SPEAKER bios
We are proud to host such a wide array of industry speakers at DCME GOES VIRTUAL conference.
All confirmed speakers are detailed further down this page (in surname alphabetical order)
With over 25 years of experience in the Data Centre sector industry Mark has been a specialist in the field of Data Centre Operations for over 20 years, concentrating on the delivery of business critical services from highly reliable, world class Data Centres having 24×365 availability expectations. A Technical Operations Manager with extensive international experience and solid technical skills covering Data Centre Facilities Design, IT and Facilities Operational Management with Technical Consulting. Regular public speaker, conference host and industry advisor on data centre technical issues as well as being involved in International (ISO) data centre Standards development.
18 Years in the Critical Power Industry having worked in both the UPS & Generator sectors (5 Years & 13 Years respectively). Kev has worked for WB Power for nearly 4 years, managing relationships with his clients and ensuring all infrastructure projects are aligned with the clients needs and expectations.
Kathryn Aves is the Managing Director at Bluepoint Technologies. Having worked initially in the M&E sector then moving into Data Cabling 18yrs ago, she has a wealth of knowledge and experience within the industry, giving her the ability to understand her client’s needs and expectations. Kathryn has been with Bluepoint since its infancy so knows the business inside out and has been able to support the business through its growth over the years, along with a trusted team around her.
Holding technical project management roles for over 15 years at Orange Labs, Dominique is responsible for studying energy performance of Orange's telecommunication networks and data centre operations and introducing the latest energy-efficient infrastructure initiatives to the business. Dominique is heavily involved in Orange's brand new OpenGreenLab in Lannion, an area in France known as a hub for telecommunications research, which will showcase network technology innovation part of Orange “Engage 2025” strategic plan and Green ITN program.
Russell Bulley started as an apprentice electrician, rising through industrial electrical systems and engineering management. With a short spell in research and chip manufacturing, was followed by an extensive period within the UPS and M&E world of critical services.
Well versed in the electrical and mechanical demands of exacting clients around the world, both from a service and supply aspect within old and new data centres. Russell comes with a wealth of knowledge and experience.
Kevin is a Chartered Engineer who leads one of the Arup Data Centre Centres of Excellence.
Kevin has worked in the field of data centre design, design management and project management for over 10 years. During that time he has worked on data centre projects across the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe, the Middle East and the Nordics. Kevin’s experience ranges from site and energy efficiency improvement surveys of small telecoms facilities to the design and planning of hyperscale data centre campuses. Kevin has a particular interest in how the UN Sustainable Development Goals may be applied to data centre projects.
Bill has over 20 years of financial services and enterprise experience in a variety of strategy, sales and marketing roles at Tibco Inc, Thomson Reuters and Interxion.
Before taking up his current VP Enterprise position in September 2017, Bill led the Financial Services segment at Interxion. At Thomson Reuters, Bill drove business development for Elektron Managed Services, where he drew on his successful track record in developing and marketing services for low latency data feeds and colocation, data distribution platforms and managed services in the global marketplace. Prior to starting in the financial services industry, Bill was a lecturer at the University of Vienna and held a post-doctoral post at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Bill holds a PhD from University of Vienna, an MA from Webster University in Vienna and a BA from UCLA.
Prior to joining Vertiv, Nicolas worked for Telecity Group and spent 7 years building the colocation business for the French Telco iliad Group. Nicolas was responsible for enabling hyperscale, webscale and IT companies to securely deploy their core and edge data centers in France.
Now working at Vertiv, Nicolas works for Western Europe to support the data centre ecosystem growth through the deployment of Integrated modular solutions.
Ian Francis is an Associate Director at Norman Disney & Young and leads the Mission Critical Team in the London office. He has over 25 years of experience in the industry and has specialised in Data Centres, Telecommunications sites and Critical Infrastructure for the past 15 years. Ian has a mechanical bias, but covers all disciplines for master planning, concept design and project delivery. The NDY London Mission Critical Team prides itself on delivering what the “Client wants”, and getting the balance right between resilience and efficiency.
Mr. de Frémery has over twenty years of experience in the global telecommunications and datacentre sector. He started his career in Amsterdam where he held legal, product management and sales related positions at AT&T- Unisource (a joint venture between AT&T, KPN, Telia and Swisscom).
