Red Hat Summit: Connect 2023

Ashesh Badani is Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Red Hat, where he leads the company’s broad hybrid cloud portfolio. This includes product development and go-to-market strategies for Red Hat® OpenShift®, Red Hat OpenStack® Platform, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat developer tools. Under Badani’s leadership, the company expanded Red Hat OpenShift from an award-winning Platform-as-a-Service solution to the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, with 1,000+ customers spanning all regions and industries.

Previously, Badani served as Director of Product Management and Product Marketing of Integration and Application Platform Products at Sun Microsystems. He has more than 20 years of experience in the technology and finance industries at both established and emerging companies.

Leigh Day is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Red Hat. Throughout her more than 20 years at Red Hat, she has held a variety of positions. Her earliest role was creating an online advertising revenue stream to help supplement business for Red Hat® Linux® (Red Hat’s original boxed product). She advanced into product management and product marketing for Red Hat Linux and then moved into a pivotal leadership role—building an in-house Marketing Communications and Brand function responsible for simplifying, unifying and amplifying Red Hat’s unique messaging-voice to deliver noteworthy experiences for Red Hat customers and partners.

Day started at Red Hat in 1999 as employee number 139, collaborating to make Red Hat a world-class software company built around open source technology. She was an integral part of the Marketing team that launched Red Hat into "the enterprise" with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 2001, and has led the team responsible for Red Hat’s annual user conference, Red Hat Summit, since its inception in 2005. This gathering of Red Hat customers, partners, developers, and associates has become the industry's premier open source technology conference. Under Day’s leadership, Red Hat has launched many successful marketing programs like Command Line Heroes, redhat.com, Open Source Stories, Co.Lab, and more. Day also led the Marketing team for more than 20 acquisitions at Red Hat, helping to expand awareness of our portfolio as it grew and evolved.

Marjet Andriesse is a seasoned leader, with over 25 years of vast international experience in driving customer satisfaction, sales, and revenue growth. She has been instrumental in successful transition and organizational management for technology and professional services firms across Europe and Asia.

As general manager and vice president of Red Hat in Asia Pacific, Marjet is responsible for the next phase of the company’s growth in the region, as well as leading initiatives to enable customer success with open hybrid cloud technology. Marjet also manages engagement with enterprise customers and emerging technologies sales and support capabilities.

Throughout her career, Marjet has been a passionate advocate for workplace diversity and has been acknowledged for her forward thinking leadership. This includes her role as Chair of the Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) council for Red Hat APAC and has been recognized as one of the Techleaders for the inaugural SG100 Women in Tech in 2020.

Marjet’s experience spans industries, including logistics and telecommunications, as well as HR
services in a variety of leadership positions. Before joining Red Hat, she was the managing director of Telstra in Asia Pacific and was responsible for delivering the company’s corporate strategy in the region. Prior to Telstra, Marjet’s career also included working with Randstad and KPN NV in national and international management positions across Europe and Asia.

Marjet is a Dutch native and holds a master’s degree in Economics from the University of
Groningen, The Netherlands.

Marshal Correia is the Managing Director for Red Hat India & SAARC. His charter is to spearhead the India team to accelerate business growth, shape market opportunities by strengthening engagement with stakeholders across industries, government and partner ecosystem.

Marshal has over 3.5 decades of leadership experience in driving large transformation projects, leading large teams across the region for sales & delivery, managing multiple verticals and P&L responsibility.

Prior to Red Hat, he was the Managing Director at DXC Technologies India, Head Pre-sales for DXC in Asia, including Japan & China. In his other experiences he was a Vice President Enterprise Services at HPE for India and held various leadership roles in organizations such as Digital and Compaq.

Marshal has a successful track-record of delivering growth, turnaround, strong interpersonal skills and operational/strategic acumen.

