Open Source Cloud Infrastructure

Jesse Robbins is Cofounder & Chief Community Officer of Opscode, the leader in Cloud Infrastructure Automation, and served as the company’s founding CEO. Robbins is a widely recognized expert in Infrastructure, Web Operations, and Emergency Management.

Opscode makes Chef , the powerful open source tool used by tens of thousands of developers & systems administrators to automate, manage and scale infrastructure of any size and complexity.

Robbins served as founding chair of the Velocity Web Performance & Operations Conference and contributes to the O’Reilly Radar . Prior to co-founding Opscode, he worked at Amazon.com with a title of “Master of Disaster” where he was responsible for Website Availability for every property bearing the Amazon brand.

Robbins is a volunteer Firefighter/EMT and Emergency Manager, and led a task force deployed in Operation Hurricane Katrina. His experiences in the fire service profoundly influence his efforts in technology, and he strives to distill his knowledge from these two worlds and apply it in service of both.

• Web site

Dr. Rich Wolski is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Eucalyptus Systems Inc., and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Having received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Davis (while a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) he has also held positions at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Tennessee. He is currently also a strategic advisor to the San Diego Supercomputer Center and an adjunct faculty member at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Rich has led several national scale research efforts in the area of high-performance distributed computing and grid computing, is the author of numerous research articles concerning the empirical study of distributed systems, and is the progenitor of the Eucalyptus project.

• Web site

Simon Wardley, based in the UK, is a Researcher for CSC’s Leading Edge Forum, a global research and advisory programme that explores new thinking and develops next practice roadmaps that address the major challenges at the intersection of business, IT and management. Simon’s focus is on the intersection of IT strategy and new technologies, and his current research project is entitled Competing in an Open World. Simon has also recently covered topics including Learning from Web 2.0 and A Lifecycle Approach to Cloud Computing.

Simon has spent the last 15 years defining future IT strategies for companies in the FMCG, Retail and IT industries. From Canon’s early leadership in the cloud computing space in 2005, to Ubuntu’s recent dominance as the No 1 Cloud operating system. He is a passionate advocate and researcher in the fields of open source, commoditization, innovation, organizational structure and cybernetics.

As a geneticist with a love of mathematics and a fascination in economics, Simon has always found himself dealing with complex systems, whether it’s in behavioural patterns, environmental risks of chemical pollution, developing novel computer systems or managing companies. He is a passionate advocate and researcher in the fields of open source, commoditization, innovation, organizational structure and cybernetics.

Simon is a regular presenter at conferences worldwide, and was voted as one of the UK’s top 50 most influential people in IT in ComputerWeekly’s 2011 poll.

• Web site

John Willis has worked in the IT management industry for more than 30 years. Prior to joining Enstratius, Willis was the VP of Solutions for DTO Solutions where he led the transition to a new suite of automated infrastructure and DevOps solutions. Prior to DTO Solutions. Willis was the VP of Training & Services at Opscode where he formalized the training, evangelism, and professional services functions at the firm. Willis also founded Gulf Breeze Software, an award winning IBM business partner, which specializes in deploying Tivoli technology for the enterprise. Willis has authored six IBM Redbooks for IBM on enterprise systems management and was the founder and chief architect at Chain Bridge Systems.

• Web site