VMware on VMware

Rupak Acharjee, Senior Application Administrator, VMware

Rupak Acharjee is a Senior Application Administrator for VMware’s IT Application Operations team. He has 12 years of IT experience and has worked at VMware IT for more than 6 years. He is responsible for ETL, ControlM, IDR,  and Big Data applications, including supporting mission-critical VMware production systems and various projects.

Gopinath Anantharaman , Senior Director, R&D, VMware

Gopinath Anantharaman manages a global team that is responsible for SaaS IT back office application delivery and works closely with the Cloud Services Platform (CSP) teams. He has held a number of leadership roles within the Business IT group. He has a strong track record of delivering key customer facing portals, enterprise application integrations and secure SSO solutions and is a key contributor to Business IT’s DevOps and Cloud-Native Application journey.

Chanh Chi, Senior Director, IT, VMware

Chanh Chi joined VMware in April 2007 with a focus on supporting VMware’s business and customer-facing applications that require the highest level of availability. He currently leads VMware IT’s Production Cloud Infrastructure team that spans multiple countries around the world.  His team is responsible for managing the operating systems, compute, and storage infrastructure as well as the backups and disaster recovery protection behind VMware’s mission-critical services. His team also manages VMware’s internal Horizon VDI implementation.

Jason Conyard, Vice President, Colleague Experience & Technology, VMware

Jason Conyard is responsible for all colleague-facing technology including the Unified Communication and Collaboration program, worldwide colleague support, and IT for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His team enables their colleagues to collaborate seamlessly across the globe to deliver value to customers. They also partner with the VMware product teams to improve the quality of products delivered to customers. They share feedback on products such as AirWatch, Horizon, and Workspace ONE. Prior to VMware, Jason was Vice President of IT at Juniper Networks.

Brad Doctor, Senior Director, Information Security, VMware

Brad Doctor is an innovative information security leader with over 10 issued patents and many years of professional InfoSec experience spanning multiple industries and technologies. At VMware, Mr. Doctor leads Security Architecture and Engineering for all areas of the company. Prior to VMware, Mr. Doctor led Security Engineering & Architecture at Centurylink including the R&D teams that launched Level 3’s global managed security and DDOS scrubbing offerings.

Boney Francis, UCC Architect, VMware

Boney Francis is a TOGAF-certified Architect aligned with the Unified Communications and Collaboration team. He is responsible for designing, planning, and implementing enterprise-level projects and supporting the teams to Keep the Lights On. With 13 years of IT experience in Messaging and Email systems (including extensive knowledge of Office 365 and PowerShell scripting), he’s always keen to take up challenges and is passionate about delivering a delightful user experience.

Catherine Greenberg, Director, VMware on VMware, VMware

Catherine Greenberg leads the VMW on VMW Program at VMware.  The goals of the program are to deploy our VMware products into our environments and share our feedback with R&D. We also share our product deployment journey and thought leadership topics with Customers. Prior to VMware, Catherine worked at Microsoft in various IT roles including Mergers & Acquisitions and directing and managed large scale IT projects/programs. Her credentials include certificates in ITIL Foundation, Program and Project Management and a Green Belt in Six Sigma.

Jerry M. Griffin, Senior Manager, Infrastructure Operations– IT Operations Global Services, VMware

Jerry is responsible for daily operational support of the engineering and remote office infrastructures within VMware IT. Past projects include implementation of EVO:SDDC within VMware Global Services, load balancing of the Engineering LDAP infrastructure, and Cloud Infrastructure and Engineering workload migrations. With more than 17 years of experience in IT, Jerry has held different roles within state and federal governments as well as non-profit organizations. Jerry also served nine years in the United States Air Force. He holds various certifications from VMware, Red Hat, SUSE, Novell, and Microsoft.

Swapnil Hendre, Director, Solutions Engineering and Design, VMware

Swapnil Hendre is a Director of Solutions Engineering and Design in VMware IT. He is responsible for leading solution architecture from inception to production for Public and Private Clouds in VMware IT. With more than 17 years of IT experience, Swapnil is also one of IT’s resident experts on the design and implementation of NSX micro-segmentation and VMware Cloud on AWS in IT’s Infrastructure and Cloud Operations. Previously, he has worked for Symantec, HP, CSC, and Nortel.

