Britt Technology Impact Series

Cloud computing has believers, detractors and lots of buzz. Enterprises and consumers alike are eager to dump ordinary servers and computers for cutting-edge cloud services. The flexibility and cost-savings promise to make cloud a compelling new world. But cloud isn’t the biggest story. More important is what it can unleash. Cloud technology has potential to foster new services for both business and consumers. Already, Google Docs and Apple’s iCloud make it easier to collaborate and store photos, music, documents and data. Enterprises can turn expensive data centers into plug-and-play operations that grow and shrink to meet demand. Pay-as-you-go pricing and increased mobility could make it easier for IT to work more quickly and help business innovate with changing technology. What will this powerful new tool produce? What will the innovations be? What indispensable services might result? What will being less constrained by costs, time and maintenance mean for businesses and consumers? Major players in the burgeoning world of cloud services will discuss the role of cloud in innovation and how businesses and consumers use technology. “On-Demand Innovation: The Promise of Cloud Computing” is the marquee event for the 2011-12 Britt Technology Impact Series, which is funded by Glenn Britt, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable. The following industry experts met at Tuck to discuss the innovative applications of cloud computing that are taking place right now and what we might see in the future.

Vendor demonstrations were given by Apple,  Axis Communications, Carbonite, Global Relief Technologies, myTUCK and Radian6.*
                                          

Peter Vosshall D’92, VP & Distinguished Engineer, Amazon.com
Peter Vosshall is VP & Distinguished Engineer at Amazon.com and is responsible for providing technical leadership for Amazon Web Services as well as for the company as a whole. Mr. Vosshall has over 20 years of industry experience designing, building, and operating large scale, highly available distributed systems. Since joining Amazon in 1998, he has been a key contributor to Amazon’s overall software architecture and has built a number of core enabling technologies for building services at Amazon, including Dynamo, Amazon’s highly available key-value store. Prior to joining Amazon, Vosshall built scalable and distributed back-ends for collaborative software systems at Apple, 280 Inc, and Infoseek. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Dartmouth College. Follow Peter on Twitter.

Steven Caniano, VP, Hosting & Cloud Services, AT&T Business Solutions
Steve leads AT&T’s global Hosting and Cloud infrastructure business, which represents one of the most strategic areas of our business services portfolio. His responsibilities include investment and product strategy, new product launch management, marketing and
communications, customer satisfaction, and he holds accountability for the growth and profitability of the business. He was appointed to his current position in June, 2006. Steve has led the introduction of on-demand enterprise services as part of a significan transformation of our hosting portfolio into “cloud computing”. He has led the development and launch of AT&T’s “Synaptic” family of services, enabling AT&T to provide virtualized utility and on-demand solutions to its customers. Steve has been instrumental in forging the key partner alliances supporting the offers as well as the scaling of services globally. He regularly collaborates with customers to ensure AT&T is meeting their requirements and to incorporate their insights into our portfolio direction. He frequently represents AT&T in key industry events and analyst forums to position its services and to shape the perceptions of the marketplacearound AT&T’s role in the “enterprise cloud”. Steve resides in New Jersey and holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science and an MBA in Marketing.
Mac Dougherty T’09, CEO & Co-Founder, Cognitive Electronics
Panel Moderator
Mac Dougherty is the CEO and a co-founder of Cognitive Electronics.  Cognitive is a startup building the next generation of Big Data Cloud Computing.  Cognitive’s proprietary co-processors inspired by neuroscience research done at Dartmouth accelerate cloud based MapReduce and other parallel software by 100x compared to commodity hardware.  Cognitive is in the process of building an elastic Cloud Computing service around that hardware.  Mac’s responsibilties run the gamut at Cognitive but he spends a lot of time thinking about the Cloud, particularly as it relates to the Enterprise and to Big Data analytics.  Mac also founded and was CEO of AskOnline (askonline.net) a SaaS business serving the higher education market.  Mac holds a BA from Harvard and an MBA, with distinction, from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he was a Tuck Scholar.
Tom Mills, Global Director, Enterprise Education, Google 
A graduate of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management class of ’96, Tom has spent his career in the technology industry.  After nearly ten years in Boston with a couple smaller firms he joined Google’s Enterprise division in 2005.  Since then Tom has held sales leadership roles covering many Google products including Enterprise Search, Google Maps and Google Apps.  In 2011, Tom took a new role leading Google’s team responsible for bringing Google Apps, Chromebooks and more to the Education market.

William Tworek, Senior Technical Staff Member & Executive IT Architect, Office of the IBM CIO
Bill leads IBM’s cloud security strategy and implementation in support of IBM’s own enterprise adoption of cloud delivery models.  In this role, he balances the unique security challenges that cloud solutions present with IBM’s business direction to aggressively move to cloud.  Prior to his current focus on cloud security, Bill was the IBM CIO Chief Architect for the enterprise’s global hosting and datacenter services, where he was implementing clouds long before the term was coined.  He has over 18 years of experience in the IT industry, with a diverse background that includes technology architecture, IT management and operations, and IT strategy consulting.  Prior to IBM, he worked for Andersen Consulting in Chicago IL, and CAE Link in Binghamton, NY.   Bill resides in rural New Hampshire, is an avid outdoorsman, and holds a BS in Computer Science from Binghamton University.

Tech@Tuck

Watch highlights of the panel discussion.

Steven Caniano, VP of Hosting & Cloud Services at AT&T

Vivek interviews Steve and discovers his opinions on the true value and capability of the cloud.

Tom Mills, Global Director, Enterprise Education, Google

Marco speaks with Tom about serving consumers and enterprises with the cloud.

Mac Dougherty T’09, CEO & Co-Founder, Cognitive Electronics

Geoff and Mac talk about the on-demand benefits of the cloud.

William Tworek, Sr Tech Staff Member, Office of the IBM CIO

Saurabh and William speak about IBM’s cloud efforts and how security relates to the cloud.

Peter Vosshall D’92, VP & Distinguished Engineer, Amazon.com

Manish and Peter talk about amazon’s cloud offerings.

Related Links

• Britt Technology Impact Series
  
  CIOs in the Cloud: Pinning Down Risks and Rewards
• Britt Technology Impact Series
  
  Maps, Spies and Commerce: Elevating Satellite Imagery with Cloud Computing