CONFERENCE MODERATOR


Rusty Weston
CMP Custom Editor

Rusty Weston is an award-winning journalist and researcher with 20 years of business technology experience. Rusty Weston has worked with CMP for the past decade in research, online, editorial management and events roles. In his career at CMP Weston was the founding editor of a number of new products, most recently Global Services magazine, the product of a JV between CMP in New York and Cybermedia in New Delhi. In that role Weston managed a team of reporters, magazine and online production specialists who collaborated to produce a monthly magazine, website, newsletter and events. In 2004 Weston founded Managing Offshore, a newsletter for managers in engaged in global sourcing or business or technology services.

Weston’s CMP experience includes eight years at InformationWeek magazine directing research projects such as the InformationWeek 500, and the Global Information Security Study among many others. For three years Weston edited InformationWeek.com, which under his direction received the Jesse Neal Award, one of the nation's most prestigious journalism honors. Weston, a journalism graduate of San Francisco State University, makes his home in northern California. He can be reached at rusty@thirdsetmedia.com.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER


Todd Furniss
COO
Everest Group


Todd Furniss is widely known for his deep insight into managing organizational and people dynamics, as well as his ability to create momentum to achieve organizational vision. As COO at Everest Group, he manages through all firm activities, overseeing consulting projects in all major industries and heading a rapidly expanding team of consultants who advise primarily Fortune 500 clients worldwide. With insight into crossover points between management and consulting, he blends the two into strategies for approaching critical issues in outsourcing strategies.

Industry/equity analysts and institutional investors often consult Mr. Furniss for his perspective on current developments in outsourcing and its impact on industries and geographic regions, and he is frequently sought as a presenter at industry conferences and corporate management events. Prior to joining Everest Group as COO, he served as Director, Corporate Business Development, at EDS, where he was responsible for developing and executing all growth strategies in the Asia Pacific region. He led the development of the Asia Pacific Growth Plan, still heralded as the best piece of strategy work in EDS. His extensive work in large-scale initiatives for many years in the Asian, North American and European regions gives him broad insight into identification of international approaches to growth markets and execution of business alliances and solution development.
Mr. Furniss has led teams of hundreds of people in cross-functional reporting structures or in different environments, organizations or countries, in applying various concepts and approaches to deliverables in ways that allow creation of strategic impact value. He is deeply involved in assessing trends and developments in the offshore outsourcing market, assessing key success factors and developing best-practice approaches to offshoring.

Mr. Furniss has a BA (Political Science) from Old Dominion University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law.


GUEST SPEAKER


David MacDonald
Partner
Kirkland & Ellis LLP

David MacDonald is a partner in the Intellectual Property Transactional Group in Kirkland & Ellis LLP's New York office.  David’s practice focuses on intellectual property and information technology transactions including outsourcing (contract manufacturing, business process, information technology, applications processing, software development and support, legal and ASP), third party administration services for financial services and products (both retail and institutional), software licensing, hardware procurement, data licensing and distribution, as well as more broadly on technology and marketing transactions.  David also regularly advises clients on the intellectual property and technology issues that arise in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, recapitalizations and bankruptcies. David obtained his J.D. from Rutgers School of Law in 1997, where he received High Honors and was named Order of the Coif.  David received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1991.


SPONSOR PANELIST


Nestor G. Cruz
General Manager, North America Business Group
President
Achievo Canada and Achievo U.S.
Achievo Corporation

Nestor G. Cruz is general manager of the North America Business Group and president of Achievo Canada and Achievo U.S. With more than 20 years as a technology consultant and senior manager in the information technology, manufacturing and telecommunications industries, Cruz transformed Netstar Solutions, a Toronto-based company, from a systems integrator to a leading provider of information technology services. Netstar became a division of Achievo when it was acquired in 2006.

Cruz began his career as a systems engineer at Electronic Data Systems. In addition, he has held consultant and management positions at Oracle Corporation and Bell Canada.

Cruz received a bachelor’s degree in science from the University of Toronto. He also holds a certificate in industrial engineering technology from Ryerson University in Toronto. Cruz serves as Chair of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), Ontario Division board and a member of the Rouge Valley Health System (RVHS) foundation board.



Eric Rongley
CEO and Founder
Bleum Inc.

Eric Rongley founded Bleum in August 2001 and sets the strategic direction for the company's growth and development.  He brings to this role over a decade of experience in building high performance software centers in both India and China. His particular strength lies in building companies to attain the highest of international standards, having led several organizations through the CMM accreditation process in India and China. Bleum is both CMM Level 5 and ISO 27001 accredited. Prior to founding Bleum, Eric established and ran Navion (Shanghai) Software Development Company for Capital One Financial Corp. He led Navion to be listed by the Asian Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern Economic Review as the 10th Best Employer in Asia award in September 2001. Before coming to China, Eric was the General Manager for IVR's (International Voice Register) software development center in India. IVR India was part of an organization that achieved CMM Level 4 in 1998. Eric is currently Chairperson of the East China Chapter of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) and is also Chair of the Ethics Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.



Bob Kramich
Executive Vice President, Business Development
DarwinSuzsoft

Bob Kramich leads DarwinSuzsoft's global business development team and has signed and delivered Chinese services to 17 U.S. clients since Darwin’s acquisition of Suzsoft one year ago. These clients include one of the world’s largest custody banks and the world’s largest infrastructure, systems and software provider. With over 16 years of worldwide business development experience in the high-tech service industry, Bob ensures that DarwinSuzsoft’s clients realize the competitive advantage of China’s robust economy, China’s deep bench of engineering talent and its favorable cost structure.

Previously, Bob was Vice President and General Manager of Converge, a $500 million global high-tech business-to-business semiconductor and services exchange founded by 15 high-tech leaders including HP, AMD, NEC, Hitachi, Solectron, Gateway, Samsung, Tatung, Quantum, and Western Digital. While at Converge, Bob was instrumental in the establishment of Converge's first Asian operation in Singapore in 1999 and its expansion into Shanghai, China in 2002 and Shenzhen, China in 2004.

Bob also served eight years as Vice President of Marketing for the Time Electronics division at Avnet Inc. (NYSE:AVT), a Fortune 500 service provider of semiconductors and related services.