Aayush’s current focus at Jio Platforms is on cutting-edge software platform development, including cloud native 5G core and 5G Radio technology that is designed, developed and manufactured in India. Aayush is also spearheading 5G advanced and early 6G research to carry forward R&D initiatives in the 5G space. Prior to this, he was involved in the successful commercialization of home-grown IMS VoLTE platforms including the VoLTE TAS, Business TAS, IPSMGW, SMSC, CRBT and other platforms - which are running today in the world’s largest VoLTE network. He has implemented 5G Use Cases on Jio’s Indigenous 5G Technology for various verticals. In addition to software development, he is involved in systems engineering activities of software products - which include the creation of the network architecture, network design, engineering, as well as traffic dimensioning. These systems engineering skills were applied to one of the world's largest VoLTE deployment at Reliance Jio - spread across 22 circles of India. Recently, he has been involved in the deployment of a pan-India indigenously developed 5G Core network across multiple data Centre's and edge sites. As a part of all his R&D projects he has a dual focus on software and system engineering.

Gulshan heads the cloud, core and transmission planning for Vodafone Idea Limited. He is an industry leader with experience across technology organizations where he has driven large scale Network Transformations.

Varun has two decades of experience in implementing, transforming and strategizing IT platforms for large Telcos , automobiles and other enterprises. He has worked with IBM till 2021 before joining IndiGo as head of Cloud engineering. In his current role, he is responsible for cloud engineering function spanning architecture, deployment and migration to cloud. He is also actively involved in tech selection and architecture of overall IT landscape at IndiGo airlines.

Mr Ramesh Lakshminarayanan is the Group Head - Information Technology at HDFC Bank. Designated Chief Information Officer (CIO), Mr Ramesh will be responsible for taking the Bankʼs technological transformation journey to the next level.
His role will cut across verticals at the bank. He will be responsible for technology strategy, strengthening foundational technology, enhancing the digital capabilities and harnessing new age Al/ML technology solutions for the bank.
Ramesh joins the bank from CRISIL, where he spent 3 years as Chief Technology and Information Officer. In this role, he was responsible for transformation of CRISIL's businesses by leveraging technology, data and analytics. He joined CRISIL after a big data and analytics start-up - Pragmatix Services Pvt Ltd - that he co-founded was acquired by CRISIL in 2017.
An industry veteran with over 25 years of experience, Ramesh has held leadership positions with organizations such as Citibank, ABN AMRO Bank, and Kotak Mahindra
Group.
Ramesh holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Mumbai University and an MBA from University of Pune. In his free time, Ramesh likes to watch cricket and listed to
music.

Kiran Bhojaraju, AVP - Practice Manager-IT Services is associated with Infosys since 2001, after an initial stint with Arvind Mills as Programmer, System and Database administrator. At Infosys, he has performed various roles from Supporting UNIX Systems and Databases to Managerial roles in IT Services. His eye for details, analysis, strength to accomplish the objective has placed him ahead of many. Kiran has been instrumental in various efficiency building initiatives which includes Open Source modules, Scale-Out Storage, Virtualization environments, Proprietary Unix platforms, Customer deployments and performance boost of Finacle environment. His recent assignments covers adoption of OpenSource comprising of OpenStack software for DevOps model, Ansible Automation & RPA workflows, IaaS, PaaS, STaaS and DBaaS across Infosys Limited & EdgeVerve. Kiran holds Engineering degree in Computer Science from UVCE, Bangalore University.

Riby is a dynamic and results-driven leader with a proven track record of spearheading digital transformation for various Fortune 500 companies. With over two decades of IT experience across Healthcare, Retail, Aerospace, Automobile & Technology sectors, Riby has consistently demonstrated an unparalleled ability to navigate the complexities of various industries. As the Chief Digital Officer at Stellantis, one of the world's leading automotive manufacturers, she is responsible for the digital transformation efforts across the company, including platform standardization, simplification, innovation, adoption, and delivering value across the business functions. Before joining Stellantis in Jun this year, Riby has played a pivotal role as the Corporate Data Analytics leader for Honeywell driving massive digital transformation enabling data driven insights across all the enterprise functions cutting across all the businesses of the conglomerate. Prior to that, she served as the Oracle ERP leader for GE Healthcare enabling transformation and business operations across 170+ countries enhancing operational efficiency and better customer experiences. Riby also worked for Target Corporation driving ecommerce transformation and for Infosys Technologies enabling large Retail businesses primarily in the Supply Chain, ERP, Warehouse Management domains. With a blend of technical and business acumen, Riby is the recipient of multiple awards and recognitions throughout her career journey. Riby holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from the Calicut University and an MBA from Symbiosis.