Bask Iyer, CIO, VMware

Bask Iyer is the CIO and an Executive Vice President at VMware. He joined VMware in March 2015 and now leads its global information and technology organization, a group that manages critical technology systems supporting the company’s worldwide business operations. Iyer held a dual CIO role, also serving as the CIO of Dell Technologies between December 2016 and August 2018. A respected industry veteran, Iyer brings more than 25 years of experience in executing and driving change in traditional Fortune 100 manufacturing companies and Silicon Valley-based high technology firms. Prior to joining VMware, Iyer served as senior vice president and CIO at Juniper Networks and as CIO at Honeywell.

Laxminarayan Jayabharthi (Laxmi J), Senior Director, IT Application Development, VMware

Laxmi J is responsible for managing the application integration platform and framework that connect islands of information between various business applications and supporting a long-term solution that is scalable, maintainable, and robust. He is also leading the team responsible for transforming Enterprise IT to evolve and adapt to next generation IT using DevOps and DevSecOps. He joined VMware in 2006.

Romy Kaura, Director IT Mergers & Acquisitions and Services, VMware

Romy is Director of IT Mergers & Acquisitions and Services where he provides thought leadership to the IT M&A organization and transformed its execution to be “a well-oiled machine.” He has 20+ years of experience in IT delivery, digital transformation, DevOps, PMO, M&A, and divestitures. He is passionate about leveraging innovative technology to deliver value.

Raanan Kesar, Sr. Director of Cloud Services Operation (CSO), VMware

Raanan Kesar joined VMware in 2010, and now leads CSO Engineering, a member of the Cloud and Productivity Engineering (CPE) org. He is also co-chair of the Production Readiness Assessment (PRA) program, and was previously was part of the CSP team operations,. Prior to joining VMware, he was with Mercury Interactive R&D (Application Performance Monitoring), Mercury Managed Services, and HP Software as a Service Operations.

Varinder Kumar, IT Director, VMware

Varinder Kumar joined VMware in 2008 and manages the global Application Operations team responsible for 24×7 availability of all corporate internal and external applications including SAP, Oracle, etc. He works closely with the application development and architecture teams to ensure that systems are designed with 100% resiliency. He has 20+ years of IT experience in improving the availability of key business applications and managing multiple ERPs, databases, cloud-native platforms, DevOps, and IT project delivery.

Jerry Li, Senior Manager, IT Release Automation and Disaster Recovery, VMware

Jerry Li is a senior manager focusing on application release management, new technology adoption, and disaster recovery at VMware IT. His responsibilities span streamlining DevOps processes, improving service availability, and operating disaster recovery plans and testing for large-scale enterprise applications. Jerry also works with VMware product teams to improve the quality of the products as part of the VMware on VMware program.

Lyubomir Lyubenov, Cloud Architect, VMware

Lyubomir Lyubenov is a Cloud Architect on the VMware Private Cloud team. He joined the VMware team in 2013 to work on large-scale infrastructure architecture leveraging VMWare’s SDDC products. With more than 15 years of experience in designing, implementing, and supporting large scale enterprise environments, he is helping the VMware’s private cloud team to deliver various cloud services by utilizing VMware’s cloud management platforms.

Michelle McNeil, Senior Director, ePRO (Portfolio Management, Resiliency & Operations), BTA, VMware

Michelle McNeil has worked in the high tech industry in Silicon Valley for more than 25 years. She currently is a Senior Director of ePRO (Enterprise Portfolio, Resiliency and Operations) at VMware. One of her roles is to manage the Global Crisis Management Team (CMT) to coordinate rapid response and resolution to major threats ranging from human-made/natural disasters to cyber security.

Balaji Padmanaban, Senior Director, IT, VMware

Balaji Padmanaban is responsible for IT back-office applications for VMware, including Oracle, SAP, and many other on-premises and cloud software applications. His team enables VMware to implement bottom line and topline impacting projects and programs across Finance, HR, Real Estate, and Legal. Balaji has held a number of leadership roles within the Business IT group over the last several years.

