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Speakers and Panels

Christian Koch

Christian Koch

Manager, Core Network Planning & Implementation

Pilot Fiber

Christian Koch

Manager, Core Network Planning & Implementation

Pilot Fiber

Christian currently leads Core Network Planning and Implementation for Pilot Fiber, an Internet Service Provider that provides better internet to businesses in New York City and now Philadelphia.

Passionate about the Internet and bringing people together, he has also served on the Board of Directors for the Open-IX Association, a Non-Profit organization that develops and promotes Interconnection and Datacenter Standards. Over the past 15 years he has held various Strategy and Engineering roles at organizations such as Megaport, Microsoft, Twitter, and QTS Datacenters.

Leading the Curve:

The State of the Regional and National Data Center Market

Steven Finnerty

Steven Finnerty

VP, Sales

zColo, a Zayo company

Ron Guida

Ron Guida

Sales & Business Development, Northeast Region

Equinix

Shawn Kaplan

Shawn Kaplan

Director, Sales - Northeast Region

Equinix

Bob Hicks

Bob Hicks

Senior VP, Strategic Business Operations

TierPoint

Michael Higgins

Michael Higgins

Senior VP, Data center Services

INAP

Allen Skipper

Allen Skipper

VP, Market Expansion

Expedient

John C. Smyth

John C. Smyth

Owner & President

Real Property Solutions

John Diamond
Moderator

John Diamond

VP, Engineering

Evoque Data Center Solutions

Ron Guida

Sales & Business Development, Northeast Region

Equinix

Ron Guida is responsible for delivering day-to-day direct sales and business development. This includes driving new revenue streams with new strategic enterprise and alliance targets across the New York metro region, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

Michael Higgins

Senior VP, Data center Services

INAP

Mike Higgins is responsible for driving INAP’s top line growth through customer acquisition and retention. Mr. Higgins leads INAP COLO’s sales, solutions engineering and client account teams including overseeing the customer experience from initial solution design through onboarding and post-sales account management. He is a seasoned executive with extensive business development, financial analysis, product management and leadership experience in the data center and telecommunications industries. Mr. Higgins most recently served as INAP’s senior vice president of marketing and customer service, where he led marketing activities, communications, public relations, branding and strategic planning. Previously, he held the position of senior vice president of business development, where he drove technical customer solutions and customer retention strategies. In addition, Mr. Higgins also served as INAP’s senior vice president of data center services and was responsible for colocation product management and data center design and engineering. In this role, he led the data center expansion strategy which doubled the size of INAP’s data center footprint across the nation. He joined INAP in January 2004 as vice president of financial planning and analysis. Prior to INAP, Mr. Higgins held numerous leadership roles in business operations, business development and finance over an 18-year career span at MCI, most recently serving as vice president of business operations. Mr. Higgins holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Bridgeport and a B.S. in Accounting from Villanova University.

From Infrastructure to Cloud Deployment:

Bridging the Gap

Justin Day

Justin Day

Director, Data Center & Operations

State of Delaware

dMitri ​DeVos

dMitri ​DeVos

VP

Solutions Engineering, Internap Corporation (INAP)

Donna Jacobs

Donna Jacobs

IT Senior Director, Technology Services

University of Pennsylvania

Kevin Olsavsky

Kevin Olsavsky

Principal

Jacobs

Jeffrey Plank

Jeffrey Plank

President & CEO

Agile Data Sites, LLC

Walt Herring
Moderator

Walt Herring

Senior Telecommunications Engineer

AKF Group

John Solensky

John Solensky

Director, Solutions Engineering - East

Internap Corporation (INAP)

Justin Day

Director, Data Center & Operations

State of Delaware

Justin began his career in public service with the State of Delaware in 1999. He quickly progressed, holding positions in Human Resources, Project Management, and IT Operations Management where he leads the Data Center & Operations Division at the Delaware Department of Technology & Information. In this role, he leads a team of 100 technologists with responsibilities for data center infrastructure, systems programming, computer operations, technical support, desktop and network services.

Prior to his current role, Justin led the Statewide IT Support Center and Data Center Team, which is responsible for delivering IT services to all state agencies and public school districts. While leading the Data Center Team, he proposed and implemented strategies that consolidated the number of state data centers. These initiatives improved efficiency, lowered costs and reduced the environmental footprint by generating fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

As a leader in IT Service Management, Justin greatly expanded services, implementing the State's first 24x7 support center and improving customer satisfaction by recruiting and developing superior talent, building relationships, and leveraging technology. During his tenure with the State, he has been an ardent student of leadership, actively striving to maximize the effectiveness of government. A native Delawarean, Justin was raised in Dover where he served with the Dover Fire Department. He currently resides in Newark with his wife, Steph.

dMitri ​DeVos

VP

Solutions Engineering, Internap Corporation (INAP)

dMitri DeVos is responsible for managing and advancing INAP’s solution engineers and

architects in colocation, cloud and managed services and hosting. Before his promotion to vice

president, Mr. DeVos served as a director of solutions engineering, overseeing teams in the

United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East. He has more than 15 years of experience in

technical operations management, specifically in hosting and SaaS environments.

