Zones Executive Panel

Adapt and Thrive With Services-Led Digital Transformation

The pace of change has accelerated over the past two years, making remote and hybrid work the new norm. Every organization is faced with more complex digital transformation journeys than ever before. Join Kim Chau, Vice President and General Manager of Marketing at Zones, for our opening keynote. Zones President and Chief Operating Officer Derrek Hallock will moderate a panel discussion with Zones executives Deepak Purohit, and Quentin Gayles about what it means to adapt and thrive in a hybrid work environment. The panel will discuss the benefits of using a services-led approach to digital transformation, identifying growth opportunities with cloud consumption, and operationalizing return to work strategies.

Derrek Hallock

President and Chief Operating Officer, Zones

Derrek Hallock was named President in 2020 and has held the Chief Operating Officer role at Zones since 2017. In this role, Derrek leads the company's Partner and Product Management (PPM), Services and Solutions Sales (including pre-sales technical support), Marketing, Operations, and Supply Chain, along with Logistics, Integration, Technology Solution Centers, and Service Delivery divisions. Since taking over as President, Derrek has driven innovation and collaboration across the company's partner ecosystem, increased operational and supply chain efficiency, optimized costs, elevated the Zones brand, and strengthened global service delivery for Zones' clients. Under his leadership, Zones has transformed into a truly global IT solutions provider dedicated to leading the industry in customer experience and client satisfaction.

Derrek leverages broad industry experience gained at SED International, Tech Data, and CompuCom Systems, where he led a progression of sales management, strategic marketing, and global supply chain organizations. He graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Supply Chain Management. He went on to earn his Executive Master of Business Administration from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

Kim Chau

VP & GM Marketing, Zones

Kim is the Vice President and General Manager of Marketing at Zones, LLC. As head of marketing, she is responsible for driving Zones' overall marketing strategy to develop the brand, generate demand for Zones' solutions, and collaborate with ecosystem partners to grow the pipeline and contribute to sales. She comes to Zones with over 20 years of scaling business, leading high-performance global teams, driving revenue growth, and delivering on technology adoption across channels and nascent markets.

Before joining Zones, Kim served as Senior Director for Sierra Wireless, Vice President for PCS, and Director for Microsoft, AT&T, and Ericsson. Her results included brand development, product marketing, channel partner management, and go-to-market (GTM) across B2B in the IT industry. She launched global product lines across NA/LATAM, EMEA, China, and APAC. Managed multimillion budget and international teams. Received industry recognition for MD&M Most Innovative Award and Spark Design Semi-Finalist.

She is passionate about building a brand and developing marketing programs leveraging a myriad of marketing strategies to drive execution excellence. Kim holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from Texas A&M University, a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from California Southern University, and a Master Certification in marketing strategy for executives from Cornell University. She is also a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) candidate.

Deepak Purohit

VP & GM Solutions, Zones

Deepak Purohit was named VP and GM of Solutions and Services at Zones in October 2019. Purohit plays a strategic role in the services organization, where he focuses on leveraging Zones’ supply chain strengths to transform service delivery. Leading a team of highly talented architects, Purohit provides executive support for strategy and execution to streamline Zones’ solution offerings and simplify customer service, working with top OEM partners. His background is deeply rooted in solutions, with a special focus on large global business transformation and service transformation.

Prior to joining Zones, Purohit served as SVP for Strategic Engagements at Birlasoft, a consulting services firm working with Fortune 500 clients. Previously, he held several consulting positions in the IT industry, including Head of Enterprise Solutions Practice at Infosys. Purohit holds an MBA from XLRI, India and a BE in Production Engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy, India.

Quentin Gayles

VP, National Solutions Sales, Zones

As Vice President of National Solutions Sales, Quentin’s primary focus is enabling client success. In leading the U.S. Field Sales organization, Quentin is responsible for executing company strategy, recruit top sales and management talent, provide cross-functional leadership and foster executive collaboration with OEMs and Partners.

Quentin is a practiced sales leader with demonstrated ability to earn client trusted adviser status through reliable delivery of technology and business solutions to satisfy quantifiable business outcomes. Able to combine innovative sales, business, and technical acumen to overachieve large sales quotas as an individual contributor and leader. Recognized top talent, adept at strategic thinking and planning to efficiently position broad product, solution and service portfolios to global organizations.

