Eric Burgener
Senior Analyst and Consultant, Taneja Group

Eric brings a wealth of cross functional expertise that spans over 20 years in the high tech industry. He advises clients on data protection, archiving, data reduction technologies including deduplication and compression, DPM, and WAFS/WDS. Eric has particular experience with emerging technologies, having worked extensively with high availability computing, heterogeneous replication, storage management and virtualization, and continuous data technologies during the early formative years for these technologies from the vendor side. Eric joins The Taneja Group from Mendocino Software, where he was the Vice President of Marketing. Prior to Mendocino Software, Eric held senior management positions at Topio, Veritas Software, and Dell. He holds a BA degree from Bowdoin College and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley.

Rich Castagna
Editor-in-Chief, Storage magazine

Rich Castagna is the Editor-in-Chief of Storage magazine. Before Storage, Rich was the Executive Editor for CNET’s Tech Update enterprise computing Web site. Prior to Tech Update, he was executive editor of CNET Enterprise, Editor-in-Chief of Windows Systems Magazine, senior editor for CMP's Windows Magazine and Technical Editor for PC Sources, a Ziff Davis publication.

Brian Garrett
Technical Director of ESG Lab, Enterprise Storage Group

Brian Garrett is the Technical Director for ESG Lab providing independent hands-on validation and analysis of emerging technologies and products in the storage, data management and information security industries. Prior to joining ESG, Brian was a founder and CTO of I/O Integrity, a storage startup. During his career, Mr. Garrett has created and managed world-class embedded development, performance measurement and test organizations at companies including EMC, SANgate and Formation. Mr. Garrett holds a degree in pure Mathematics from Rutgers University and has been awarded nine patents.

Howard Goldstein
Founder, Howard Goldstein Associates Inc.

Howard Goldstein has over 30 years of experience in storage, data and telecommunications networking. His background includes positions in technology, management and education with practical technical experience in architecture, design, planning, implementation and operations. His technical focus ranges across various storage network architectures and products including IP storage, iSCSI, SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI, Serial ATA, Fibre Channel, TCP/IP, Gigabit Ethernet, Infiniband, PCI, PCI-X, PCI Express and others. Howard is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association and serves on the SNIA Education Committee. He helped to develop the SNIA Certification Program, as well as other SNIA Education initiatives.

Jeff Harbert
Storage Consultant, GlassHouse Technologies

Jeff Harbert is an Engagement Partner at GlassHouse Technologies.Specializing in Data Protection Strategies, Jeff is responsible for developing solutions to maximize customers’ data recoverability and properly positioning new technologies as they are deployed.Prior to this, he was a consultant for GlassHouse focused on backup services. He brings more than 10 years of backup and storage experience, gained in technical positions at EMC and StorageNetworks. Jeff has spoken at various conferences, including Storage Decisions and Comdex and has been published in Storage magazine.

Bill Peldzus
Director of Storage Architecture, GlassHouse Technologies

Bill Peldzus is Director of Storage Architecture at GlassHouse Technologies, where he is responsible for key client engagements. Prior to GlassHouse, Bill had more than 20 years' experience working in technical positions at Imation Corporation's Storage Professional Services and StorageTek's SAN Operations business group, as well as running multiple IT groups at CNA Insurance and Northern Trust Company. Bill often serves as a content expert in storage and disaster recovery and business continuity presentations, including speaking engagements at Storage Decisions for the past four years.

Mark Peters
Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

Mark is an analyst at ESG, focused on storage systems, as well as on the (re)emerging challenges of power, cooling and space effi ciencies throughout data centers. Mark has over 20 years of experience in IT. Prior to his current role as an ESG analyst, Mark ran his own business consulting on corporate communications, but still focused on the storage and IT worlds. British by birth, and with a Masters degree from Oxford University, he has been based in Colorado since 1997.

W. Curtis Preston
VP of Data Protection Services, GlassHouse Technologies

W. Curtis Preston is Vice President of Data Protection Services at GlassHouse Technologies. Curtis authored Using SANs and NAS, Unix Backup and Recovery and The Storage Security Handbook. Curtis has been designing and implementing data protection systems for over 12 years, and now consults on data protection with end users from Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, as well as vendors around the world. Curtis is also a sought-after speaker for technical and CXO-level audiences. He can speak the languages of business and technology to any level audience, using humor to keep the presentation enjoyable. Curtis speaks at several storage, security and disaster recovery and business continuity oriented industry events including, TechTarget’s Backup School and Preventing Data Theft and Loss Seminars, Storage Decisions for the past four years and Information Security Decisions.

Greg Schulz
Founder and Senior Analyst, StorageIO

Greg Schulz is the Founder and a Senior Analyst for the StorageIO Group as well as author of the book Resilient Storage Networks – Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures. He brings over 25 years experience in UNIX, Windows, IBM Mainframe, OpenVMS and other environments from a clustering, server, applications, capacity planning, DR, networking and storage perspective. Greg brings a rare perspective and insight of having worked in various industries including transportation, energy and financial benefits in IT, as a vendor for storage and storage networking companies working with clients around the world, and as a storage industry analyst. He has written over a thousand articles, papers, tips, reports and other content in addition to his books, research and consulting projects. Greg is a frequent contributor to various TechTarget properties including Storage magazine, SearchStorage.com, SearchSMB.com and SearchStorageChannel.com.

Marc Staimer
CDS, Dragon Slayer Consulting

Marc Staimer is the CDS of Dragon Slayer Consulting in Beaverton, OR. He is widely known as one of the leading storage market analysts in the network storage and storage management industries. His consulting practice of 6+ years provides consulting to the end-user (>200) and vendor (>70) communities. Most of his consulting is in the areas of strategic planning as well as product and market development. Marc's 23 years of marketing, sales and business experience in the storage, software and systems industries, combined with his years of research into the MIS community, give him unique business, systems and market expertise.

Jon Toigo
CEO and Managing Principal, Toigo Partners International, and Chairman of the Data Management Institute

Jon William Toigo is a 20-year IT veteran who has worked both as an operative within corporate information systems departments and as a senior consultant with two international systems integrators. He is also a prolific writer with 15 books and thousands of articles in the technology trade press to his credit. His technology columns in seven popular print and on-line media garner a loyal readership of more than 500,000 per month worldwide. Jon's books include: The Holy Grail of Network Storage Management, Disaster Recovery Planning 3rd Edition: Preparing for the Unthinkable, The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management, and The Essential Guide to ASPs. Forthcoming titles include Making IT Matter (with co-author Randy Chalfant) and The Data Democracy (with co-author Margaret Romao Toigo). In addition to his work in print, Jon provides consulting and analysis services to a broad range of international clients.