What's next for Red Hat Enterprise Linux? As the Senior Director, Solutions Architecture and CTO for Red Hat India/South Asia, Ameeta helps clients on their hybrid cloud and digital transformation journeys with the power of Open Source Technologies from Red Hat. She leads a team of experienced Red Hat Solution Architects and Specialists with diverse expertise across the solution portfolio. Prior to Red Hat, Ameeta Roy led the Solution Consulting teams for SaaS Cloud Applications at Oracle India working with several clients on the digital transformation of all aspects of their business. Ameeta has also spent several years at IBM in client facing roles where she has helped clients architect, design, build and troubleshoot software systems. In her last role at IBM she was leading the Technical Solution teams across IBM’s Software Portfolio of Analytics, IoT, Commerce, Security, Cloud, Middleware and Industry Solutions.

Steven Ellis is a Principal Portfolio Architect in the Red Hat APAC Office of Technology. During his nearly 30 years in the technology industry Steven has transitioned from development through infrastructure and operations, with a bit of devops on the side, into architecture roles. Today he helps Red Hat’s customers deliver complex business solutions thanks to the capabilities of Red Hat’s Enterprise Open Source technologies.

Mangesh Surve has been in crucial leadership roles as the technology influenced the digital transformation of Industries and impacted daily lives of its consumers.
He is currently leading the Red Hat Solutions Specialty team for Open Hybrid Cloud. He is consulting crucial verticals like BFSI, Telco, IT/ITES, Manufacturing and Pharma on Cloud Native & Open Source based Digital transformation. He had also lead the technology teams in Oracle during its transition to Cloud. He was leader of Information Management at IBM during that time when Business has started looking at Analytics as one of the crucial pillars of their business.

Anuj Mittal is the Head - Sales Specialist, India and South Asia in Red Hat. He is a seasoned sales and Technology professional with over 20 Years of experience and has been instrumental as change catalyst and strategic advisor to clients. Anuj is an expert with great skills on Strategic Thinking, Emerging technologies and Middleware solutions. Prior to Red Hat, Anuj had worked with Oracle in the capacity of Principal Sales Specialist for middleware and emerging technologies and started his professional career as developer.

Giridhar Ramaraju is Senior Director - Global Engineering at Red Hat in the Core Platfoms division. Giri has a passion for building & leading teams in engineering software solutions in Open Hybrid Cloud. In his current role, Giri leads a global team to deliver reliable, scalable enterprise grade software solutions and services to RedHat's customers.

Prior to the role in Red Hat, Giri was part of the Engineering leadership at EMC India and worked on Storage and Data Center Technologies. Giri has a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering and a PG in Business Management from XLRI. Giri lives in Bangalore, India.

Geeta Gurnani, is a pioneer in Technology and has over 25 years of experience in Technology serving multiple Industries. Her career expands over several domains, right from Pre-sales technical to Architect, Solution lead, Business development and Business strategy. Currently, she serves as the Chief Technology Officer and Technical Sales Leader at IBM Technology for India and South Asia. More recently, she has also served as the Country Head for Modern Work, Microsoft India.

Leveraging the unique lessons she has learned through her corporate life, Geeta wishes to empower women for overall development and, to that end, serves as a mentor for women at different stages in their careers at “Aspire For Her.”

