If you are interested in speaking at the 2nd Cloud Computing World Forum Middle East and North Africa then please contact:

Amy Darlison
Conference Executive
Tel: +44 (0) 845 519 1230
Amy [at] keynoteworld.com

Roger MacFarlaine has been an IT professional for over 30 years. His career started from humble beginnings as a Computer Operator, Programming and has now lead to positions in Senior Management in the IT industry. The first half of his career was in the manufacturing industry and then transitioned into the hospitality industry with much time in systems management working in regional positions for hotel companies like Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts, Marriott Hotels & Resorts & Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts just to name a few.

Mr. Mario Foster joined Rawabi Holding in June 2010 as Group IT Manager with the primary goal of fully restructuring the IT Organization for the entire Group, and setting strategic plans to take the Group IT Department to the next level. After only 14 months, Mr. Foster succeeded in building a responsive IT Organization that constantly delivers results by aligning technology initiatives with business goals, with substantial improvement to service delivery, standardization, and business / systems performance.

Mr. Emad Khatib has over 25 years experience in the field of information technology and management and consulting. He has worked extensively in the US as well as internationally in Europe and the Middle East. He served as the CIO at Emcredit and currently is an Adviser at the MOI. Mr. Khatib worked on aligning overall technology, security and operations corporate strategies to advance in developing consumer and commercial financial information system. Emad provides vision and leadership in the management and development of projects and initiatives in the development and implementation of strategical privatization programs and services.

Dr. Jassim Haji is the Director of Information Technology Division for Gulf Air, the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain. He has been functioning as Acting Director of Information Technology since 25th August 2011 and has been instrumental in implementing some key innovations at Gulf Air’s IT systems and processes in recent times, most notably, the introduction of advanced technology for Gulf Air World Wide Contact Centre and Cloud Computing that have helped further improve customer interface services as well as cost efficiency to the company.

Graduated with a B.Sc (Hons) in Information Technology from Dublin Institute of Technology, Mojtaba joined British Telecom Ireland as a Network Support Consultant where he provided support services to a wide range of internal and external clients. During his time with BT he has been involved in diverse range of projects focusing mainly on broadband access and services.

Yasser Zeineldin is the CEO of eHosting DataFort (eHDF), the region’s leading Managed IT and Advisory services provider and a member of TECOM Investments. Under Yasser’s leadership, the company is focused on delivering a comprehensive range of Managed IT services, carrying out its expansion plans and further improving the value and total cost of ownership for its customers. The industry is witnessing an important transformation to Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing and eHDF plans to be at the forefront of this transformation.

Mahesh Jaishankar is the Vice President of Investments - Special Projects at du, the integrated telecom service provider in the UAE, where he leads the business development and investments efforts to developing premier regional telecommunications services, this includes leading the activity on new initiatives on managed services, Content delivery Networks, Data Centres’,Submarine and terrestrial Cables systems.

Dino Wilkinson is a partner in the communications, media and technology team of international legal practice Norton Rose Group and is based in Abu Dhabi. Previously based in London, Dino has been serving the Middle East market for several years and has advised government departments, Islamic and conventional financial institutions, telecoms operators, professional services organisations and other corporate clients throughout the region on a wide range of non-contentious IT, intellectual property (IP) and outsourcing matters.

Dr. Ali Bhayani is strategist for Higher Education Industry and managing principal with focus on repositioning of Universities and Colleges, strategic marketing and brand management. Dr. Bhayani has more than fifteen years of experience in higher education, including more than twelve years in MENA region, where he was involved in managing branch campuses of University of Bradford (UK) and Michigan State University (USA).

Mikki Jang is a charismatic visionary who has a firm grasp of the significant and disruptive technological trends which are currently reshaping our world.  Through her previous experience and learning at CNN, CNBC, Fremantle Media, MTV, Mobile Monday and the World Bank , she’s been trying to make sense of our non-linearly evolving world, and  interprets these complexities into their simple heuristics, taking views from various disciplines and decoding the previously disconnected relationship between them. With her unique insight, Mikki enables organisations and companies to address the challenges we now face to develop transformational and winning ways for ‘what next’ essentially looks like.