Optimizing Mac in Today's IT Ecosystem

As many companies return to growth and look at the future of work, Apple is well-positioned to provide the best technology for you, regardless of where your employees call the office. Apple’s Mac lineup features the M1 chip, which offers power, performance, and all-day battery life in a device that is easy to deploy and secure right out of the box. Your users will see productivity benefits from a familiar operating system, support for modern business and collaboration apps, and compatibility with the iOS applications they love. That’s not all – the best tech deserves the best support, and that’s something Zones can offer. We provide wide-ranging services to simplify the adoption and integration of Apple products into your company’s environment, including those powered by the M1. Please join us and learn how to optimize Mac within your organization.

Presented by Apple

Josh McLaughlin
Solutions Architect II, Zones

Josh McLaughlin is a Digital Transformation Solutions Architect at Zones with more than 10 years of experience modernizing workplace operations in Retail, Utility, Hospitality, and Commercial business units.

Maximize User Productivity with Better IT Workflows

Together, Zones and Jamf help organizations succeed with Apple. By enabling IT to empower end users, we bring the legendary Apple experience to businesses as well as education, healthcare and government organizations. During this session, we will explore and demonstrate how to efficiently manage the Apple ecosystem to reduce time to deployment, minimize support costs, and realize ROI for Apple devices.  We’ll also introduce Jamf managed services provided by Zones and the value we offer managing Jamf on your behalf.  

Presented by Zones and Jamf

Dustin Dembrosky

Chief Architect - Mobility, Office of the CTO, Zones

Dustin Dembrosky is the Chief Architect for Mobility in the Office of the CTO. He has been with Zones for over 10 years. As a Chief Architect, he is responsible for leading Zones' Mobility strategy in an ever-changing technology centric workplace. Dustin has been integral in architecting the biggest Apple enterprise deployments at Zones and is key to providing the right leadership to ensure success. 

How to Protect Your Most Valuable Resource: Data

The work that goes into data center transformation looks dramatically different today than it did even a year ago. Everything used to be on-premises – the question was how to outfit your office with the best possible infrastructure to store and manage data. Now, people are remote or hybrid, and their data lives in entirely different places that are usually outside the office – including platforms such as Microsoft 365. This raises a key question: How should you handle data backup and recovery when you’re working with an entirely new infrastructure? During this session, we will discuss Microsoft Cloud Managed Services, including Microsoft CSP, CSP+, and Zones Backup as a Service (BaaS), and show you the cloud management benefits that Zones can offer.

Presented by Zones and Microsoft

Daniel Kristek

Solution Engineer II, DR Specialist, Zones

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

Josh Kuser

Senior Solution Engineer, Zones

Josh is a highly motivated and ambitious Microsoft Azure Solution Engineer with a focus on Azure architecture and security. He is a U.S. Army veteran with a deep understanding of service and a proven ability to overcome unique and complex challenges. His background and experience in infrastructure, operations, messaging, and Azure technical solutions position him to provide robust solutions to any client that's looking to modernize their system architecture. Josh has a passion for collaboration and problem-solving, as well as a great deal of Azure cloud experience spanning migration, computing, networking, storage, and security.

Harvest More Value for Your Business Through Cloud Migration

What are the unique success metrics for cloud solutions in your organization? Are you aiming to decrease costs and boost capacity by transitioning to next-generation storage? To increase productivity, accountability, or quality by converting your data? Whatever your metrics are, you can count on our solutions to get your organization up and about in the cloud. Zones provides a range of services to complement the Azure, Oracle Cloud, and AWS solutions we deploy. During this session, we will discuss how to harvest more value for your business with Zones' Cloud Migration & Implementation services, including architecting your cloud environment, migrating your identified workloads, and testing your cloud solutions.

Presented by Zones and Microsoft

Martin Rosales

Solutions Architect, Zones

Martin comes to Zones with over 20 years of experience analyzing and supporting computers and networks in the information systems, data center, and managed services spaces. He has held senior positions with Freestone Capital Management, Flexcar, Boeing, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and MindTree. In these roles, Martin developed and supported secure models with a range of Windows operating systems, and he implemented databases and SQL management systems. As a Solutions Architect at Zones, Martin creates and delivers solutions tied to business growth, organizational development, and systems and network optimization. He is highly skilled at troubleshooting and identifying problems as well as managing complex projects and teams in a range of IT environments.

