Zones Welcome & Keynote

Conceptualizing AI-first organizations: Transforming the IT infrastructure
Just as a strong foundation is crucial for a house, a business-aligned IT infrastructure is essential for organizations to function effectively and reap the rewards of emerging technologies. Despite the buzz around AI and generative AI and the aspirations of widespread adoption, many organizations find themselves stuck in pilot project purgatory, with legacy IT infrastructure acting as a roadblock.

Embracing an AI-first strategy is key to unlocking growth and gaining a competitive advantage in today’s world and a holistic approach, encompassing data, technology, people, and governance, is essential for organizational success.

Join us in this Keynote Panel Discussion as we discuss: 

• Beyond the hype and speculation, to what extent are enterprises truly embracing AI and generative AI?
• Why is IT infrastructure modernization necessary for conceptualizing AI-first organizations?
• How can AI and generative AI enhance and optimize IT infrastructure services?
• Top strategies for conceptualizing an AI-first organization.
  
  

Zones Presenters

Saad Ayub
Chief Digital Information Officer,
Zones, LLC


Saad Ayub was named Chief Digital and Innovation Officer (CDIO) in January 2022. In this role, he is responsible for managing the digital transformation organization and Global IT. Saad leads the overall digital strategy to develop new innovative products and enable the enterprise-wide transformation of Zones' business model.

Saad has a long track record of leveraging digital and emerging technologies to transform organizations, formulate new business models, and facilitate enterprise growth. Prior to joining Zones, he served as the Global CIO at Scholastic and as Divisional CIO at Aetna and The Hartford. He also worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, where he advised clients on technology strategy and IT transformation. Earlier in his career, Saad was a research scientist, and product developer focused on Artificial Intelligence at GE Corporate Research & Development and GTE Labs.

Saad has been named one of the Premier 100 IT Leaders by Computerworld magazine and has spoken at various conferences on IT leadership. He completed both his Ph.D. in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) and his MBA from RPI in Troy, NY, and graduated with a BSc in Computer Engineering from METU in Ankara, Turkey. 

Jeff Andrew
SVP, Chief Delivery Officer,
Zones, LLC


Jeff Andrew was named Senior Vice President and Chief Delivery Officer in March 2022 to lead our IT Services Delivery business. Jeff is a tech-savvy industry veteran and global executive who brings a steady hand and a builde’s mentality. His knowledge and skills include all areas of service delivery in various industries, including retail, banking, healthcare, technology, and manufacturing.

Prior to joining Zones, Jeff held executive leadership positions at Pomeroy Technologies, CompuCom, VizTech (formerly Tech Force), and CSC (now DXC Technology). His extensive cross-functional IT leadership experience is integral to driving Zones’ service delivery practices to benefit our customers. After earning an associate degree in IT programming, Jeff graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in Business Management.

Industry Analyst

Yugal Joshi
Partner at Everest Group


Yugal Joshi is Everest Group’s business leader for technology services research and advisory memberships, which include multiple programs such as applications, cloud services, digital, and platforms. In this role, he is responsible for shaping and growing these programs by leading a team of analysts serving client engagements and published research. Yugal has helped leading buyers and providers of technology solutions and services in technology adoption strategy, assessment of key market trends, go-to-market strategy, competitive insights, market positioning, and expected future roadmap.

Before joining Everest Group, Yugal worked as an equity research lead, driving software and services research, leading a 12-member cross-industry analyst team. He was responsible for creating, managing, and delivering the research agenda, selling research to institutional investor clients, and guiding corporate strategy and sales teams. Earlier in his career, he worked with leading software and services companies such as Adobe Systems and Tata Consultancy Services.

The Best AI PC is a Mac

Join Apple and Zones experts as they discover why Mac stands out as the best AI PC. We'll delve into the unparalleled advantages Mac offers for processing AI workflows.