She is the co-founder of the innovation consultancy firm Advatec LLC: in which she explores the significant implications for business and organisations of living in a wired-up, networked world, helping transform fear to prudence, pain to information, mistake to initiation and desire to new undertaking.

Olivier Maes is responsible for the market development and sales of CITRIX Cloud Platform portfolio (CloudStack & CloudPortal) in EMEA.  He is engaged in multiple private and public cloud projects amongst Service providers, Telco’s, System Integrators, Enterprises and Web 2.0 companies.   Before joining Citrix, Olivier Maes was the General Manager for Cisco’s private sector in Emerging Markets. He worked with various Telco’s to develop managed services and brought Datacenter virtualization to his Finance and Energy customers

 

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Steve Kletzmayr is the Strategic Alliances Manager in EMEA for Hitachi Data Systems. In this role Steve is responsible for aligning technology vision and business strategy, related applications, technologies and partner ecosystems together with Alliance partners Microsoft, SAP & VMware. With 27 years in IT, of which 22 years have been with Hitachi Data Systems in Europe & Asia, Steve is a highly experienced professional helping customers transform their IT operations & business by leveraging integrated resources that provide elastic, virtualized and highly available cloud environments for all data.

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Mr. Abdulsalam Rahma Al Bastaki, vice President – Information Technology, at Dubai Silicon Oasis, UAE’s leading Technology Park, has over 25 years of success with large, global organizations, responsible for setting global technology direction and leveraging technology to support new sources of revenue. e has previously held senior IT positions with leading organizations such as Dubai Petroleum Company, Conoco Philips, and DUBAL. He is a Computer Science graduate with post-graduate qualifications in Management Studies, Ohio State / Franklin University, USA, and member of many local and international Technology Forum.

Andrew Mason is the District Manager for Hitachi Data Systems, Middle East. In this role he is responsible for the regional sales and channel operation for the complete HDS solutions portfolio, hardware and software product range, throughout the Middle East. With over 18 years experience in storage and IT infrastructure solutions Andrew’s expertise is both wide and deep having gained experience in many roles in the industry from Database Administrator, Technical Product Support, to Professional Services Consultant through to his present district management role. 

Ajay Rathi, currently heads the IT infrastructure of DAMAC Holding, which is a conglomerate of Property, Investment, securities and F&B, spread across 15 countries around the globe. As, Senior Manager of IT he is responsible for building and maintaining a highly available, scalable and centralized IT infrastructure for the organization. Before joining DAMAC, he has served for 14 years in various positions at Indian Oil Corporation, which is one of the fortune 500 companies. He was part of project for consolidating the network infrastructure and establishing state of the art data center for rolling out SAP across more than 1000 sites.

Having gained nearly 20 years experiences in IT industry starting from 10 years with multinational company when Julia was leading several Regional SAP rollouts and implementing various Management Accounting Systems across CIS, USA and Middle East. Julia is a founder of Vinci Solutions, IT Management Consulting company, based in UAE. Vinci Solutions has been born with a definite aim to bring together the skills, expertise and experiences of IT experts to offer an essential IT services to entrepreneurs and small- and home-based business owners.

Mr. Kooliyankal is an exuberant IT & Information Security professional with around 16 years of experience in the Information Technology and Security arena. At present, in the role of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), he leads the Information security and business continuity activities at Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX), one of the most prestigious organizations in the region. Before joining ADX, he was serving Emirates Telecommunication Corporation (ETISALAT) for more than 10 years.

General Manager , Group Information Technology, Al Batha Group, a UAE based conglomerate engaged in multiple business lines including Automotive, Pharmaceuticals, FMCG, Electronics & Home appliances, Real Estate and Construction. Saji has over 25 years of industry and consulting experience in SAP, IT Strategy and Enterprise architecture. He is one of the Directors of SAP Users Group Middle East and North Africa. He was the President of ISACA UAE Chapter during 2005-2007.  He has been a key speaker at major forums regionally and worldwide including SAP international conferences and ISACA international conferences.

