Gridstore launches Technical Advisory Council

Gridstore has announced the formation of their Gridstore Technical Advisory Council (G-TAC) comprised of industry leaders with deep expertise and experience in leading-edge hyper-converged technologies and Microsoft solution sets. G-TAC is chaired by Gridstore Founder and CTO Kelly Murphy and is comprised of industry experts with a combined legacy of decades of industry expertise. The mission of G-TAC is to research the myriad options for the hyper-converged market, evaluating current architectural trends and future potential technical developments to ensure the Gridstore product roadmap meets or exceeds end-user demands for the architecting of the most innovative Microsoft-focused systems available in the market.

The council is chartered to provide critical technical evaluation of industry trends and developments and provide advisory direction to ensure that on-going and future engineering initiatives are aligned. The council convened its initial meeting earlier this month at Gridstore corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California, ratifying their charter and setting their 2015 agenda. Subsequent meetings will be held on a bi-monthly basis with the locations to include attendance at key industry events and conferences.

“Having the ability to help guide the development of leading-edge technology futures for the industry is a very exciting challenge,” said Rob McShinsky, Microsoft MVP and virtualisation advisor. “This initial meeting was a powerful launch pad for developing the next generation initiatives. Working with a company as innovative as Gridstore, I can leverage my Microsoft virtualisation expertise and help ensure they continue to be at the forefront of delivering cutting-edge systems to their customers.”

The Council’s founding members are:

Dave Kawula, TriCon Elite Consulting
- Dave is the Managing Principal Consultant and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server environments, and has led the architecture for virtualisation, System Center, Exchange and Internet Gateways. Very active within the Microsoft technical and consulting teams, Dave has provided deep dive technical knowledge on various System Center and Operating System topics. Dave holds over 50 Microsoft certifications.

Cristal Kawula, TriCon Elite Consulting
- Crystal is President of TriCon and the key driver of the TriCon Partner Network. Focusing on IT Consulting Services for the past 10 years, Cristal has seen the costs that organisations endure when visibility is hindered in the enterprise. Through intimate knowledge of TriCon’s Partner Network, she focuses on virtualisation solutions, asset intelligence, and Green IT initiatives to maximise savings in customers’ environments. During her career in the industry, she has worked with Microsoft’s SMSGR and GTR groups to create internal training materials, and certifies in Microsoft and Partner technologies to bridge the gap between the technical and business requirements of an organization

Marcos Nogueira, Chief Technology Officer, Noga IT Consulting Inc.
- Marcos has more than 17 years’ experience in Datacenter Architectures. He is an expert in Private and Hybrid Cloud, with a focus on Virtualisation, System Center and Microsoft Aure. He is a Microsoft MVP and he has more than eleven years as Microsoft Certified, with more than 100+ certifications. Marcos has worked in several industries, including Aerospace, Transportation, Energy, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Government, Health Care, Telecoms, IT Services, and Gas & Oil in different countries and continents.

Rob McShinsky, Sr. System Engineer - Microsoft MVP (Virtual Machine) - Technology Writer & Presenter - Virtualisation Advisor
- Robert (MCSE, MCP, MCTS) has been working in technology for over 16 years focusing on server management and systems architecture design and is currently employed as a Sr. Systems Engineer at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. He is also a regular contributor and member of the Server Virtualisation Advisory Board at SearchServerVirtualisation. Robert has been the development architect working closely with Microsoft as an early adopter and ongoing participant in TAP/RDP programs of Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). This has included video and written case studies, acting as a customer reference, and speaking with industry analysts and vendors about Hyper-V and multiple System Center products.

Mike Burke, Managing Partner, Virtual Dynamics (VDX)
- Mike is an industry recognised driver for the development of solution-based services leveraging virtualisation technologies from many vendors. He possess a vast depth of knowledge around virtualisation solutions from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, as well as many complimentary ecosystem. As an industry-leading consultant, he has architected solutions designed to solve clients’ IT and business challenges, and helped train and mentor a wide array of consulting architects on technical and methodological execution for professional services engagements.

Jaymes Davis, Director of Cloud and Virtualisation Strategies, Entisys
- Jaymes has been involved with providing solutions and technical expertise in the computer industry since 1996 specialising in fringe technologies and advanced computer sciences. He is one of the industry’s top consultants with over 600 client projects ranging from global enterprise companies of 20,000+ employees to regionalised medium-sized businesses to small businesses with 5-25 employees. His white papers and articles have been published and recognised by the industries top virtualisation leaders.