Plan, Build, and Operate a Better Hybrid IT Environment

The pace of change has accelerated over the past two years, making remote and hybrid work the new norm, and creating a surge in home internet use. As companies move toward a digital future, it places enormous strain on their IT teams, which are now responsible for infrastructure, networking, and services they do not own or control – yet the quality of this IT still impacts employee productivity and customer experience. Cisco’s strength in network and application performance allows you to monitor key factors that influence how office or remote/home users experience business-critical resources and identify the root cause of any degradation in minutes. Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki delivers end-to-end visibility through advanced analytics with machine learning and smart path selection to assure experience for business-critical applications no matter where they are hosted—SaaS, IaaS, or the data center.  Now’s a great time to learn how you can leverage these tools from Cisco – and services from Zones – and understand how to plan, build, and operate a better hybrid IT environment. 

Presented by Zones and Cisco

Young Brown

Solutions Architect, Zones

Simplifying How You Consume and Deliver IT Services

Today’s fast-moving business environment drives the need for on-demand IT solution availability. To ensure availability, many organizations buy excess capacity upfront and risk paying for technology they don’t use. This overprovisioning consumes budget and jeopardizes funding for other critical projects. But with Flex on Demand, you will enjoy elastic capacity. We will work with you to right-size capacity for your workloads as they shrink and grow over time. You will gain immediate access to buffer capacity should you need it, while only paying for the technology you use. Your payment will adjust up or down to match your actual usage. In this session, Dell Technologies and Zones will discuss how Flex on Demand can help you acquire exactly the technology you need to support your ever-changing business.

Presented by Zones and Dell Technologies

Tim Bisping

Solutions Architect, Zones

Tim is an on-prem Cloud Solution Architect who specializes in on-prem solutions. Not only is Tim focused on Zones’ current on-prem cloud portfolio – he also strives to continuously add additional on-prem cloud partners to the Zones portfolio. In his previous role as the lead HPE Inside Solution Architect, Tim designed over 5,000 solutions for Zones clients totaling over $150M in shipped revenue, a feat for which he was awarded the Zones Platinum Seller Award in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Before joining Zones, Tim worked at Microsoft as a Data Center Engineer. He also served in the US Army as an AH-64D Apache Helicopter crew chief.

Ihab El Ghazzawi

Regional Director, Dell Technologies, APEX Global Enablement

Ihab advises organizations on APEX as a Service offering to help them define and accelerate their digital transformation journey. He brings expertise on managed services, workplace productivity, emerging technologies (like AI, edge computing, and the Internet of Things), cloud, and mobility. Prior to joining Dell Technologies, Ihab held leadership roles in sales, consulting, and professional services at Cisco, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.

Data Management Strategies for Ransomware Resiliency

Businesses today have to navigate a global pandemic, an economic crisis, shifting regulations, malware, ransomware, and other IT difficulties. Ransomware is an especially daunting challenge, and attackers today are relentless in their pursuit of new, creative ways to infiltrate corporate networks and IT environments to seize data and hold it hostage. The key is to be resilient and be able to restore your on-prem or hybrid infrastructure, quickly and at scale. Join this session to learn how Zones and Veritas can help you craft your resiliency strategy and secure your infrastructure, reducing risk so you can maintain control of your business – even in the face of malicious malware.

Presented by Zones and Veritas

Anjali Fields

Lead Solutions Architect, Data Center & Cloud, Zones

Anjali Fields has over 25 years of experience in computer science & storage technology. With an academic background in Physics & Mechanical Engineering, Anjali has worked in fields of advanced research & development. She has designed storage devices and storage software products. Anjali has been at Zones for 2 years and spent 12 years at Dell EMC and 6 years at Veritas Software. Her background includes a wide range of storage software, hardware & cloud technology experience. She is a Lead Solutions Architect at Zones specializing in Data Center & Cloud Technologies.

Tim Krause

Sales Engineer, Veritas

Tim Krause is a Veritas Sales Engineer supporting large enterprise customers in the Mid-Atlantic region. His prior role as a data protection engineer, overseeing a NetBackup environment for an IT organization, provides great perspective into the customer experience and challenges. Tim strives to help customers, partners, and sellers understand the value proposition and technical aspects of Veritas technologies.

Streamline IT and Accelerate Time-to-Value

For CIOs and other IT decision-makers, the biggest challenge today is deciding how best to harness data, from edge to cloud. Organizations are faced with more complex digital transformation journeys than ever before, which requires a trusted partner to collaborate with on big-picture strategies – building roadmaps, right-sizing designs, and deploying hybrid cloud technologies. It's time to modernize your infrastructure – moving from inflexible, expensive, and difficult to a new environment that offers scalability, high performance, and world-class reliability. Learn how to leverage Lenovo's ThinkAgile VX Series, along with Zones services, so you can focus on growing your business rather than building your infrastructure.

