Patrick Fetterman

Vice President of Marketing, Plexus

Patrick Fetterman is vice president of marketing of Plexus Systems, Inc, developers of Plexus Online™ on-demand software for the manufacturing enterprise, Plexus Online combines the capabilities of enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing execution systems (MES), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), shop floor integration, quality management, and much more.

Prior to joining Plexus, Fetterman was with New York City-based Mi8 Corp., where he served as vice president of marketing and products from 2000 to 2005, and as president from 2005 to 2006. During Fetterman’s tenure with Mi8, the company built a reputation as a trailblazer in the software as a service (SaaS) market, and earned a position as the premium quality provider in the highly competitive market for on demand Microsoft solutions.

Chuck DeVita

President, Growth Process Group

Chuck DeVita is Founder & President of Growth Process Group, a strategic sales outsource and consulting practice focused on early to mid-stage technology companies. Growth Process Group helps established companies grow revenues, profits and predictability. It assists emerging companies in securing funding and offers an outsourced reference customer acquisition program. The firm also provides interim “C” level executive services to get its’ clients through transitions.

Chuck has over thirty years experience in Sales and Marketing management of enterprise technology suppliers. He has developed regional and worldwide sales forces. He has extensive international sales management experience. He has built direct and indirect channels as well as major account sales organizations.

Jim Geisman

President, Software Pricing

Jim has helped emerging and established software companies solve some of their thorniest pricing problems including how to transition to the on-demand (SaaS) pricing model. He has written extensively on software pricing and is widely quoted in the trade press. He is a frequent speaker at seminars and trade conferences and has consulted internationally on issues of software pricing and deal structuring. Jim has been a co-founder, director, advisor or mentor to early stage companies. He sits on the Board of the Professional Pricing Society and is an advisor to the Entreprenuerial Leadership Program at Tufts University.

Sean O’Connell

Senior Manager, Product Marketing,
Cast Iron Systems

Sean has over 10 years experience in product, field, and partner marketing and product management.  Currently Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Cast Iron Systems, he is responsible for go-to-market strategies, product launches, positioning, pricing, field sales enablement, and solutions marketing.  Prior to joining Cast Iron, Sean led the Product Marketing team for Cisco Systems’ Unified Contact Center solutions, and helped Cisco to become the market leader in enterprise-class IP-based contact center solutions. 

At Genesys Telecommunications, Sean led all aspects of the marketing launch for a new mid-market solution called Genesys Express, targeting high-growth market opportunities.  As a Product Manager at Nortel Networks, Sean drove development of product requirements for the industry’s first software-based computer-telephony integration (CTI) solutions.  Sean holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College

Rajiv Parikh

CEO, Position2

Rajiv is CEO of Position2, a leading search engine marketing firm, with over 20 years of sales, marketing and entrepreneurial experience.  He is Co-Founder and Board Member of Apieron Inc., a VC-backed company. He grew the AltaVista Business Solutions Group to $40 million in revenues. Prior experience includes leading Marketing and Business Development groups at Sun Microsystems, NCR, and AT&T. Rajiv has a MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Electrical Engineering from UNH.

Position2 clients include Johnson & Johnson, Northwestern Mutual, Coverity, Convergys and Reliance.  Rajiv is a frequent speaker in industry forums on search and social media marketing.

Gene Landy

Chair, Technology Group
Ruberto Israel & Weiner, P.C.

Gene K. Landy is a shareholder of the Ruberto, Israel & Weiner, P.C. (RIW)  His practice is concentrated on technology companies and information technology transactions.  Mr. Landy is Chair of the firm’s Technology Business Group.  Gene is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School (cum laude).

Gene is the author, together with RIW attorney Amy Mastrobattista, of a comprehensive plain English layperson’s guide to digital technology and media law, published by Elsevier in June 2008. The book, called The IT/Digital Legal Companion, is available on amazon.com and other online book selling sites.

Gene handles domestic and international transactions for high technology businesses, from start-ups to publicly traded companies. Mr. Landy represents companies in software, integrated circuits, telecommunications technology, IT hardware, Internet applications, e-commerce, computer games, and other technology fields.

James Edward McGriff, Jr., MPA

Co-founded Peniel Solutions, LLC

James McGriff co-founded Peniel Solutions, LLC in 2005 and currently serves as the company’s Chief Technology Officer. James McGriff completed a successful twenty-one year military career that helped developed and honed his knowledge and application of information services. During his career, he rose from programmer to Chief Information Officer, for the Naval Health Sciences Education and Training Command, Bethesda, MD. Upon his retirement in 1996, he joined the Emory Healthcare Information Services Department, Atlanta, GA and led many IT successful projects. While at Emory, James was selected and graduated from the Woodruff Leadership Academy. The Academy was created to groom future leaders for executive level service within Emory University and Emory Healthcare.