Zones Presenter:

Heidi Haughee
Sr. Alliance Marketing Manager,
Zones, LLC

Evan Hale
Solution Architect,
Zones, LLC

Partner:
Apple

Matt Humphries
Enterprise Trainer,
Apple

Streamlining the Digital Workplace with Copilot for Microsoft 365

In this session, the speakers are going to cover focus areas around CoPilot for M365, and how security, compliance, and governance come together to form a bigger part of the story around AI, in today’s workplace.

Zones Presenter:

Daniel Kristek
Solutions Architect, Zones, LLC


Daniel has been in the IT industry for more than a decade. He has competency in several key areas, including network administration. During his time with Zones, Daniel performed as a member of our Help Desk team and as a project engineer.

Daniel’s specialty is in the backup disaster recovery (DR) field. Prior to Zones, Daniel worked as a Backup Disaster Recovery (DR) Specialist at Network Management Group, where he successfully created and deployed continuous backup solutions. Daniel used his expertise to build the Backup DR department from the ground up and secure monthly recurring revenue to sustain profitable business growth year over year. 

Partner:
Microsoft

Robert Gates
Principal Cloud Solutions Architect,
Microsoft


Robert Gates is a Principal Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft where he is a Microsoft Cloud Expert currently focused on Microsoft Copilot and Generative AI. Over the decades Robert's focus has been helping organizations transform their business using a wide range of Microsoft technologies. 

Implementation and Adoption of the Modern PC

Join this session to learn about the benefits of Modern Device management (MDM) and how Zones can help you improve, audit, or manage your platform. Learn about Lenovo’s new AI PCs. We will have an expert from Lenovo provide an overview of how Lenovo devices can improve your employee’s experience.

Zones Presenter:

Rhonda Bednar
Solutions Architect,
Zones, LLC


Rhonda Bednar is a Public Sector Solutions Architect at Zones. Her primary areas of expertise are solutions and offer development for Digital Workplace, Devices as a Service, Lifecycles Services, and Field Deployments. Rhonda has over 15 years of experience listening to customers to understand their challenges and working collaboratively to identify the process changes and services required to meet business needs. 

Partner:
Lenovo

Pooja Sathe
Director and Category Leader,
Worldwide ThinkPad AI PC,
Lenovo

Enhance Employee Experience with Zones Digital Workplace Services

In this session, the spotlight will be on modern device management and how Jamf can help facilitate trusted access, security, and compliance tools, all while unlocking critical business applications across all devices in the present-day workplace.

Zones Presenters:

Heidi Haughee
Sr. Alliance Marketing Manager,
Zones, LLC

Evan Hale
Solution Architect,
Zones, LLC

Partner:
Jamf

Michael Covington
Vice President, Portfolio Strategy,
Jamf

Using Data Analytics to Drive Application Modernization with AI

Join our speakers as they delve into the rapidly evolving landscape of technological advancements and their profound impact on their clients. From the transformative potential of artificial intelligence to the strategic use of data analytics, this exploration highlights the boundless possibilities for modernizing legacy systems and optimizing business processes. As we navigate the challenges and opportunities of these innovations, it becomes clear that our future is shaped not just by technology itself, but by how we choose to harness it. By fostering a culture of ethical innovation and inclusivity, we can ensure that these advancements serve to enhance the human experience and drive us toward a more sustainable and equitable world. This journey into modernization is not merely about upgrading systems, but about actively participating in the creation of a better future for all through technological innovation.

Zones Presenters:

Don Bilbrey
Director, Cloud Solutions,
Zones, LLC

As a cloud service director, Don oversees the development of cloud services, manages a team of solutions architects, and drives pre-sales strategies at Zones, LLC.

Oscar Pineda
Solutions Architect,
Zones, LLC

Oscar, a seasoned Cloud Solutions Architect, specializes in Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and DevOps methodologies. In the spring of 2022, he became a valuable addition to the Zones Center of Excellence team. Prior to his tenure at Zones, Oscar dedicated several years to perfecting his craft at various SaaS organizations, where he excelled in a post-sales engineering capacity. With a passion for cloud technologies that date back to 2014, Oscar has consistently been at the forefront of cloud services innovation.