In 2000, Frank moved to New York to work at Global Crossing as Director Strategic Network Expansion focusing on expanding the firm’s IP network around the world.
At the end of 2005, Mr. de Frémery relocated back to the Netherlands to work as VP Sales and Business Development for Linxtelecom / Datacenter, an international telecommunications and datacentre provider focusing on connectivity and datacentre services in Eastern-Europe. In 2012, he moved to Curaçao as Chief Commercial Officer at the Curaçao Technology Exchange, and in 2014 became CEO of TRES Networks, a Curaçao-based operator and licensed distributor of digital television and entertainment services providing residential and business customers with high-speed internet, voice and digital video services (“Triple Play”) over the island's first fibre-to-the-home (“FTTH”) network.
After TRES Networks was sold to the Digicel Group in October 2016 Frank returned to the Netherlands to head up AC Niellsen Data Centres which is an independent boutique data centre advisory practice with the principal focus to provide strategic advice and real estate services for data centres to occupiers, investors and operators. (Site selection, Sale/leaseback, Acquisition, Greenfield)
Frank holds a Master's Degree in Law from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Richard Govier is the Technical Director of Socomec U.K. Limited. He has a BSc(Hons) in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from University College, Cardiff as well as PhD in the application of microprocessors in control of computer networks. He is a Chartered engineer (CEng MIET) and is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Prior to joining Socomec he worked for Panduit/Unite managing its power product line and more recently as Senior Manager Global Operations for the Intelligent Managed Serviced (IMS) Business Unit. Before that he worked in a variety of R&D, consultancy, operational and technical director roles.
Amin Hadian began his career in the fire protection field right after his graduation as a Civil Engineer MSc in 1999. Having specialised in structural fire protection during his study, Amin started his first job at a manufacturing company for high-pressure water mist systems in Germany.
For 20 years, Amin has been working in several companies, countries and roles inside the fire protection market, thus building a solid international experience. For 6 years, Amin held a position of Country Manager in the Middle East Region. Prior to joining Danfoss Fire Safety A/S, Amin was a Sales Manager for an American company in the sprinkler technology.
In 2018, Amin became a Business Development Manager for Data Centres in Danfoss Fire Safety A/S. He is responsible for global data centre market development and works from Germany.
Harry is the director of data center solution architecture for ABB, a pioneering technology leader with a comprehensive offering for digital industries. With a history of innovation spanning more than 130 years, ABB is today a leader in digital industries with four customer-focused, globally leading businesses: Electrification, Industrial Automation, Motion, and Robotics & Discrete Automation, supported by its common ABB Ability™ digital platform. ABB operates in more than 100 countries with about 147,000 employees..
Harry has global responsibility for providing technical and application support of critical power and electrical distribution products as well as integrating other ABB businesses to
serve mission critical customers. He also collaborates with product management and technology teams to develop new products for the mission critical applications.
Harry graduated from Auburn University with a bachelor of science in electrical
engineering. He and his family reside in Birmingham, Alabama in the USA.
Paul has over 40 years of international construction, engineering, operations and enterprise management expertise. Leadership scope includes large regional infrastructure projects, mission critical systems and facilities, consisting of semiconductor manufacturing plants, data centres, chemical processing plants and nuclear facilities.
Prior to joining Google, Paul was the Defense, Equipment and Support (DE&S) Chief Operating Officer, reporting to a Three-Star Admiral, responsible for the delivery of mission critical equipment to the United Kingdom Royal Navy. He also served as Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and Principal Vice President for Bechtel, where he managed the progress and/or completion of numerous major projects in the United States and abroad. As manager of industrial operations for North America, he was responsible for a number of regional projects, including Equinix, a $360 million data center program.
Paul began his career as an isometric draftsman for Bechtel in 1977 at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and later worked as a boilermaker at Cholla Generating Station in in Arizona. After receiving his Bachelor of Science in construction management from Arizona State University, he moved into the role of civil field engineer at San Onofre.
Dario Hernandez is Product Manager of battery and flexible power solutions at RWE, a leading power generation and energy trading company. In his job, Dario supports data centres saving costs by using innovative generation technologies. Dario has 10 years’ experience in power generation and international energy markets. He holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Postgraduate Masters in Energy Markets from EOI Business School.