As the company's key technologist, James is credited with developing the company's successful SaaS model in the federal government and specially the success in the SaaS delivery strategy for the Federal Housing Administration. He oversees all areas of both engineering and product development, including managing site operations, and developing features and services that are compelling and easy to use for everyone. Peniel Solutions recently provided the event services for the Department of Commerce’s 2008 national conference on “American Competitiveness”, where James was able to introduce the SaaS model to key participants.

Ed Sullivan
CEO, Aria Systems

Ed Sullivan is the CEO and Founder of Aria Systems. As CEO, Ed brings leadership, vision, and valuable insight to the needs of the marketplace to bear on Aria’s strategic direction. His entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas have led him to build several successful companies. Prior to Aria, Ed was the Founder and President of LaserLink.net, the World's first and largest Virtual Internet Service Provider. LaserLink provided billing and Internet services to over one million end users and operated the Internet Services for several ISP's including American Express, Compaq, Gateway, Amway and IBM. LaserLink was acquired by Covad Communications in March 2000.

Siamak Farah

CEO, InfoStreet

Siamak Farah is the founder and CEO of InfoStreet, a leading provider of IT & Productivity Software as a Service (SaaS). Active in its day-to-day management, Siamak has assembled and leads a seasoned team of industry professionals at InfoStreet. By employing a business philosophy that focuses first on solving business problems and second on applying appropriate technologies to those solutions, he has enabled flourishing businesses for both InfoStreet and its clients. Siamak is an advocate of developing a strong SaaS reseller channel for InfoStreet and has helped spearhead this effort at InfoStreet.

Prior to founding InfoStreet in 1994, Siamak worked at NeXT Computer side-by-side industry visionaries the likes of Steve Jobs. Having been in the industry for more than 20 years Siamak has striven to include a cutting edge technological vision in his work. A member of the Society of Industry Leaders, Siamak is a frequent speaker at conferences that focus on the Internet and SaaS such as ISPCON, INBOX: The Messaging Industry Event, the Layered Technologies Pact conference and more.

Bob Conlin

VP of Marketing, Centive

As VP of Marketing, Bob led the transformation of Centive from their roots as a traditional enterprise software vendor to a model that is focused 100% on delivering on-demand, Software-as-a-Service solutions for optimizing sales performance. Because Centive provides sales and executive compensation systems for a wide variety of firms, including many software and SaaS-based firms, Bob is in a unique position to discuss best practices when discussing sales compensation programs for your company.

Prior to joining Centive, Bob held senior level sales and marketing positions at Infinium Software. Bob is a frequent speaker at industry events and has been published in numerous business journals including: Benefits and Compensation Solutions, Workspan, CRM Magazine, HR.com, Compensation and Benefits Review and Technology for Finance.

Bob received a bachelor's degree in resource management from Oregon State University. He is accredited as a Professional in Human Resources by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Tom Appleton

Vice President of Customer Success, DreamFactory

Tom brings over 14 years of customer facing software support experience to the DreamFactory team. Tom most recently comes from On-Demand software pioneer WebEx Communications. While at WebEx, Tom served as the Principal Sales Engineer for Enterprise Accounts. Tom's leadership of the Enterprise SE team helped secure many of WebEx's largest Enterprise and Federal accounts. His performance earned him many accolades including the award for SE of the year three times and the award for SE of the QTR thirteen times. Prior to WebEx, Tom managed the Customer Support organization for another On-Demand software pioneer Digital Discoveries. Tom also previously served as the Technical Support Manager for CyberFlix, Inc., a company which pioneered CD-ROM Entertainment Software for the consumer market.

Fred Engel
Senior Vice President and CTO
Iron Mountain Digital

Fred Engel joined the company as senior vice president and chief technology officer in April 2007.  He is responsible for the development and strategy of Iron Mountain's Digital solutions and oversees the product management team. Most recently, Engel was executive vice president and chief technology officer for Concord Communications where he drove all aspects of product development and strategy. He was also responsible for the company's growth from inception to $150M in revenue and participated in the company's IPO as well as several acquisitions. Prior to this, he was the vice president of engineering at Technology Concepts/Bell Atlantic.  Engel is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s “Distinguished Engineer Academy” award for 2005 and the Mass High Tech Entrepreneur of the Year award for 2000. Engel also holds several patents in network management and security.  Engel holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics and a Masters of Computer Science degree from the University of Connecticut.

Suman Sharma
General Manager of Astadia's
India Delivery Center

Suman Sharma is General Manager of Astadia's India Delivery Center. She is best known for her entrepreneurial spirit and ability to execute with precision. As GM she is overall responsible for scaling Astadia's Global Delivery Center that truly embodies the requirement of Web 2.0 and the On-Demand solution model. It is her mission to build centers that truly embody the SaaS culture, are scalable and leverage the distributed delivery service model. A team that is internationally recognized for innovation, quality of service, energy and innovative approach. Her experience with large enterprises and a successful startup allows her to bring broad experience in Service based Architecture, people strategy, business development and launching new delivery centers.