Presented by Zones and Lenovo 

Brent Durst

Solution Architect II, Zones

Brent has extensive experience designing solutions for cloud and data center migrations and managed services. He has worked in Cloud and Data Operations as well as Program Management at Microsoft, Real Networks, Comcast, and Sony Media Entertainment. As a Solution Architect at Zones, Brent architects and maintains production-grade secure cloud solutions, supporting IT processes by utilizing industry standards (ITIL).

Brandon Saxton

North America ISG Software Defined Infrastructure Brand Manager, Lenovo

Brandon brings nearly 10 years of experience aligning technology solutions to the strategic goals of Fortune 500 companies. He consults with clients by understanding their current data center environments and overall corporate strategies, then determining the optimal technology to deliver a competitive advantage in the marketplace. He also currently oversees all product management functions as well as sales enablement for all of Lenovo's software-defined infrastructure products, including VMware, Nutanix, and Microsoft offerings.

Zones Executive Panel

Closing Keynote: Rethink Your Hybrid IT Infrastructure

Digital transformation has accelerated in the last two years, and organizations need new strategies to adapt and thrive in today's evolving IT landscape. In this keynote address, Annika Hafner, West Territory Vice President at Zones, leads a discussion with Regional Directors Greg Sottile, Ashok Rajagopalan, and Rolawe Bakare on what Zones has learned from this period of IT transformation. We have reflected on how our clients think about their solutions and organize their IT and procurement teams, and we have aligned our offerings accordingly. This keynote will lay out a more uniformed platform that addresses the immediate business challenges of today – including flexibility, productivity, scalability, compatibility, and security. Join this discussion to discover how to challenge your organization to rethink your hybrid IT infrastructure.

Annika Hafner

West, Territory Vice President, Zones

Annika Hafner has been with Zones for seven years. She was first named AVP of the SW Territory in 2015 and subsequently named TVP of the West Coast in 2020. In her current role, she is responsible for client success, and she works diligently to develop strategic partnerships with her clients, draw up IT budgets, and form long-term strategic plans. She also works as a trusted adviser, delivering IT services that help clients achieve their global delivery goals.

Before joining Zones, Annika was the founder and VP of sales at Channel Chargers, as well as VP of global marketing at GE Capital. She has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry in various leadership positions, partnering with Global Fortune 500 as well as mid-market companies to deliver local and global IT solutions.

Greg Sottile

Northeast/North Central Regional Director, Zones

Greg is a proven business consultant with more than two decades of experience in the IT industry. Although he has had many roles over the years, Greg's primary focus has always been the same – how to solve the current business challenge. At times, these challenges can be addressed with process and procedure, while others may require technology. Many times, a solution may require aspects of both. As a Regional Director at Zones, Greg works with his team of Solution Architects to help clients build and architect solutions to solve their business challenges. Before joining Zones, Greg held various leadership positions at other tech companies such as CompuCom, Ciber, and IBM.

Ashok Rajagopalan

Regional Director - North West

Ashok comes with an accomplished track record of executing diverse programs that drive sales excellence, solution innovation, and revenue growth. He has deep experience leading senior solution architecture teams across horizontal and vertical solutions and running large outsourcing and IT transformation engagements that have involved deal shaping and outcome-based solutions. Prior to joining Zones in 2021, Ashok held leadership positions at other notable tech companies including Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Zensar Technologies. Ashok is a certified mindfulness coach and is actively involved with his local community, volunteering as a board co-chair for Yoga Behind Bars and a program leader for Humanize Homelessness.

Rolawe Bakare

South Central Regional Director, Zones

Rolawe has been with Zones for five years. As the Director of Solution Architecture for the South region, Rolawe is responsible for technical solution strategy for customers, focused on Zones' key competency areas: Workplace Modernization, Data Center Transformation, Network Optimization, and Security Fortification. Rolawe brings over 15 years of experience in technology architecture, service delivery strategy, and business transformation to Zones. Prior to joining Zones, Rolawe was a technology consultant at both Oracle and EMC, where he was responsible for working with customers to implement private cloud solutions for both structured and unstructured data. His primary responsibility is helping customers identify and overcome technology barriers to drive enterprise growth.