Presenters and Bios
Travis Wright
Travis Wright is a Principal Program Manager on the System Center Service Manager product engineering team. His current focus is on enabling strategic customers and partners inside and outside of Microsoft to take advantage of the common System Center platform and in particular SCSM. As the community lead for SCSM, he is actively sharing knowledge, driving adoption, and jumpstarting community efforts on TechNet forums, CodePlex projects, the SCSM Engineering Team Blog and presenting regularly at industry events. Travis and his team were the Program Managers for the common platform shared by SCOM/SCME/Essentials including the model-based database, data warehouse, SDK API layer, and the infrastructure for notification, security, and management pack (including authoring tools), and reporting. Travis used to work on the SCOM team going all the way back to MOM 2000. He has been at Microsoft as a PM since 2002 and before that was a SW Engineer at aQuantive (before it was acquired by Microsoft).
Travis Wright is a Principal Program Manager on the System Center Service Manager product engineering team. His current focus is on enabling strategic customers and partners inside and outside of Microsoft to take advantage of the common System Center platform and in particular SCSM. As the community lead for SCSM, he is actively sharing knowledge, driving adoption, and jumpstarting community efforts on TechNet forums, CodePlex projects, the SCSM Engineering Team Blog and presenting regularly at industry events. Travis and his team were the Program Managers for the common platform shared by SCOM/SCME/Essentials including the model-based database, data warehouse, SDK API layer, and the infrastructure for notification, security, and management pack (including authoring tools), and reporting. Travis used to work on the SCOM team going all the way back to MOM 2000. He has been at Microsoft as a PM since 2002 and before that was a SW Engineer at aQuantive (before it was acquired by Microsoft).
Wally Mead
Wally has been with Microsoft for over 19 years, working with Systems Management Server and Configuration Manager for 17 of those years, starting with SMS 1.0. He has helped in the development of Microsoft Official Curriculum on SMS and Configuration Manager since SMS 1.0. He currently works as a senior program manager in the Configuration Manager product group, working with TAP customers, presenting at conferences, creating hands-on labs and virtual images, and helping manage the Configuration Manager Community for the product group.
Wally has been with Microsoft for over 19 years, working with Systems Management Server and Configuration Manager for 17 of those years, starting with SMS 1.0. He has helped in the development of Microsoft Official Curriculum on SMS and Configuration Manager since SMS 1.0. He currently works as a senior program manager in the Configuration Manager product group, working with TAP customers, presenting at conferences, creating hands-on labs and virtual images, and helping manage the Configuration Manager Community for the product group.
Mahesh Unnikrishnan
Mahesh Unnikrishnan is a Senior Program Manager in the Cloud and Datacenter Management organization that is part of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business (STB) division. He is part of the team that develops and enhances Microsoft’s premier private and hosted cloud management product - System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SC-VMM). Mahesh’s primary areas of focus include automated provisioning and monitoring of datacenter fabric elements, specifically the storage related aspects of Virtual Machine Manager.
Until recently, Mahesh was a member of the team working on the “Windows 8 Server” release and was responsible for Distributed File System (DFS) and Network File System (NFS) components. Mahesh has worked for almost 8 years on distributed file system, replication, directory services and security components of Windows in various roles including as a program manager, development lead and software design engineer.
Mahesh Unnikrishnan is a Senior Program Manager in the Cloud and Datacenter Management organization that is part of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business (STB) division. He is part of the team that develops and enhances Microsoft’s premier private and hosted cloud management product - System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SC-VMM). Mahesh’s primary areas of focus include automated provisioning and monitoring of datacenter fabric elements, specifically the storage related aspects of Virtual Machine Manager.
Until recently, Mahesh was a member of the team working on the “Windows 8 Server” release and was responsible for Distributed File System (DFS) and Network File System (NFS) components. Mahesh has worked for almost 8 years on distributed file system, replication, directory services and security components of Windows in various roles including as a program manager, development lead and software design engineer.