Louise oversees business development for Future facilities in EMEA. Future Facilities is the provider of the Digital Twin for data centre design and capacity planning. Originally employed as a Consultant Engineer for Future Facilities, Louise moved into Business Development 4.5 years ago and hasn’t looked back since. Louise is passionate about driving data centre efficiency and hopes we can create a greener future by using new technological advances, like the Digital Twin, to get more from our data centres.
Steve is a senior executive within the IT industry, with a wealth of experience leading large globally diverse organisations as well as those evolving from dynamic start up to consolidated businesses. With a career based upon a proven track record of strong technical leadership, delivery against financial and operational metrics, and commercial goals.
Steve’s talents have been honed upon rapid growth and development of Fintech, telecoms & hosting businesses, including leadership responsibility for the Operations & Technology of large global service providers. The breadth of this experience has allowed him to develop a well-rounded and commercial outlook, inclusive of senior customer facing relationships, technical and delivery accountability. Throughout his career he has enjoyed extensive experiences of speaking to public and private audiences.
Steve is the Global head of product & Platform at Finetix, a managed service and technology provider delivering global solutions to multi-asset trading organisations active in the low latency trading space such as hedge funds, investment banks, proprietary trading houses, market makers and prime brokers.
Having worked in exhibition & sponsorship sales for many years (first in telecoms followed by datacoms) Caroline launched the information portal www.datacentre.me in December 2011. The site lists a free online directory, news page, reports, white papers, case studies and a host of other useful information.
In September 2013 Caroline expanded her business portfolio by launching a series of high level networking events aimed at senior management within the data centre sector. These events were designed specifically for decision makers and influencers within end user organisations and are by invitation only. The now infamous quarterly networking evenings are free of charge to attend and, prior to COVID-19, were held in central London on a quarterly basis. The team had just ventured out of the UK for the first time with a very well-received end user networking event in Dublin in November 2019.
Additionally, since 2016 Caroline and the DCME team have been running a hugely successful annual charity Christmas party for the industry, having raised well over £10,000 to date for worthy charities including as Alzheimer’s Society, Cancer Research UK and Shooting Star Children’s Hospices.
Obviously 2020 has proved extremely challenging to everyone. COVID-19 has put paid to the DCME face to face events for the moment so Caroline and her team decided to adapt and bring you this fantastic virtual conference and exhibition instead, which they hope will become a mainstay in the DCME events calendar. Time will tell!
Gordon has worked in the industry for 30 years as a professional engineer experienced in Engineering Design, Project Management & Critical Operations and supporting clients with their Data Centre strategies. The majority of this experience has been gained working globally with clients that have significant critical facility portfolios.
Gordon joined JLL in 2005 where he has continued to drive innovation and technical expertise within client organisations with a strong focus on Engineering Platforms, Critical Operations, Capital Investment Planning and Operational Risk Management & Compliance.
Since joining Metnor Construction in January 2015 as a Quantity Surveyor, Andy has worked on a number of high profile, complex data centre projects. Due to his success in this sector, Andy was promoted to Head of Special Projects in October 2018 where he works closely with our Operations department, leading the team's Data Centre division.
With a 16 year career at Vertiv, previously Emerson Network Power, Lucijana is responsible for marketing communications and strategy for the prefabricated modular (PFM) data centre business offering. Located in Zagreb, home to Vertiv’s global PFM design and manufacturing facility that serves all of their customers modular data centre projects in EMEA. Lucijana’s responsible for helping Vertiv’s customers visualize their PFM facilities during the design phase by using high-tech solutions like virtual reality.
David King is responsible for all aspects of implementing the data centre capex strategy to support Yondr's cutting edge technology and business needs including developing and executing the company’s international program which focuses on cost planning reporting frameworks, workflow management across projects, estimating and value engineering. He also holds responsibility for the end-to-end governance of capex calculations globally, while leading the integration of best practices and driving consistency, quality of cost and commercial management.
David is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building, and has 30+ years post-qualification experience. His ongoing Doctoral research is themed ‘The impact of location variables on the modelling and forecasting of capital expenditure for hyperscale data centres’.
Based in Paris, Luis serves Vertiv’s key account telecom and colocation customers in EMEA, supporting them as their trusted advisor for data centre and network infrastructure projects. Before joining Vertiv nearly 3 years ago, Luis held similar data centre sales management roles spanning over 13 years. With deep technical data centre experience coupled with strong sales acumen, Luis holds a master's degree in Business Administration and Management, General from Emlyon Business School in France.
