  Mike was also the Manager for Technology Assessment and Acceptance during which he identified new storage solution business opportunities.  Mike has an MBA and a B.S. of Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University.


Deborah Shotts

Ms. Shotts holds a Master’s Degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Illinois Springfield as well as several professional certifications.  Ms. Shotts is certified as an Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), and as a Business Continuity Planer (CBCP).  During her 30 plus years in IT, she has worked as a programmer, analyst, internal auditor, college-level instructor, security professional, and disaster recovery coordinator.  She currently works as a subject matter expert in the Security and Compliance Solutions division within the Illinois Department of Central Management Services Bureau of Communications and Computer Services (CMS/BCCS).  CMS/BCCS operates as the state’s telecommunication, Internet, and information processing service provider.  The CMS/BCCS supported voice and digital network serves more than 800 cities in all 102 Illinois counties, providing 24x7x365 on-demand bandwidth to state and local governmental agencies serving the public safety, human services, employment, and economic needs of Illinois citizens.  The central computing facility processes thousands of transactions daily to support over 80 agencies, boards, and commissions under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Illinois.


Scott Warner
Scott Warner has spent the past 8 years as an information technology consultant providing networking, hardware and application expertise to clients throughout the Chicago area.  His experience spans the education, financial, pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries.  He is currently employed at Hart, Schaffner and Marx as the Technical Operations Manager, where he has worked to streamline IT operations across the enterprise.  Scott holds a Bachelors degree in Management Information Systems.


Dennis Wenk
Mr. Wenk is a management consultant and has consulted worldwide with large Fortune 500 customers.  His experience includes developing architectures and strategies for highly available, resilient and secure infrastructures in heterogeneous IT environments; virtually anywhere IT is mission critical to business success. He has performed quantitative operational risk assessments that were used to justify the significant investments required to build, transform and maintain resilient infrastructures in over 20 different countries and developed a number of risk-based services that increase resiliency and improve continuity programs.  Dennis has written award-winning professional articles and is a regular speaker at industry conferences world-wide. He has MBA in Accounting and Finance, BS in Computer Science; is certified in ITIL Service Management and is a certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Systems Professional (CSP) and Certified Data Processor (CDP).

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