Baelson Duque
Baelson Duque started at Microsoft a Systems Engineer and shortly thereafter, became a Tools Engineer building tools for Microsoft Game Studios Operations team that managed zone.msn.com. There he owned the Monitoring Infrastructure where Baelson pioneered MOM 2000 as the Operations Monitoring Platform. Baelson is now a proud member of the System Center Operations Manager Program Management team bringing with him over 5 years of Operational Expertise from many levels in the IT Operations stack. Baelson has been with the OpsMgr PM Team for over 8 years designing many features from core modules in the Infrastructure, many Management Packs, Distributed Application Designer, Synthetic Transactions, and various MP Templates. Baelson is currently a Sr. Program Manager responsible for the Next Gen UI Framework to support Dashboards in OpsMgr 2012 and the Authoring Tools for Management Packs.
Baelson Duque started at Microsoft a Systems Engineer and shortly thereafter, became a Tools Engineer building tools for Microsoft Game Studios Operations team that managed zone.msn.com. There he owned the Monitoring Infrastructure where Baelson pioneered MOM 2000 as the Operations Monitoring Platform. Baelson is now a proud member of the System Center Operations Manager Program Management team bringing with him over 5 years of Operational Expertise from many levels in the IT Operations stack. Baelson has been with the OpsMgr PM Team for over 8 years designing many features from core modules in the Infrastructure, many Management Packs, Distributed Application Designer, Synthetic Transactions, and various MP Templates. Baelson is currently a Sr. Program Manager responsible for the Next Gen UI Framework to support Dashboards in OpsMgr 2012 and the Authoring Tools for Management Packs.
Jason Buffington
Jason Buffington is an analyst and lab engineer primarily focused on projects related to data protection, Windows Server infrastructure, storage and virtualization. Jason has been working in the IT industry since 1989, focusing mainly on data protection and storage technologies. Jason was awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in File System & Storage Solutions. Jason has spoken around the world at numerous Microsoft, business continuity, and storage events, and has been published in several industry journals. Check out Jason’s first book, Data Protection for Virtual Data Centers.
Jason Buffington is an analyst and lab engineer primarily focused on projects related to data protection, Windows Server infrastructure, storage and virtualization. Jason has been working in the IT industry since 1989, focusing mainly on data protection and storage technologies. Jason was awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in File System & Storage Solutions. Jason has spoken around the world at numerous Microsoft, business continuity, and storage events, and has been published in several industry journals. Check out Jason’s first book, Data Protection for Virtual Data Centers.
Pete Zerger
Pete is a consultant, author, speaker and Microsoft MVP focusing on System Center management, private cloud and data center automation solutions. He is a frequent speaker at Microsoft conferences and has written articles for a variety technical magazines including Microsoft TechNet.
He was a contributing author on several books, including Opalis 6.3 Unleashed and the upcoming System Center Orchestrator 2012 Unleashed. He also contributed to the R2 Supplement for Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed and the PowerShell 2.0 Bible.
Pete is also the co-founder of SystemCenterCentral.com, a popular web community providing information, news and support for System Center Technologies. In 2008, Pete founded the System Center Virtual User Group, a group dedicated to sharing System Center knowledge with users around the world.
Pete is a consultant, author, speaker and Microsoft MVP focusing on System Center management, private cloud and data center automation solutions. He is a frequent speaker at Microsoft conferences and has written articles for a variety technical magazines including Microsoft TechNet.
He was a contributing author on several books, including Opalis 6.3 Unleashed and the upcoming System Center Orchestrator 2012 Unleashed. He also contributed to the R2 Supplement for Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed and the PowerShell 2.0 Bible.
Pete is also the co-founder of SystemCenterCentral.com, a popular web community providing information, news and support for System Center Technologies. In 2008, Pete founded the System Center Virtual User Group, a group dedicated to sharing System Center knowledge with users around the world.