Prior to Astadia, Suman was Executive Vice President and Co-Founder at Theikos, a global developer and implementer of business technology solutions, which merged with Astadia in March 2008. Suman also worked at Sapient in the Engagement Management group. She managed numerous large client projects and helped to establish Sapient India operations. Suman was profiled as 'Young Turk' on CNBC Asia.

Suman holds a Masters in Computer Science from UMASS Dartmouth, a Bachelor's in Computer Science from The Institute of Technology & Science, Bhiwani, India, and a CSS in Administration and Management from Harvard Extension School.

Erik Seifert

CEO, Atlantic Crossing

Erik Seifert consults independent software vendors for proven sales success. In software marketing for over 20 years, Seifert’s unique academic background combined with extensive sales and management experience render him one of the leading international software marketing consultants on the topic of SaaS.

After product management at IBM, as an entrepreneur Seifert brought Navision Financials (now known as Microsoft Dynamics/NAV) into the US market. Later as Chairman & CEO Seifert created the product’s identity and marketing strategy, and engineered its VAR-only international distribution channel. Microsoft acquired Navision for $1.3 billion in 2002. Seifert also created trademarks such as C/SIDE® and SIFT, still used by Microsoft today.

Most recently, Seifert engineered a financial turnaround at a web CMS vendor as it emerged from bankruptcy. Seifert’s solution simplified the product’s structure from complex licensing terms into a low-end SaaS offering and a high-end mixed licensing/SaaS product. The company went from a negative cash flow of $200,000 annually to a positive $400,000 on revenues of $1.6 million in just 9 months.

Steven K. Richmond

CEO, Projetech

Steven K. Richmond, CPE, CMRP established Projetech Inc. as a mechanical project management organization in 1990, and has led the company to its position today as North America’s premier provider of eMaintenance®, IBM Maximo’s SaaS solution, Maximo® services, and a Channel Partner of IBM. He has over 25 years of experience in facilities engineering, project management, automation control and the implementation of successful maintenance programs.

Richmond envisioned and established Projetech’s eMaintenance® service which is a SaaS model that enables customers to access best-of-breed IBM Maximo software on-line, while providing extensive implementation, consultation, user training, customization and reporting on- and off-line.

A published author and accomplished speaker in the U.S. and Canada, Richmond has been sought to talk at professional organizations for over 20 years.  

Roshen Chandran

CTO, Paladion

Roshen Chandran is co-author of "Know Your Enemy 2nd ed". He is the co-founder of Paladion Networks, a security consulting firm with offices worldwide. Roshen advises clients on their software security strategy. He is founder editor of Palisade, the executive newsletter on application security. Roshen's work has been presented at leading security conferences, including the RSA Conference, Cansecwest and SDWest.

Gary Skiba

CEO, Midamak

Gary Skiba’s career is very diverse, encompassing financial, marketing and development.  A CPA and programmer, he is the co-founder of several companies, he has been lead developer of several SaaS firms, including Kea Technologies (fulfillment services), GarfieldGames.com (online games), TheBoardInstitute (corporate assessment), and his current position with Midamak as president and chief developer of GPS asset tracking and management systems for VARs and internal customers.  Gary has also been either lead developer or manager of over 30 product releases, including: Picture Perfect Golf, LYRIQ Crosswords, Inside the SAT (and other Princeton Review products), Discovering Endangered Wildlife, Inset, Hijaak, and many others. He was a product manager for Ashton-Tate in the late 80s, and was the product manager in charge IBM’s advanced word processing products in the early 90s.

Ray Solnik

President, OpSource

Ray will discuss an emerging concept with the SaaS ecosystem – that successful SaaS companies think of themselves as Web companies and not software companies. This is a significant paradigm shift for most software companies, because the traditional thinking is that on-demand applications are a replacement for traditional business software. While SaaS is a service, payable per transaction (monthly, number of users, etc.), many software companies incorrectly believe that the software is developed, sold and delivered in the same manner as traditional licensed software. That couldn’t be further from the truth, or, the realities of success.

SaaS applications that emulate consumer Web sites in the way they are developed and sold tend to achieve much more success than those that emulate traditional enterprise software. Successful SaaS companies, for example, conduct iterative development and focus on multi-tenancy and agility. Marketing concentrates on attracting and growing the user base instead of trying to make big, one-time sales. In addition, the applications take full advantage of Web 2.0 technologies to help differentiate the product from traditional offerings. Ray will explore each of these three phenomena in greater detail.

Brian Zanghiis

President and CEO of Kadient

Brian Zanghiss is CEO of Kadient (www.kadient.com), a leading supplier of on-demand sales knowledge solutions.  Brian brings more than 20 years of sales and executive leadership in the high technology industry to Kadient. Prior to joining Kadient, he was the Chief Operating Officer of SPSS, Inc., a $200 million publicly traded software business well known in the predictive analytics and statistical analysis market. He was formerly Executive Vice President of Worldwide Operations at eRoom Technology (acquired by Documentum), an early leader in web-based collaboration and hosted document management software.

Brian was also President of PC Docs, where he was instrumental in that company’s high-growth phase from $8 million to $80 million and beyond.