In 2021 she was acknowledged as one of the key AI influencer by NASSCOMGeeta Gurnani, is a pioneer in Technology and has over 25 years of experience in Technology serving multiple Industries. Her career expands over several domains, right from Pre-sales technical to Architect, Solution lead, Business development and Business strategy. Currently, she serves as the Chief Technology Officer and Technical Sales Leader at IBM Technology for India and South Asia. More recently, she has also served as the Country Head for Modern Work, Microsoft India.

Leveraging the unique lessons she has learned through her corporate life, Geeta wishes to empower women for overall development and, to that end, serves as a mentor for women at different stages in their careers at “Aspire For Her.”

In 2021 she was acknowledged as one of the key AI influencer by NASSCOM

Rajesh Singh leads the Application Modernization portfolio at AWS and helps customers to accelerate their digital transformation journey across all industry segments. He’s been in the industry for over 2.5 decades and currently based in Mumbai, India. You can connect with him on LinkedIn

Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran is the CTO of Kyndryl India, where he directs technology strategy for the India business. Earlier, he worked with IBM for 25 years as Distinguished Engineer, Master Inventor and the CTO of IBM’s Cloud Center of Excellence.
He has authored a book on embedded Linux published by Prentice Hall that is prescribed at top-tier universities world-wide.
Krishnan has a B.Tech in Computer Science from NIT Calicut, M.Tech from IIT Kanpur and a PhD from BITS, Pilani
 

Xavier has over 16 years of experience in the IT industry, with skills spanning across enterprise architecture, data center design and optimization, consulting, and building Technologist teams, he also has in-depth knowledge with respect to the Indian enterprise Market and trends across the Industry.
His experience spans working with customers in multiple regions and in various market segments including RISC Platforms and Security. He carries multiple industry certifications with regard to administration, process, and design of enterprise infrastructure.
Currently as Director of Enterprise Solution and Alliances he is the owner for key growth verticals including Bid-Data, Cloud, HPC and VDI among others. He is also responsible for Strategic Alliances and evangelizing Dell’s solutions and portfolio across the broad Dell EMC Portfolio of products and solutions.
Xavier is also an avid Scuba diver exploring sunken wrecks and underwater cave systems.

Part of the Sales Engineering team at Nutanix focusing on designing Hybrid cloud solutions, security architectures, and consulting best practices for BFSI customers. With 16 years of experience in Hybrid Multi-cloud, Digital workforce, security, datacentres, storage, and networking industry, he worked under various profiles in organizations like Automation Anywhere, F5 networks, Brocade consulting for different business verticals.
Abhishek believes in the Customer-first approach and helps customers drive digital transformation.

Sachin Nagpal is currently Solution Sales leader for Microsoft’s Azure Global Black Belt team focuses on driving Linux migration in the Asia Pacific. His charter is to drive end-to-end migration solutions for customers who want to move resources to Azure, developing migration roadmaps, architectures, and best practices for different scenarios, such as lift-and-shift, re-platforming, re-hosting, and modernization. In addition, Sachin is also leading initiatives and developing Azure based solutions by working very closely with key partners and global ISVs.

With an established track record in IT since 1996, Luca Arcara holds a degree in Computer Engineering and began his career as a FullStack Developer. 
Over the years, he has specialized in key roles as a Database Administrator (DBA) and an expert in ETL (Extract, Transform, Load).  His notable experiences include a role as Information Systems Manager in the CBT Group, he was responsible for e-mail platform at Hitachi, and worked as a trainer on topics such as SQL and ACG (Architecture, Cloud, and Governance) for notable companies including IBM. He has been working at Zextras since 2016, as a Product Owner since 2020.
 

Pranav is currently working with Bharti Airtel as Lead Enterprise Architect. He has 15 years of managing multiple IT streams. He specializes in multi-cloud architecture and have led various consulting engagements comprising of security strategy development, solution design, enterprise architecture, security governance, telecom, edge, implementation, and project delivery spanning across multiple infrastructure and security domains.

