Vice President and Managing Director of Hewlett Packard, South Pacific
Paul Brandling is responsible for driving revenue and profitability for HP's Enterprise Business in the South Pacific region as well as overall general management of this subsidiary.

Paul Brandling moved into the role from his previous position as Vice President and Managing Director, Compaq Computer South Pacific with overall responsibility for the region. Brandling brings to the position more than 17 years of experience with HP and 24 years in the IT industry. His experience spans the entire business and includes strategy development, major merger and integration leadership and driving organisational change.

Paul Brandling holds a BSc Hons. (Mechanical Engineering) from Aston University in England and his early career was in the motor industry in Europe.

He is a member of the International CEO Forum (Australia) and a Director of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

Alexander Downer retired from a 24 year political career in politics in 2008. Prior to that he was a highly successful career diplomat.

He was schooled through Geelong Grammar and Radley College in Oxford, has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Politics and Economics and is a Doctor of Civil Laws. He also holds a Doctor of Philosophy from Bar Ilan University.

His early roles included being an Economist to Westpac Bank, an Australian diplomat serving in the Australian Missions to European Union and NATO; and as an Embassy representative in Belgium and Luxembourg.

In 1984, Mr Downer entered politics as the Member for Mayo. He has held several key positions both in Government and Opposition (including Leader of the Opposition) but it was his 11 year role as Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Australia Liberal Government where he truly made his mark.

Mr Downer has been at the forefront of Australian Foreign Policy in some very turbulent and also progressive times. He has orchestrated significant reforms to combat the influence of terror; been instrumental in delivering independence in East Timor; has played a pivotal role in Australia's response to the Middle East conflicts; has been an active participant and diplomatic force on global issues of human rights, climate change, natural disasters and has still found time to represent his local constituency on local, state and federal issues.

Post politics Alexander Downer has accepted a professorial role with Adelaide University, is a principal of his own his own business consultancy and now runs the peace process for the UN Secretary General in Cyprus.

Managing Director and Partner, BKK Partners
Peter Costello practiced as a lawyer for ten years before entering the Australian Parliament where he served over nineteen years. From March 1996 to December 2007 he was Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia, a record term.

During this period he was responsible for foreign investment policy, competition (anti-trust) policy, corporate regulation, superannuation, tax policy and the Federal Budget. He brought down twelve Federal Budgets, eliminated government debt in net terms and established Australia's Future Fund. During his period as Treasurer, Australia's sovereign rating was upgraded twice to its current AAA level.

Mr Costello set up Australia's system of financial regulation with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority established in 1998 and the Financial Services Reform Act of 2001. He introduced Australia's monetary policy targets by agreement with the Reserve Bank of Australia.

For more than a decade Mr Costello was a Governor of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. He was also a member of the Committee of the International Monetary Fund. He has been Chairman of the OECD Ministerial and the APEC Finance Ministers. He was involved in the establishment of the G20 after the Asian Financial Crisis and was Global Chairman of the G20 in 2006.

He is currently a member of the Independent Advisory Board of the World Bank which advises on transparency and anti-corruption measures. In December 2009 he was appointed a Guardian of Australia's Future Fund.

Vice President and Managing Director HP Enterprise Services, South Pacific
David Caspari is vice president for HP Enterprise Services, South Pacific. In this role, David is responsible for business growth in HP's core areas of infrastructure services, business process outsourcing and application solutions across Australia and New Zealand.

David was previously Vice-President for Sales in Technology Solutions Group (Asia-Pacific & Japan) at HP, where he led a team serving customers from the enterprise and public sectors across 14 countries in the region. His responsibilities included driving the growth agenda, initiating and executing strategies to secure market leadership, building on sales capabilities, and developing a team focused on sales excellence.

David joined HP in August 2007 from Cisco Systems where he was a senior member of the Asia Pacific leadership team.

Non executive Director of Telstra and the founding President of the Society for Knowledge Economics (SKE)
Steve Vamos is a non executive Director of Telstra and the founding President of the Society for Knowledge Economics (SKE).