As Executive Vice President for Data Centres at Bouygues Energies & Services, Dan is responsible for the development of new opportunities, evolving the build technique and overall solutions portfolio in response to market and technology trends, while optimising the company’s position as a leader in the market. Dan also provides engineering and operational support to optimise the company’s technical solution and delivery strategy across Europe.
Working in a number of sectors, initially the Pharmaceutical and power generation markets, Dan has established a vast experience in electrical engineering, testing and commissioning, project management through to operational handover. For over a decade Dan has focused specifically on the Data Centre market where he has excelled and developed the design, delivery and commissioning expertise gained over multiple state of the art Data Centre facilities from conception to completion.
Dan is forward thinking with an innovative mind-set that drives his ambition to do better. He developed a simple-to-use pre-fabricated modular solution, “building blocks” to enable the fast deployment of Data Centre facilities and to keep pace with the growing demand from the market. The solution has the capability to be applied to new and existing sites.
Penny Madsen-Jones has been working with and alongside the data centre industry in Europe for over a decade, tracking supply and demand trends from enterprise to hosting and cloud, as a journalist and then as an analyst. She is particularly interested in the business models and building, buying and selling trends of the colocation providers – wholesale and retail – as well as the external factors that influence the industry.
Romain works in the investment team of InfraVia Capital Partners, an independent investment company specialized in the infrastructure sector which manages c. EUR 4.5bn. Over the past 4 years, Romain has been active in the European digital infrastructure space, in particular with the acquisitions of Next Generation Data (Newport, UK) and Green Datacenter (Zurich, Switzerland). He has also investigated a number of datacenter investment opportunities across Europe including edge, retail, wholesale and hyperscale sites. As part of his role, Romain is involved in all expansion projects (greenfield, M&A) and financing for InfraVia’s datacenter portfolio companies. Prior to joining InfraVia, Romain worked for Société Générale CIB, Royal Bank of Scotland and ABN AMRO.
An established figure in the Data Centre Industry with over 25 years’ experience in Financial Services, Infrastructure and Data Centre Environments. Prior to VIPA Digital, Vijay was the Operations, VP at Digital Realty, responsible for the company's portfolio of Data Centres across Europe.
Vijay also spent 20 years at Morgan Stanley where he held a number of senior leadership positions including the European Head of Enterprise Computing, Global Head of Data Centre Portfolio Management and European Head of Enterprise Data Centres, where he transformed the team into a world class organisation, earning numerous industry accolades .
Vijay holds a BSc in Information Systems Design, and sits on a number of advisory boards within the DC Industry.
Martin Murphy is the Global COO within CBRE’s Data Centre Solutions Group. An accomplished leader with global experience in managing complex facilities for major clients. As the leader of our business, Martin ensures the team, solution and process are bespoke to each client.
Martin worked for Orange Communication in an operational and project role from 2000 – 2007. He then joined AMS Ltd, a PM and Consultancy organisation focused on the DC and Telco space until 2010. During this time he spent 7 months with CSC as head of Data Centres for EMEA, he then joined GWS in 2010 (formally JCI) and has continually been a top performer for the company. Martin comes from an M&E background and has over 20 years’ experience in consulting, project management and operations within data centres.
Martin is a member of the Institute of Engineering
Adam Pool is the Demand Generation Manager for Critical Infrastructure at Xtralis.
Xtralis is the leading global provider of innovative solutions for the very early & reliable detection allowing rapid and effective response to smoke, fire, and gas threats. Xtralis’ technologies prevent disasters by giving users time to respond before life, critical infrastructure or business continuity is compromised. Xtralis is the manufacturer of VESDA® which is the world’s most advanced Aspirating Smoke Detector (ASD).
Adam has worked for Xtralis for over 22 years. He has held several roles in Sales, from Sales & Technical support for EMEA to Sales Lead for a large part of Northern Europe and Middle East. Adam has a wealth of Fire knowledge throughout the entire industry.
Adam has been promoting VESDA® in the UK, dealing with Fire System Contractors, Consultants, Specifiers and End-users. He is involved with the FIA group that is currently writing a guide on smoke detection in high airflow applications. He regularly conducts CPDs on ASD promoting the use of the technology. He contributes to writing specifications for ASD in DC applications.