Partner:
IBM

Vito Foderaro
Strategic Partner Recruit
Leader Data & AI, IBM

In his role, Vito is responsible for recruiting and activating strategic Business Partners into the IBM Partner Ecosystem, specifically in the Data & AI solutions. The mission is to create an exceptional revenue and growth opportunity, encompassing all routes to markets and all Sales motions.

Mitigating Business Risk in IoT Infrastructure

This presentation explores the critical importance of ensuring profitable and secure IoT investments in today's rapidly evolving technological landscape. From addressing common risks such as financial, technical, strategic, and security challenges, to presenting effective mitigation strategies, this session highlights the essential steps businesses must take to maximize their IoT ROI. Real-world case studies will illustrate the practical application of these strategies, providing valuable insights into successful IoT deployments. As we navigate the complexities of IoT investments, it becomes clear that a proactive approach to risk management is vital. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement and strategic alignment, businesses can harness the transformative power of IoT technologies to drive sustainable growth and innovation. Join us as we not only predict the future of IoT but actively participate in shaping a secure and profitable digital future for all.

Zones Presenters:

Don Bilbrey
Director, Cloud Solutions,
Zones, LLC

As a cloud service director, Don oversees the development of cloud services, manages a team of solutions architects, and drives pre-sales strategies at Zones, LLC.

Oscar Pineda
Solutions Architect,
Zones, LLC

Oscar, a seasoned Cloud Solutions Architect, specializes in Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and DevOps methodologies. In the spring of 2022, he became a valuable addition to the Zones Center of Excellence team. Prior to his tenure at Zones, Oscar dedicated several years to perfecting his craft at various SaaS organizations, where he excelled in a post-sales engineering capacity. With a passion for cloud technologies that date back to 2014, Oscar has consistently been at the forefront of cloud services innovation.

Navigating Cloud Economics: Strategies for Optimizing Costs in Multi-Cloud Environments with Managed Services

In this session, our speakers will dive into practices around cloud advisory & optimization, and how AWS positions FinOps within each unique organizational context, particularly with the advent of the public cloud.

Presented by Zones and CloudLogic, in partnership with AWS:

Steve Merrill
VP Managed Services,
Zones, LLC

Steve Merrill is an IT & Services Executive who possesses experience developing and leading Information Technology and IT Services based organizations. Throughout his career, he has held responsibilities for delivering end-user innovation, cost efficiencies, and delivery excellence. Steve has a positive reputation for developing strong business relations with proven accomplishments in financial management, and operational efficiencies while delivering business outcomes through a positive customer experience. Prior to joining Zones, Steve spent 25 years with Dell Technologies / NTTData Services in various senior leadership positions implementing end-to-end Digital Workplace Services and improving operational efficiencies through automation and margin optimization. Prior to joining Dell Technologies, Steve served with America West Airlines in a variety of leadership positions including support for network engineering and design, America West’s Frequent Flyer program, and IT leadership responsibility for The Leisure Company’s applications and systems infrastructure.

Ashok Ganguli
Solution Director, Cloud, and Data Center,
Zones, LLC

Ashok Ganguli leads the Solution Architecture team at Zones for Cloud & Data Center practice. driving services pursuit. He brings with him a wealth of experience in core IT infrastructure services solution across Cloud & Infrastructure. He is very adept in deal shaping and pursuits, with a proven track record of driving innovative solutions and fostering collaboration across teams. A seasoned IT leader with 22+ years of experience of which the majority was with Wipro, Cognizant, and AWS, the most recent being Cognizant.

Ashok plays a pivotal role in Zones strategic objective of services selling, leading our solutions charter aligned to our WIGS and delivering solutions to win.  His previous roles have enabled him to align with industry segments of BFS, Retail, CG, Travel & Hospitality, and Public Sector. Previously, he was with Cognizant, where he was responsible for the US East, Canada, and some of US West portfolio for Cognizant Cloud Infrastructure Services business for Retail, Consumer Goods, Travel, and Hospitality vertical which comprised of 90M revenue base. During this period, he has shaped and closed key multimillion pursuits with enterprises like McCormick, TJX, Loblaw, Albertsons, and McDonalds.