The SKE encourages better practices in the management of human and other intangible resources; and is supported by Microsoft, Westpac, PWC, HP and CPA Australia.

Steve's thirty years experience in the Information Technology and Online media Industry includes having worked with IBM, Apple, ninemsn and Microsoft, in geographies spanning Australia, Asia and the USA.

Chief Financial Officer, Tabcorp
Matt Bekier is the Chief Financial Officer of Tabcorp, Australia’s premier leisure, gambling and entertainment group and one of the biggest gambling companies in the world. .

Matt joined Tabcorp, in early 2006 after holding various roles with McKinsey and Company for 14 years, where he focused on building a substantial practice in both post-merger management and financial services, working across four continents (Australia, Europe, Asia and North America).

At Tabcorp, Matt has responsibility for Corporate Finance, Treasury, Investor Relations, Taxation, Accounting Shared Services and group IT functions. Matt has managed two highly successful equity and debt raisings for the company and helped to reinvigorate the corporate bond market in Australia.

Mr Bekier holds degrees in Economics and Commerce as well as a PhD in Finance from St Gallen University in Switzerland.

Vice President, Chief Information Office, MacDonald’s Australia (panelist in Sydney only)
After graduating from the University of Sydney in 1980 with an Honours Degree in Chemical Engineering, Henry joined the Australian Gas Light Company as a Technical Sales Engineer working with customers on the introduction of Natural Gas into the Sydney Metro Region. He played a key role in the distribution and conversion to natural gas for a number of major Industrial Customers and large Commercial Buildings in the Sydney CBD.

In 1984 Henry took up an opportunity to join Honeywell Ltd as a Systems Application Engineer and worked with Major Industrial customers, such as Australian Newsprint Mills, on Process Control solutions to their plants. In 1990 he was appointed General Division Manager for Protection Services Division, a business unit operating across the six states and two territories of Australia. During this period he grew the customer base to in excess of 35,000 and record profitability was achieved in the business, nationally.

He joined Australian Newsprint Mills in 1996, as National Director for the News Ltd Account. In 1998 ANM was merged with it’s parent company Fletcher Challenge Paper. As part of the merger, Henry was appointed Director for Strategic Planning and IT for the Australasian region. In this role He oversaw a major reorganization of the business and the establishment of major business partnerships to support the region's IT requirements.

After an eleven year career in the manufacturing space, he decided on a vertical market change and joined McDonalds Australasia in May 2007, as VP- Chief Information officer.

Bank of Queensland, Group Executive IT & Operations (panelist in Melbourne only)
Jim Stabback joined the Bank of Queensland in September 2008 as Group Executive – IT & Operations. In this role, he oversees the strategic focus of the Bank’s IT platform and its service delivery, along with the Bank’s important outsourcing relationships with EDS and Fiserv.

Jim has over 20 years experience managing large scale operations, technology and service delivery management in the financial services and telecommunications industries. He has been involved in some of the largest projects in banking telecommunications, as well as having extensive experience in running large back office processing operations and has previously managed the EDS outsourcing relationship for CBA.

South Pacific Regional Presales Manager, HP Enterprise Storage Server and Networking
He is responsible for effective technical sales execution, excellence in the description and display of HP ESSN capabilities and for the development and execution of the role of presales in HP's ESSN business. Paul's role sees him participating in sales consulting, technology and business demonstrations, providing leadership to a large group of HP technical professionals, and designing and developing initiatives to develop HP mindshare in the industry. Paul's background across many roles in the IT industry over the past 27 years includes infrastructure management, database administration, application development and technical management.

Converged Infrastructure Business Development Manager ESSN
Peter's experience, honed through more than 20 years of IT development, project management, sales, marketing and management, enables him to clearly define and dissect core issues for organisations as they transform their IT to an "as- a-service" culture. His experience working with customers in some of Australia's most complex data centres will enable you to see the path to a service based environment more quickly.