Prior to joining INAP, dMitri DeVos worked as a director of technology for LiveWire Mobile

where he supervised and strategized the creation, development and launch of a digital music

store and music discovery app.

Donna Jacobs

IT Senior Director, Technology Services

University of Pennsylvania

For more than 10 years, Donna has served as ISC Technology Service’s IT Sr. Director of Infrastructure Operations at the University of Pennsylvania – Data Center Management, Network Operations, Enterprise Automation, and other associated Infrastructure disciplines. She is responsible for leading the ISC Operations’ team and its transition to implement the ITIL methodology into day to day operations, infusing enterprise automation within the Operations environment, and implementation of a Quality Management System. The organization conforms to the ISO 9001:2015 quality standard. In this (and previous) roles, Donna has traditionally been brought in to transform organizations into more efficient, high performance operations. She is also an adjunct faculty member for Wilmington University’s Graduate and Undergraduate Programs in Technology. Professionally, Donna holds Board positions in the AFCOM Midlantic, 7x24 Exchange Delaware Valley, and Liberty Valley Association of Contingency Planners organizations. Donna holds a B.A. from Neumann University and an MBA from Wilmington University.

Kevin Olsavsky

Principal

Jacobs

With over 30 years of professional engineering experience, Kevin is a Principal and Director of Mission

Critical Projects for Jacobs Buildings & Infrastructure, a Fortune 500 global provider of mission critical

facility solutions. A graduate of Penn State University with a degree in Architectural Engineering, for the

last 11 years he has led Jacobs teams in the successful delivery of critical data center projects up to

$1.2B in construction value and 100 MW in total capacity for our clients. In addition to design, he has

provided a variety of services including planning/site selection studies, audits, risk assessments,

construction cost estimating, scheduling and commissioning of systems.

Jeffrey Plank

President & CEO

Agile Data Sites, LLC

Jeff is recognized as a leader in the hosting, colocation and managed services industries. Prior to leading AGILE, Jeff served as EVP and CTO for Directlink, taking the company from startup to a successful data center services provider with responsibilities including managing operations, sales, marketing and overall organizational direction. He brings more than 20 years’ experience to his current role. Jeff held similar roles with Champion Solutions Group as an overlay sales and engineering resource for the IBM Channel for the eastern US, supporting IBM sales teams in qualifying and developing Hosting, Collocation and Managed Services solutions. Prior to that Jeff was a Director of Hosting and Managed Services at AT&T when the industry began to take shape. He was instrumental in developing the data center markets in Secaucus and Ashburn in the late 90’s/ early 2000’s for AT&T, winning large hosting and services contract for enterprise clients as well as Internet startups that have grown into what is eBay today.

John Solensky

Director, Solutions Engineering - East

Internap Corporation (INAP)

John Solensky leads the solution engineering group for INAP’s east region, comprising of

Boston, New York and Atlanta. Mr. Solensky is responsible for solution design pertaining to

INAP’s colocation, cloud, IP and hosting products. He has 18 years of engineering and

management experience in the cloud and data center industries.

In some of his previous roles, Mr. Solensky worked in the financial vertical as solutions engineer

with Savvis and served as director of solutions engineering at Net Access Corporation prior to

its acquisition by Cologix. In addition, he has experience as a solutions architect with a leading

systems integrator in the SLED and higher education space.

Summary

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Event Topics

  • Mergers and Acquisitions
  • Data Center Investment and Capital Markets
  • Infrastructure in a Modern, Agile World 
  • Shift to the Cloud 
  • What End Users Want vs. Settle For 
  • Construction and Design/Engineering Trends and Best Practices
  • Fiber Trends and How Connectivity Affects the Marketplace
  • Cap Ex Vs. Op Ex
  • The Future of IT
  • Location Selection Tactics
  • Data Security
  • Economic and Regulatory Policy
  • Public/Private Collaboration
  • Exploring The Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Big Data
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • New/Upgraded Development Outlook
  • Who's Building, Upgrading, and Expanding
  • Hyperscale Data Center Model Prepares for Larger Capacity Data Centers

Venue

Sheraton Downtown Philadelphia
201 North 17th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103

Ballroom: Liberty Ballroom


Discounted $20 Valet Parking

Agenda

Time Activity
12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Registration Opens | Breakfast & Networking
1:30 PM
2:15 PM
Leading the Curve: The State of the Regional and National Data Center Market
2:15 PM
3:00 PM
From Infrastructure to Cloud Deployment: Bridging the Gap
3:00 PM
3:30 PM
Post-Event Networking