Chintamani leads the Solution Architecture team for Enterprise FSI & MFG segment at Red Hat India. In this role he works with an energetic team of solution architects to help customers in aligning Red Hat’s open-source technology with business & operational objectives to meet their organisational goals. He has worked with organisations TCS & IBM in multiple roles spanning pre-sales, architecture, delivery, project management & consulting to provide solutions across domains like Cloud & Cognitive, Telco Network & IT Assurance, Infrastructure Management & Enterprise IT etc. In IBM he has led technology sales of Tivoli, Watson Data & AI and Integrated Analytics Platform portfolios. Chintamani has a Bachelor's degree in Electronics Design & Technology Engineering, and has close to 25 years of industry experience.

Anuva Ambastha joined Red Hat in 2013 in the Global Partner team where she focused on Red Hat key and strategic partners and helped them build meaningful solutions for their customers.

In her career spanning over 21 years , Anuva has worked extensively with Middleware technologies and specialises in supporting customers to accelerate their digital transformation journey by using next generation cloud-native and container technologies from Red Hat.

In her current role as Principal Specialist Solution Architect she strives to make open source technology both practical and workable for enterprise users by balancing her technical expertise, understanding of business processes and IT problems faced at the enterprise level along with her passion for open source.

Prasad Mukhedkar is a Senior Specialist Solution Architect, Cloud & Automation
at Red Hat India. He is a Red Hat Certified Architect and brings over 12 years of experience in the IT field that covers automation, containerisation, management, operations, development and solution design. He is a huge fan of the Linux 'GNU Screen' utility and co-authored a book titled 'Mastering KVM Virtualization'

Rahul Damle is a Senior Specialist Solution Architect-App Platform, with experience in architecting, designing & delivering Hybrid Cloud Solutions.
An established IT professional with 16+ years of experience in IT, spanning in the areas of Technical PreSales, Solution Architecture, Analysis, Design and Development of MicroServices and applications.

In Red Hat currently focusing on Enterprise accounts in the BFSI Segment.

Have a passion for all things DevOps, cloud, containers and automation. Specialized in Digital Transformation technologies, Cloud Computing, Microservices, Cloud-native Architectures (AWS, GCP, Azure) and DevSecOps.

Ritesh Shroff is a Senior Solution Architect focusing on the BFSI sector. Ritesh has over 21+ years of experience in the IT Industry. Ritesh has always been a technical advisor for clients and customer centricity is his forte.

He brings in extensive experience in creating architecture blueprints, roadmaps, leading discussions with C- Suite and working with customer business & technical teams in all of his accounts. Also collaborates well with the larger ecosystem and the SI community for critical projects such as Digital Transformation.

Jitender is an accomplished Cloud and automation technologist with 18 years of experience across Telecom, BFSI, Retail segments.

In his current role as Principal Specialist Architect, he helps customers take the best architectural decisions and make the best of their IT investments using Red Hat powered Open Source technologies.

Mandar Dixit is responsible for Presales across West & North India for Corporate Customers.
With 20+ years of Presales & Consulting experience, in varied segments like Cloud, Data Center, Telco & System Integration, he brings an excellent blend of Business & Technical skills.
At Red Hat he has remarkable contributions towards business growth in the hybrid cloud market based on Enterprise open source technologies.
Proven record of accomplishment in complex solution building across Industry verticals like BFSI, Manufacturing & ITES.
Has been a Trusted Advisor to Large Business Conglomerates, in their Application Modernization & Hybrid Cloud journey.

Yatin has overall IT experience of 14 years. He plays the role of Telco SME for India Consulting. Along with Teclo (Openstack & Openshift), he has scaled and acquired expertise in Satellite, Ceph, RHEV, OCS, ODF, IDM, Ansible, MTC and RHEL Products of Red Hat.

As Technology Evangelist in the telecom space with two decades of industry experience, Neha works with strategic telco clients helping them along their transformation journey from 4G to 5G. She works on demystifying Red Hat’s Hybrid Cloud technology and marrying it with the changing landscape of telecom networks, IT and Edge. She strives to convert the vision of telecom operators into reality.