Converged Infrastructure Architect ESSN
Ken Albert is a 20 year plus IT veteran with deep experience across all facets of IT infrastructure. With cross industry skills, general purpose, high performance and IT applications credentials, Ken applies his experience today to help organisation transform their current IT silos into service based architectures using HP converged Infrastructure architecture. His experience, gained through deep interactions with some of Australia's marquee companies is invaluable and his ability to describe core benefits is key for organisations trying to make the move.

Technical Marketing – Elastic Data Centre, HP Software & Solutions
Colin Fernandes brings 28 years of global IT experience across several IT management disciplines including business development, product management, product marketing, solution architecture and design; at customers, other IT management vendors and HP.

Colin's current role leverages his experience collaborating with Customers' senior management to underpin solution design and implementations for IT transformation and modernization initiatives covering Converged Infrastructure, private Cloud and Business Service automation using best practices from ITILv3 and HP.

Colin works with some of the largest enterprise organizations including Unicredit, KPN, ING, Rabobank, Shell, British telecom, Colt UK, Ericsson, Nokia.

Strategic Marketing, HP Software & Solutions
Paul Schroeter has been working with HP since 1986 and with the HP Software organisation since 1997. He is responsible for the advocacy of HP Software & Solutions and its cloud initiatives in the Asia-Pacific Japan region. Paul is based in Melbourne, Australia.

Senior Technical Consultant, HP Software and Solutions
Les Pall is a practitioner using HP management software since 1993, and has been with HP since 1999. Les has been a solution architect for management software solutions to various Government agencies, telecoms companies and Finance sector organisations. An ITIL Master, Les is based in Sydney, Australia and works with organisations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the IT service delivery.

Regional Chief Technology Officer, Enterprise Services, HP Asia Pacific & Japan
Michael Conlin is the Regional Chief Technology Officer for HP Enterprises, Applications Services Field Operations APJ. Michael is accountable for Technical Governance, technical leadership; sponsoring and driving all technical initiatives; supporting growth; providing Architects to accounts; fire fighting; participating in Global technology Forums. Michael is also the Regional Thought Leader on Applications Modernisation. Michael Conlin is a leading IT strategist with a track record of building and leading service businesses in more than 20 countries.

Green Practice Leader HP Enterprise Services Asia Pacific & Japan
Sundeep Khisty is the Green Practice Leader HP Enterprise Services Asia Pacific Japan. In this role, Sundeep is responsible for developing the organisation's ‘Green IT' service offerings, overall go-to-market strategy and consultancy of this comprehensive portfolio across the region. He is a regular speaker in various government agencies in China, Korea, Australia, Japan, India and Singapore on this topic showing HP's Thought Leadership.

Sundeep has over 22+ years of experience within the IT industry, having undertaken a range of roles across business process outsourcing in BPO organisation, applications services in the leveraged centre (Solution Centre) and information technology outsourcing in the Infrastructure management organisation.

AMOD and SOA Practice Leader, HP Enterprise Services Asia Pacific and Japan
Florian Generalao is the Practice Leader for Applications Modernisation and SOA in HP ES Application Services for APJ. In her current role, Florian closely collaborates with HP marketing, sales, solution and delivery teams for the development and deployment of the Applications Modernisation capability in APJ. She also leads customer Portfolio Assessment engagements and provides oversight to AMOD projects. Florian brings more than 25 years of expertise delivering application transformation projects, undertaking consultative IT Portfolio assessments and developing IT architectures and solutions. Florian is also a certified Master IT architect, a certified TOGAF practitioner and an HP Distinguished Systems Engineer.

CTO - Application Modernization & SOA & Integration Application Services Practice HP Enterprise Services
Luc Vogeleer is currently the Chief Technologist for the SOA & application modernization practice in HP Enterprise Services for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) region. In his current role, he works closely with the customers teams to support customer projects, providing competence in related technologies, services and solutions and oversee the development of new services capabilities and solutions to support those engagements. Luc started his career in Digital Equipment Belgium in 1980 as software engineer. He joined Hewlett Packard in 2000, were he occupied various positions both at European and worldwide level, including Global Portfolio Manager for Microsoft technologies and European SOA practice and SOA Competency Center manager.