Etienne Gadient
Founder, Cloud Strategy Consultant, Practice Leader, FinOps | Cloud Transformation,
CloudLogic

Etienne Gadient is a technologist in IT strategy, cloud services, and hybrid IT service disciplines. He is one of the founders of CloudLogic and is responsible for Cloud Strategy, Enablement, and Optimization Portfolio for CloudLogic.  Mr. Gadient developed Intellectual Property (IP) specific to Hybrid Data Center infrastructure, FinOps, cloud services, application placement, and IT strategy.  He is certified in two different public cloud platforms and FinOps.

During his engagement with a previous consulting firm, he was responsible for growing and leading a successful IT and Cloud strategy practice that was the recipient of Forbes “Best Management Consulting Firms” award for 3 straight years, a prestigious award that measures both consulting service capability and quality, as reported by the firm’s customers.

He is a thought leader in fully integrated public and private cloud Infrastructure as a Service, public cloud marketplace, data pipelines, big data, and promoting hybrid cloud adoption by supported business units. He successfully developed, proposed, won, and delivered a large professional services program developing a fully integrated cloud enterprise architecture for a top five national US bank supporting a complex cloud services delivery model capable of delivering true active/active services & end to end automation and tooling in a data center design that could scale to 150,000 workloads, across 14 technology domains.  His personal technology discipline developed from network transport into enterprise & infrastructure architecture.

Prior to the last 8 years of consulting, Mr. Gadient helped to build and grow two different managed services companies; the first operated in the US and focused on delivering network, security, systems, and application services. Through that model, he developed methods to associate manufacturing methodologies such as Lean Six Sigma in delivering IT services.  His second managed services company delivered complex IT services for US multinational companies operating throughout Latin America with Mr. Gadient as their CTO.

Navigating the Hybrid Cloud: Strategies and Best Practices for Seamless Migration

In this session, our speakers will talk about why multi-cloud practices are so critical for customers today, emphasizing on the APEX framework, presented by Dell. Watch out for details around lowering TCO in the public cloud, and bringing the cloud experience on-prem.

Zones Presenter:

Robert Laureno
Solutions Architect,
Zones, LLC

Robert is a technical presales and solutions architect of data center compute, storage, virtualization, data protection, and disaster recovery IT solutions at Zones, LLC.

Partner:
Dell Technologies

David Lombardi
Partner APEX and Multicloud Specialist
– Global Strategy, Dell Technologies

With over 14 years of experience at Dell Technologies, David has held various regional and global roles in Sales and Pre-sales, focusing on the Dell portfolio. Currently, he works within the Global Data Center Channel team, leading the strategy for the Partner APEX and Multicloud Specialty organization. His team’s mission is to ensure Dell’s partners are fully engaged, enabled, and empowered on Dell’s APEX Multicloud and As-A-Service strategy.

See, understand, and improve your digital value chain – Addressing the digital experience visibility challenge

Cisco ThousandEyes is a comprehensive network intelligence platform designed to provide visibility into digital experiences across the entire network ecosystem. This presentation will explore how ThousandEyes leverages advanced monitoring, synthetic testing, and real-time analytics to diagnose and resolve network issues, ensuring optimal performance for end-users. Attendees will gain insights into the platform’s capabilities for monitoring AWS cloud services, application delivery for hybrid employees, Meraki MX integration, and network infrastructure. By understanding the powerful features of ThousandEyes, organizations can enhance their network reliability and user experience.

Zones Presenter:

Lawrence Van Deusen
Global Vice President of Networking,
Zones, LLC


Lawrence has over 25 years of experience in leading teams, developing go-to-market strategies, and designing, implementing, and supporting enterprise business solutions in a variety of IT computing environments. 