Thirupati Panyala, Senior Director, R&D, Mobile Engineering, VMware

Thiru Panyala has been at VMware since 2011, when he joined to oversee portal/web app research and development. He now leads R&D for mobile apps engineering and IoT Labs. He has more than 25 years of IT experience in web and mobile apps, including ecommerce, digital marketing and customer/partner relationship management.

Balaji Parthasarathy, Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture and Experience Design, Business IT

Balaji Parthasarathy leads the VMware on VMware initiative for Business IT.  He is responsible for the continuous development/continuous integration (CD/CI) and DevOps agenda for Business IT. His team is responsible for the enterprise architecture and design for all key business domains and systems supporting VMware customer and business operations. Balaji is an accomplished IT leader with extensive experience in ERP and Entitlement Management domains. He has successfully launched, directed, and managed large-scale global IT projects/programs.

Mehul Patel, Senior Manager, IT Applications Development

Mehul Patel is responsible for strategy, framework, security, and operationalization of DevOps and DevSecOps practices. In this position, Mehul manages software-defined infrastructure provisioning, release platform enablement & automation, and identity/access management functions. Prior to this, Mehul managed and led teams in Application Integrations and Master Data Management, also at VMware.

Brooks Peppin, Information System Engineer, Colleague Experience & Technology, VMware

Brooks Peppin is an Information System Engineer the in End-User Services organization of VMware IT. He is passionate about VMware end-user computing (EUC) products and delivering a delightful experience to his colleagues.

Pankaj Purwar, Director, Business IT, VMware

Pankaj Purwar is a Director of Business IT at VMware and is responsible for leading IT enterprise applications for Master Data Management and Global Services functions. Pankaj brings over 20 years of experience across strategy, technology, and business transformation to deliver value and a delightful experience to customers. Prior to joining VMware, Pankaj was an IT Director at Juniper Networks.

Paramesh Puttegowda, Senior Manager, IT Messaging Services, VMware

Paramesh Puttegowda is driving cloud transformation initiatives in the Unified Communication and Collaboration team, focusing on Office 365 architecture and operations. He is a result oriented technology leader with more than 15 years of IT experience. Prior to joining VMware, he served as technology lead in the IT Architecture team at Juniper Networks.

Tom Ralph, Senior Cloud Service Architect, VMware

Tom Ralph leads architecture and product improvement for VMware’s global private cloud. His teams are focused on building next generation cloud architecture, while improving the current cloud architectures. Besides running the largest private cloud in the world, he and his teams are also focused on product improvement for external customers and their use cases. In Sept 2010 Tom was the 51st person to achieve the highest level of VMware certification VCDX (VMware Certified Design Expert).

Eric Rong, Technical Architect, Business IT, VMware

Eric Rong is a Technical Architect on the Business IT team responsible for driving the Cloud-Native, DevOps transformation, and strategic project delivery from an architecture and technology perspective. Eric brings 20 years of experience in IT industry focus on technology and application architecture, with a strong track record in delivering key initiatives and projects. Prior to join VMware, Eric worked at Franklin Templeton and HP.

Dan Sanford, Information Systems Engineer, VMware

Dan Sanford is a member of the VMware IT Airwatch team responsible for Apple server and client systems, including Apple system integration, wireless telecom, and Airwatch deployment and license management. He has more than 12 years of IT experience.

Jeremy Sage, Senior  Cloud Site Reliability Engineer, VMware

Jeremy Sage is a senior SRE working with VMware’s private cloud and providing product improvements. His teams are focused on designing next generation cloud architecture while building and maintaining the current cloud architectures. Besides running a large private cloud, his teams are also focused on product improvement for external customers and their use cases.

Velchamy Sankarlingam, Vice President, Cloud Services Development & Operations, VMware

Velchamy Sankarlingam is Vice President of Cloud Services Development and Operations at VMware and has a dual role in IT and R&D managing all infrastructure and common SaaS Operations. Prior to joining VMware, Velchamy was Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Cisco where he was responsible for engineering and operations of WebEx. Before that, Velchamy held Vice President positions at WebEx (was acquired by Cisco) and Presenter.com (was acquired by WebEx).  Velchamy also worked at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), IBM, Network Computing Devices, and Standard Microsystems. Velchamy is on the advisory board of RingCentral and on the board of Bellus3D.