Sanjay is the Global Senior Vice-President of Business Development and Global Chief Technology Officer for Data Center Solutions for the Digital Energy Business Unit of Huawei Technologies.
In his role, he is responsible for world-wide Business Development and driving innovation & strategy for the Data Center & Mission Critical business solutions.
He has more than 30 years of experience in Leadership roles, Business Development and Start-ups across US, Middle-East & Asia Pacific Markets.
He is a recognized “Trusted Advisor” to many customers, partners and influencers.
Paul leads NTT ltd Global Data Center Divison, transition from a real estate company to a client focused and product management driven service provider to assure that our clients experience a state-of-the-art network service that adds value to their business, no matter the location.
Prior to NTT Paul served in senior management business transformational roles across the technology arena including Colt, Vodafone, Virgin Media, Centurylink and Zayo.
Comfortable driving innovation and leading programs of digital operational enablement and digital transformation initiatives in fast-paced, agile, matrix environments with laser focus on data-driven analysis and prioritization. Leading people and teams with energy and passion to deliver new outcomes and challenging objectives.
His experienced over 35 years spans a breath of technology and functions developing new strategy and leading new company direction while restructuring and reforming the operational model and organisational for growth through simplification, innovation and transformation.
Mark is a Chartered Engineer and Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designer. He holds CIBSE and IET fellowships and has over 30 years of experience in the building services industry.
Mark has been designing data centres for almost 20 years and leads project teams that design colocation and hyperscale data centres across EMEA.
Since studying for a Marketing Engineering degree, Andrew has been involved in the international telecommunications and data centre industries for the past 30 years, starting his career within the manufacturing and distribution arenas.
He joined CNet Training in 1997 as Sales Director and has been CEO since 2004. Andrew has always been an active member of numerous industry trade bodies. He also created The Global Digital Infrastructure Education Framework and has been instrumental in the development of the only truly mapped qualifications and certifications for the data centre industry. Andrew has been awarded a number of industry accolades for his work and has recently accepted an invitation to become a Trustee of the Edge Foundation, an independent education charity dedicated to raising the status of technical, practical and vocational learning via UTC’s and Career Colleges.
Nick drives innovation, technical expertise and technical excellence.
Nick is a Chartered Engineer and was one of the first to achieve Accredited Tier Designer status in 2009. He has been at the forefront of energy efficient data centre design for the past three decades with a particular focus on evolving cooling technologies and has successfully designed and delivered many data centre projects throughout EMEA – a number of them awarded for innovation and energy efficient designs.
Ed is a Chartered Engineer with over 36 years’ experience within the building services industry. Ed started his career as an apprentice pipe fitter welder and has worked his way through all areas of the industry to reach the level of a professional engineer with responsibilities in management, supervision, and design of building services projects in the Mission Critical Sector.
James Wilman. CEO at Future-tech.
Future-tech is a specialist organisation that is 100% dedicated to data centre design, construction and life-cycle consultancy services. For the last 10 years we have worked exclusively on data centre focused projects, gaining deep knowledge of differing customer requirements and emerging technologies, locations, commercial structures and processes. Over the last three years my team and I have worked on projects covering more than 3GW of data centre capacity. These projects have been varied and included concept, developed and detailed design, site selection, technical peer review, technical and commercial due diligence, commercial, design and technology analysis and optimisation, post outage forensic engineering and life-cycle consulting in multiple countries and on multiple continents.
John is Director in SMBC specialising in Data Centre Funding. His focus is providing structured debt and financing solutions to businesses in the sector, and transactions include those to Retail, Wholesale and Hyperscale Data Centre Operators as well as Managed Service Providers. As one of world's leading investment banks, SMBC is ideally placed to support the DC sector, having a strong presence in US, EMEA and APAC.
Jason Yates is the Technical Services Manager for leading uninterruptible power supply manufacturer Riello UPS Ltd. With more than 25 years’ experience in the power protection industry, Jason is one of the UK’s foremost experts in his field.
He’s designed, delivered and installed countless low and high-power systems across a broad range of industries, working with some of the country’s biggest data centres, businesses and organisations. Over the last 15 years, Jason has played a pivotal role in establishing Riello UPS Ltd as one of the fastest-growing and technically-diverse UPS companies in the UK. He is also the co-author of the 300-page technical handbook ‘The Power Protection Guide’.