Extensive experience transforming customer’s business challenges into technical solutions through the development and sales of infrastructure, network, and workplace service solutions. Demonstrated success in improving security infrastructure with proven success in developing effective disaster recovery solutions aimed at ensuring seamless business-critical functions. Adept at conveying complex technical information and creating novel solutions to build consensus with key project stakeholders, including top leadership and key stakeholders. 

Partner:
Cisco

Alfonso Valencia
Partner Account Manager,
ThousandEyes, Cisco

Barney Norton
Senior Solutions Architect,
ThousandEyes, Cisco

Leveraging AI and Automation in Next-Gen Network Operations Center

In the presentation on accelerating managed services with AI and automation, AIOps is introduced as a key technology that enhances IT operations through advanced analytics and machine learning. The discussion highlights the benefits, such as improved efficiency, reduced downtime, and proactive issue resolution. Various use cases are explored, showcasing the practical applications of AIOps in real-world scenarios. Additionally, an example is provided on how Zones is leveraging automation with its nterprise platform to streamline processes and enhance service delivery.

Zones Presenter:

Lawrence Van Deusen
Global Vice President of Networking,
Zones, LLC


Lawrence has over 25 years of experience in leading teams, developing go-to-market strategies and designing, implementing, and supporting enterprise business solutions in a variety of IT computing environments. 

Extensive experience transforming customer’s business challenges into technical solutions through the development and sales of infrastructure, network, and workplace service solutions. Demonstrated success in improving security infrastructure with proven success in developing effective disaster recovery solutions aimed at ensuring seamless business-critical functions. Adept at conveying complex technical information and creating novel solutions to build consensus with key project stakeholders, including top leadership and key stakeholders. 

IAM the New Security Perimeter – A foundational component for ZTA

In this session, the speakers will touch upon key points around building a robust security posture with a framework like Zero Trust, ensuring data integrity remains top of mind. Join to learn more about identity access management, from a data governance perspective with Microsoft Purview.

Presented by Zones and Microsoft

Daniel Kristek
Solutions Architect,
Zones, LLC


Daniel has been in the IT industry for more than a decade. He has competency in several key areas, including network administration. During his time with Zones, Daniel performed as a member of our Help Desk team and as a project engineer.

Daniel’s specialty is in the backup disaster recovery (DR) field. Prior to Zones, Daniel worked as a Backup Disaster Recovery (DR) Specialist at Network Management Group, where he successfully created and deployed continuous backup solutions. Daniel used his expertise to build the Backup DR department from the ground up and secure monthly recurring revenue to sustain profitable business growth year over year. 

Davis Branscome
Global Partner Solutions – Security Architect,
Microsoft


David works as a cloud security architect at Microsoft, helping Microsoft partners learn and deploy the latest Microsoft security technologies in Microsoft 365 and Azure. 

David is a technical certification junkie and holds numerous certifications, including CISSP, GCWN, GCED, GCDA, GMOB, GCIH, GISP, GSEC, GSOC, GCFA, GDAT, GCPN, GCFR, AWS Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Architect and a bunch of Microsoft certifications.

NIST CSF 2.0: Security Governance Compliance & Training

The NIST Common Security framework provides a voluntary, risk-based approach to help organizations reduce cybersecurity risks. The CSF focuses on six key functions: Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover. Each function uses clear, outcome-based language without extensive technical detail, making it easier for organizations to understand cyber risks and improve their defenses. In this session, the speaker will discuss how NIST CSF 2.0 can help your organization, and talk about the tools and services that exist to help you implement NIST CSF 2.0 in your corporation.

Zones Presenter:

Erik Haberkamp
Principal Solutions Architect,
Zones, LLC

Security Operations Expert. Extensive leadership as well as hands-on experience measuring, assessing, designing, implementing, improving, and managing Information Security Operations organizations. Well-versed in ensuring prioritized business goals are met within budget requirements, solutions are designed for longevity as well as cost-effectiveness, and staff retention, acquisition, and professional development for current and future need is well planned. Consulting experience working with hundreds of organizations, of all sizes and across major vertical markets, using well-documented industry best practices and methodologies.