Scott Metzger, CTO TransUnion Interactive
Scott Metzger leads Software Engineering and IT Operations at TransUnion Interactive. Over the last 9 years, Scott has overseen the software architecture from an internally developed Service Oriented Architecture stack to the evaluation and adoption of 3rd party SOA technologies.

Scott is an active spokesperson in enterprise application development and management. In 2006, Scott was also recognized in InfoWorld’s top 25 CTO awards for his pioneering efforts on service oriented architecture.

Kenneth Venner, CIO Broadcom Corp
Ken Venner has served as Chief Information Officer since joining Broadcom in 2000 and he is responsible for all business systems, computing and telecommunications infrastructure. He was elected a vice president in 2002. Previously, Venner was Vice President of Product Management and Chief Information Officer of Rockwell Electronic Commerce from 1997 to 2000.

“Mechanical disk arrays with their high relative latency, high cost per I/O and significant maintenance, power and manageability costs will hold back the movement to an enterprise cloud-based architecture,” Venner said. “Violin brings the right blend of high sustained performance, low cost and large scale that will allow the industry to move rapidly to adopt this architecture. I look forward to assisting Violin in the industry through my role as an advisor for the EDA and semiconductor industries.

Chris Corrado, Senior Vice President of Technology Solutions, Governance and Mobile Applications, Asurion
Asurion is the global leader in technology protection services. From lost, stolen and damaged wireless handsets to malfunctioning computers or HDTVs, Asurion provides more than 70 million consumers worldwide with best-in-class, next day device replacement.

As Senior Vice President, Corrado oversees Asurion’s expanding information technology, project management areas and mobile applications. Most recently, he was the Chief Technology Officer at eBay overseeing site operations, information technology and security. Prior to eBay, Corrado served as CIO and EVP of AT&T Wireless. While at AT&T Wireless, he oversaw the alignment of the company’s technical infrastructure with its business strategy. Prior to joining AT&T Wireless, Corrado was the head of the Security Solutions Practice at Wipro Technologies. Previously, he held CIO and CTO positions domestically and abroad at three marquee investment banks: Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley. All of these firms set the standard for outstanding use of technology in the financial services industry. Corrado also helped Merrill Lynch manage through the 9/11 tragedy, restoring their capital markets businesses.

Gerrit Schutté, SVP & CIO ConAgra Foods, Inc
“Our business relies on a fully functional and reliable SAP ecosystem with high performance transactional and analytics capabilities.” Schutté said. “We see Violin’s technology as a potential means to help meet our increasing IO demands and reliability requirements. I look forward to advising Violin’s management team along its path toward delivering products that can help large companies running SAP to improve their ability to deliver better performance to users.”

Schutté joined ConAgra Foods in 1998. He has successfully led ConAgra’s restructuring, consolidation and modernization of IT resources including the design and construction of state-of-the-art data center capabilities, outsourcing of legacy application systems and proliferation of PMO disciplines and standards across the enterprise. He has deployed effective technical and leadership development capabilities throughout all areas of the IT organization. Schutté’s organizations have successfully implemented a single SAP instance across multiple business platforms and functions including Finance, Supply Chain, Sales and R&D. In 2009, ConAgra became the first company in the Americas to be awarded certification from SAP as an Advanced Customer Center of Expertise. Prior to joining ConAgra, he served as SVP IS Infrastructure for the Mutual of Omaha Companies and VP of Systems and Operations for the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. Schutté is a native of New York City, holds a BA degree from Fordham University and an MA from Central Michigan University.

William Pappas, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Alliance One International
“We pursue innovation and excellence at Alliance One International, and we continue to look for ways to improve performance and reliability while lowering our operating costs for all key systems,” Pappas said. “Clearly, Violin’s silicon memory array directly addresses the imbalance between our company’s compute workload and existing disk based storage systems. Violin’s innovations bring low cost and large scale to our Microsoft Virtualization projects and I look forward to advising Violin’s management team on the design and delivery of products the market is demanding”

As Senior Vice President, Pappas oversees Alliance One International’s expanding information technology and emerging technology requirements. Pappas joined Alliance One International though the Violin Memory, Inc. merger of DIMON Inc. and Standard Commercial Corporation in May 2005, having previously served as Chief Information Officer of DIMON from December 2004. Pappas joined DIMON as Vice President – Information Technology in March 1998 and was appointed Vice President – Chief Technology Officer in October 2001. Prior to joining Dimon, he was a director of consulting at an information technology consulting firm in Atlanta.

Piyush Singh, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Great American Insurance
“To be competitive in a hyperactive cyber shopping environment, it’s necessary to have customer response times on par with the likes of Amazon and Google and that is driving expectations for reduced latency in the business IT environment. Additionally, business technology leaders continue to seek lower costs of operations as they experience exponential demand on storage requirements,” Singh said. “In the insurance industry, document imaging and online access applications are driving storage growth like never before. Disk-based storage systems will not be able to keep pace with response time demands. Violin’s products are designed to address the evolving and emerging needs of businesses that place a premium on reduced latency and the rapid scaling of memory resources. I look forward to advising Violin on its potential in the vertical insurance industry and exploring business opportunities in horizontal applications as well.”

As Senior Vice President and CIO, Singh is responsible for creating the vision and direction of Great American’s IT strategy and operationally executing the same to take the specialty insurer to the next generation. Singh started his IT career in 1988 as a consultant with CitiCorp Overseas Software Limited in Mumbai, India. He moved on to ANZ Banking Group and worked in Bangalore, India while being involved on international assignments in Australia, Greece, United Kingdom, Singapore and the Middle East. Thereafter, he joined Price Waterhouse’s Management Consulting Services group in Jamaica. He joined RLI Insurance of Peoria, Ill. in 1994, and became the company’s CIO in 2004. He was responsible for taking RLI from a back-end focused organization to one that deployed technology to achieve business transformation.