Amazon, Rackspace join Australia's DC Summit

Chief technologists from both Amazon Web Services and Rackspace are coming to Australia to speak at the Australian Data Centre Strategy Summit on February 11-13 on the Gold Coast.

The Gold Coast, Queensland.

iTnews is proud to announce that Rackspace CTO Nigel Beighton and Amazon Web Services technology evangelist Jeff Barr will both be making keynote presentations.

The full program is available to download [pdf].

Beighton will give an introduction to the OpenStack effort and discuss what early adopters have learned. Rackspace is soon to begin offering IaaS from an Australian data centre and has also announced that – like Facebook – it will build custom computing kit using the Open Compute specification.

Jeff Barr will give a keynote on what entrenched processes organisations might need to re-think to prepare themselves for the cloud era. Amazon Web Services pipped Rackspace at the post with an Australian offering and has set to work on hiring some of the best talent in the local tech industry.

We’re also pleased to announce two more special guests: VMware cloud infrastructure specialist Aaron Steppart will discuss the software company’s vision for the ‘Software-Defined Data Centre’, while National Australia Bank’s data centre specialist Glenn Allan will give a presentation on the careful due diligence every enterprise should go through before building or buying their own facility.

The four new speakers join what is undoubtedly the best line-up of IT infrastructure engineers ever to congregate in Australia.

A limited number of tickets remain on sale.

The final list of speakers and panellists includes:

• Glenn Allan, Data Centre Transformation Manager, National Australia Bank
• Mike Andrea, Director, Strategic Directions
• Adil Attlassy, Vice President, technology, Digital Realty
• Nigel Beighton, CTO, Rackspace
• Greg Boorer, Managing Director, Canberra Data Centres
• Michael Bowolick, Head of Data Centres, IBM Australia New Zealand
• Ellen Broad, Executive Officer at Australian Digital Alliance
• Jens Butler, Analyst, Ovum
• Sean Casey, Broadband Applications Advisor, NBN Co
• Matthew Clark, Director of the Water and Energy Branch, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage
• Doug Coleman, Manager Technology & Standards, Enterprise Network, Corning
• Jon Curry, General Manager, Managed Data Centres, Telstra
• Glenn Gore, Chief Technology Officer, Melbourne IT
• Bob Hayward, CTO, CSC
• Matt Healy, Head of Regulatory and Government Affairs, Macquarie Telecom
• Chris Heffernan, CTO, Global Switch
• Daniel McCabe, Assistant Secretary (Infrastructure Architecture), Department of Defence
• Marco Magarelli, Data Centre Design Engineering Manager, Facebook
• Matthew Maw, CTO, Tatts Group
• Craig Scroggie, CEO, NextDC
• Joseph Smith – Data Centre Facilities Manager, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services.
• Bob Sharon, CEO, Green Global Consulting
• Peter Simon – Senior IT Architect, Emerson Network Power
• Tony Simonsen, Managing Director, Equinix Australia
• Aaron Steppart, Cloud Infrastructure Product Manager, VMware
• Mark Thiele, Executive VP of Data Centre Technology, Switch
• Mark Vincent, Partner, Shelston IP
• Brett Winterford, Editor, iTnews
• Albert Y. Zomaya, School of Information Technologies, University of Sydney