Ashu Saxena, Cloud Infrastructure Administrator, VMware

Ashu Saxena is a Cloud Infrastructure Administrator responsible for the Linux infrastructure in VMware IT. He has 12 years of IT experience.

Mukesh Sharma, Lead Applications Developer, VMware

Mukesh Sharma has more than 18 years of diverse and extensive experience in architecture, software development, business and IT strategy alignment, business transformation, product management, and solution delivery. In his more than 10 years with VMware, Mukesh has worked on various IT platforms, including Finance, CRM, HR, legal, and real estate. He is a member of the VMware GDPR compliance team.

Sachin Sharma, Linux Systems Architect, VMware

Sachin Sharma is a Linux Systems Architect responsible for VMware’s IT Operations Layer 1 Infrastructure. He has 17 year of IT experience and has worked at VMware IT for more than five years.

Sukhjit Singh, Network Systems Engineer, VMware

Sukhjit Singh is Network Systems Engineer responsible for load balancing performance. He has eight years of networking experience.

Brian Smith, Senior Director, Cloud and Productivity Engineering, VMware

Brian Smith leads the SaaS Production Readiness Program (known as PRA), which ensures that all VMware services are meeting internal and external standards for site & service reliability engineering (architecture, security, performance, monitoring, business continuity, CI/CD pipeline, etc.). Brian also leads the team responsible for designing and operating the private clouds that are used by VMware every day and that power the infrastructure behind the VMworld Hands-on Labs. This team is built around a DevOps mentality that leverages infrastructure-as-code to build and maintain the clouds. This team is also responsible for running early VMware product releases and giving feedback directly to the product teams.

Aju Sukumaran, Senior Manager, Colleague Experience & Technology, VMware

Aju Sukumaran leads the End User Services (EUS) client engineering team responsible for EUS IT engineering. He has 17 years of IT industry experience and has worked in various roles within VMWare IT. He has expertise in the Virtual Desktop & virtual application solutions.

John Tompkins, Cloud Network Architect, VMware

John Tompkins is a Cloud Network Architect for VMware’s internal private cloud platform.  He joined the VMware team to work on network infrastructure designs that rely on the SDDC model for high availability, large scale, and multi-tenancy. He has over 15 years of experience in networking, to include both large enterprise and service provider hosting networks.  He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Systems Management from Ohio University.

Shane van Bentum, Director, Cloud Operations, VMware

Shane is an original member of the Site Reliability Engineering team for VMware’s internal private cloud. His responsibilities have included system management, storage, infrastructure builds, as well as performance and capacity management.  Shane now leads the Cloud Operations team following a next-generation cloud operating model and focusing on leveraging infrastructure-as-code to build and maintain one of the largest clouds in the world.

Shaji Vayaveetil, Domain Architect, Business IT, VMware

Shaji Vayaveetil is a TOGAF-certified Domain Architect working in IT Global Support Services (GSS) area. He’s responsible for designing critical applications like MyVmware.com as well as sustainable and futuristic applications for the VMware business. He’s been working at VMware for more than 10 years and was instrumental in implementing ERP solutions (Oracle eBS and SAP). He’s an active member of the VMware enterprise architecture team.

Sunder Vudhya, Director – IT, Digital Order Ops and Advanced Technologies, VMware

Sunder Vudhya manages a global team responsible for the SaaS and Perpetual IT back office application delivery model. His team works closely with the various business organizations like the Global Order Operations and Global Pricing Operations & Cloud Services Platform (CSP) teams. He has been working at VMware for more than 10 years, has held a number of leadership roles within the Business IT group, and is TOGAF-certified.

Zaigui Wang, Senior Manager, Cloud Infrastructure Operations, VMware

Zaigui Wang is a senior manager of Cloud Infrastructure Operations at VMware IT. His team is responsible for planning, designing, and operating the virtualized infrastructure to support mission-critical VMware production systems, including ERP, web portals, enterprise collaboration, and data analytics. Running products to their full potential and sharing his knowledge with customers are his passions. Zaigui’s background includes system and storage administration for 15+ years.