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Summer joined Forrester through its acquisition of Springboard Research. Prior to joining Springboard, she worked as an analyst for the Saraya Development Group in Dubai, researching the travel and tourism industries in MEA. She also worked as a management information systems analyst at SDG Amman. Summer holds a bachelor's degree in commerce and a master's degree in information technology management from Ryerson University.

 

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With over 15 years of diversified experience in IT frameworks, Raja Al Mazrouei joined Dubai International Financial Centre in July 2010, as head of IT, bringing with her a rich portfolio of value-creation expertise. Al Mazrouei is currently leading the strategic planning, implementation and organization of a solid ICT infrastructure, systems, and solutions, aiming at the maximization of business benefits for the DIFC. Raja’s deep understanding of the regional IT landscape serves as an invaluable instrument in leading innovative enterprise-level deployments of solutions and service deliveries.

Information Security Consultant cum Audit Strategist, professional speaker as well as Chief Security Researcher (CSR) at whitehat‘People’ - an open security consortium, having years of experience in cloud security, pentesting, auditing, compliance and risk assessment. Have certain number of research and conference publications in his name. One of the core members of Cloud Audit/A6 standards workgroup working directly with Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), drafted under IETF.

A recognised IT executive with over 15 years experience in leading edge IT and change implementation in the Middle East in areas of IT Strategy, Smart City IT, ERP, DSS, IT Outsourcing & transforming IT into a Profit Centre. Acclaimed as an agent of change with a track-record of successfully implementing complex IT and change projects to a reference site standard meeting challenging deadlines on time and in budget. Twice Awarded as one of the Top 10 IT Managers of the Middle East and featured in numerous published articles in IT and Project Management in the region's IT publications. Currently architecting a Smart City IT infrastructure for the regions new Knowledge Based Industries hub.

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Thomas Mueller is Chief Technology Officer of Cloud Technologies and General Manager of CloudPark and he is leading the cloud strategy at ASG.  In his role he is responsible for developing innovative private and public cloud architecture platforms. He has been instrumental in aiding clients deploy cloud solutions within global leading Banks, Telecommunication, Pharmaceutical and Retail companies. Companies such as Barclays Bank, Lufthansa and Deutsche Telekom  delivered high quality services to their users, customers and suppliers.

Jassim Mohammed Sajwani brings 15 years worth of experience within the IT industry to aswaaq. Currently practicing as Executive Director – Corporate Services, Jassim is responsible for IT, HR, Procurement, Administration, Marketing and Corporate Sales. In 2009, Jassim was voted I.T. Manager of the Year by Arabian Computer News.

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Bio to follow

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Sudhir has over 17 years experience in the ICT Industry and has worked in the Middle East for over 10 years. Sudhir has a Bachelors degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering –and an MBA in Marketing. He has worked in Solutions Sales, Consulting and Business Development with ICT service providers and vendors.

An ICT Professional with over 15 years of experience having served in various Technical and Business capacities in the UAE and abroad. Has been over 10 Years into Wireless Technologies, Enterprise Mobility and Cloud Computing domains. Manages the Conglomerates vertical from a Business Development perspective and is the Lead Member of the Cloud Computing Team within Etisalat.

 

 

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Born in Tunis on February 11, 1975 where he graduated from High school in 1994. Passionate about discovery and innovation, things that will shape his future, Walid joined the business school of Tunis to obtain a bachelor's degree in international trade. In 1998, his passion for adventure led him to create a communications agency, ICH-HAR with a capital of $ 2000 borrowed from his mother. A year later he sold the company to his partner for 20 times the initial capital, a new passion for marketing and business was born.

Bharat Kumar is VP International Sales and Marketing for SmartHost. He possesses more than 20 years of international commercial, sales and marketing experience. He has held senior management roles in a number of companies most recently as VP of APAC, Middle East and Japan for Tandberg Data responsible for the performance of that region. Previously, he held the position of VP of Marketing and Development at the same company, having the ownership for global marketing, product management and strategy. Prior to Tandberg Data he was the Business and Marketing Director at Microsoft. He was responsible for subsidiary marketing, business groups and business planning functions.