Having worked with industry leaders like Nokia, Ericsson, Accenture and Oracle across presales, business development and client advisory roles, Neha brings extensive experience in key telecom domains including OSS/BSS, RAN, Core, IOT/Edge and Cloud.

Rachna Dodia is a Cloud Specialist Solution Architect focusing in the BFSI sector. She works along with Partners and Customers to help them in their Digital Transformation Journey, and enjoys working with them to understand their pain point and give them the most suitable solution.

She comes with a total experience of 5 years where prior to Red Hat she have worked as a Production Analyst at Barclays Technology Center. Throughout her career Containerisation and Automation has been my key area of contribution.

Anuvrat is Associate Principal Specialist Solution Architect with 17 years of IT professional experience in architecting, designing & delivering Hybrid Cloud Solutions across Cloud Native, Containers, Automation, Security and Virtualization technologies.

In the past 9 Years at Red Hat, he has worked with multiple customers from Government/Public, Enterprise/FSI & Telco sectors and helped them in architecting, designing Hybrid Cloud, Automation & Virtualization Solutions using Containers, KubeVirt, KVM Virtualization & Automation technologies.

In his current Role at Red Hat, Anuvrat is working closely with BFSI sector customers and assisting them in digitally transforming and modernizing their businesses using Red Hat Open Hybrid Cloud approach. Also, assisting customers in adopting Containers/OpenShift Application Platform, OpenShift Virtualization, Resilient Microservices patterns, Cloud Native Architectures, DevOps, DevSecOps / Trusted Software Supply Chain Security processes and practices!!

Rahul Sreenivasan is a Solution Sales Specialist with Red Hat, and he is focused on augmenting the SAARC region for developing awareness of curated opensource solutions..

He is an IT Industry veteran with 15+ years of experience in IT solution consulting, pre-sales, and architectural design of complex IT infrastructure and operations. He specialises in the areas of IIoT, Industry 4.0, Industrial Automation and Edge.

As a tech speaker he has spoken in various venues with the Computer Society of India, DRDO on Edge, IoT and automation.

Vivek Koul joined Redhat as an intern in 2018. Recently Vivek took a new role of Associate solution
architect and manages the commercial customers across west region in India

Vivek has total 5 year of experience with specialization in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenStack Platform.

Rakesh Chhabria is Solution Architect with Red Hat and manages the Commercial and Emerging customers across West region in India.

He brings expertise for the Red Hat Solution Portfolio in the area of Hybrid Cloud, Modern Application Development and IT Automation and Management design principles.

He works with customers to help them in their modernization and digital transformation journey to meet their business and technical requirements by designing the solutions using the power of open source technologies.

Rupesh is the Strategic Account Manager for BFSI and Automotive Clients, he comes with 23+ years of experience in working with Different Sectors of Industry like Telecom, Consumer Durable, Media & Entertainment and IT. Last 7 years he has worked with Manufacturing and Automotive Clients on Different Solution areas like Connected Vehicle PLatform, Manufacturing Process Automation, Integration, Automation and IOT& Edge.

Varun Bhatia is a Seasoned Cloud Architect having approximately 18 years of industry experience with a broad background in both business and technology.

In his current role working with strategic telco clients where he is advocating open source technology for the modernisation of their networks, enteprise and digitisation of internal applications.

Mukul is an expert sales, presales & business development consultant with 18+ years of experience & proven track record in driving new technology sales, business development & consulting initiatives. Well versed in developing and delivering next generation architectures & products including advanced technology services to large scale telco , media & entertainment customers & partners.
 

Rajveer Singh is Practice Lead for India Consulting Services with 18+ Years of experience in designing & delivering Hybrid Cloud Solutions, Virtualization and Automation Technologies.
In his current role, he leads the team of seasoned consultants helping customers in accelerating adoption of open source technologies and He has been instrumental in delivering complex solutions to the customers in Enterprise, Telco, and Government customers in India.