Mark Russinovich is a Technical Fellow in the Platform and Services Division at Microsoft. Russinovich is a widely recognized expert in Windows operating system internals as well as operating architecture and design. His discovery of a rootkit on popular Sony audio CDs led to industry reforms in the area of computer privacy.

Russinovich joined Microsoft when Microsoft acquired Winternals software, the company he cofounded in 1996 and where he worked as Chief Software Architect. He is also cofounder of Sysinternals.com, where he wrote and published dozens of popular Windows administration and diagnostic utilities including Filemon, Regmon, Process Explorer and RootkitRevealer. He previously worked at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, researching operating system support for web server acceleration and serving as an operating systems expert.

Russinovich coauthored "Inside Windows 2000" and "Windows Internals," both from Microsoft Press, is Senior Contributing Editor for Windows IT Pro Magazine, and has written many articles on Windows internals. He has been a featured speaker at major industry conferences around the world, including Microsoft's TechEd, IT Forum, and Professional Developer's Conference, as well as Windows Connections, Windev, and TechMentor, and has taught Windows internals, troubleshooting and file system and device driver development to companies worldwide, including Microsoft, the CIA and the FBI. Russinovich earned his Ph.D. in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jeffrey Snover is the Partner architect for Windows Manageability at Microsoft. He is the inventor of Windows PowerShell, Microsoft's next generation Automation/Scripting technology. Jeffrey has spent the majority of his 28 years in the industry focused on the problems of network and systems management. Prior to coming to Microsoft in 2000, Jeffrey was an architect in the CTO office at Tivoli and was the development manager for NetView. Jeffrey was also a Consulting Engineer and development manager at Digital where he led various network and systems management projects. Prior to that he worked on networking protocols at Apollo Computer, MUMPs at Greystone Technology and process automation at Storage Technology Corporation.

Mike Manos is general manager of Data Center Services within Global Foundation Services, responsible for the world-wide operations and construction efforts of all Internet and enterprise data centers for Microsoft. These data centers support MSN and Windows Live branded services, Microsoft communication and collaboration services as well as 150 additional Microsoft services and web portals.

In addition to his responsibility for ongoing administrative and technical support of servers, network equipment and data center equipment residing within data center facilities, Manos directs the design, construction and facility-related technology research as it relates to data center architecture.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Manos was responsible for all global network and data center operations for Walt Disney Internet group including Disney.com, ESPN.COM, ABC.COM and Park and Resorts.  He was also the chief technology officer for Nuclio Corporation, which was eventually purchased by Sun Microsystems. Manos has also held executive positions at Rhythms NetConnections (now part of Verizon), and O/E Systems, a regional integration and consulting firm in Chicago specializing in carrier-grade broadband network design.

Manos attended the Illinois Institute of Technology, maintains multiple industry technical certifications and is an active industry blogger.  He is happily married to his wife of 11 years, Angela, and has three children.  He enjoys spending time with his family, outdoor activities and has a fervent love of history.

Iain McDonald has worked for Microsoft for 16 years; currently he is General Manager for Windows Server in Redmond. A native of Australia, he started working for Microsoft's Australian Subsidiary in 1991. After moving to the US in 1992, he spent 6 years in the Exchange Server development team where he worked on the first three versions of that product. Over his time in Exchange, his responsibilities moved from the connectivity components, to the deployment in Microsoft, to being the Project Manager for the 5.0 & 5.5 releases. After the release of Exchange 5.5 he became a member of the Outlook Web Access development team for their redesign which became the first and the model for what are now AJAX applications At the end of 1998 he moved to the Windows group where he accepted responsibilities as the Project Manager for Windows 2000. In this role he owned day to day operations of the development group, & project schedule. For Windows XP & Windows Server 2003 he was Project Director where his responsibilities included day to day operations of the development group, project schedule & the overall feature set of Windows. In his current role in the Windows Server organization he owns vision, planning, & delivery of future releases of Windows Server. Prior to working for Microsoft he worked with Northern Telecom, as software development contractor & spent his twenties as a good for nothing professional musician.

Roger Halbheer joined Microsoft as Chief Security Advisor of Microsoft Switzerland in 2001 and was promoted to the role of Chief Security Advisor for Microsoft Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in February 2007. Roger leads a team of national Chief Security Advisors across EMEA who work with organizations in the commercial and public sectors - including national governments, law enforcement and intelligence agencies - on information technology issues and strategies. He is a trusted advisor to C-level executives, governments and law enforcement agencies and has established relationships with security communities and government agencies across the region. Roger is a regular speaker at industry events and has worked with national and international print and broadcast media both to represent Microsoft and to provide expert comment on broader security issues. A Swiss national, Roger holds a Master of Computer Science degree from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and is a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP). Before joining Microsoft, he was responsible for e-Business Risk Management at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Switzerland. He lives in Zurich and is married with two sons.

Biography to follow

Jeff Woolsey is a Senior Program Manager Lead for Windows Virtualization in the Server and Tools Business (STB) at Microsoft. Jeff has over ten year's virtualization experience and has been an integral in the development of Virtual PC 2004, Virtual PC 2007, Virtual Server 2005, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the new hypervisor-based virtualization technology, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. Jeff is a sought after virtualization expert and has presented in numerous keynotes with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Bob Muglia.

Steve Riley is a product manager in Microsoft's Security Business Unit in Redmond, Washington, USA. Steve specializes in network and host security, communication protocols, network design, and information security policies and process. His customers include various ISPs and ASPs around the United States, as well as traditional enterprise IT customers, for whom he has conducted security assessments and risk analyses, deployed technologies for prevention and detection, and designed highly-available network architectures. Steve is a frequent and popular speaker at conferences worldwide, often appearing in Asia one week and Europe the next. When not evangelizing the benefits of Microsoft security technology, he spends time with customers to better understand the security pain they face and show how some of that pain can be eliminated. Having been born with an Ethernet cable attached to his belly button, Steve grew up in networking and telecommunications; the simple telephone still provides endless hours of exploratory joy. Besides lurking in the Internet's dark alleys and secret passages, he enjoys mountain biking, clubbing and the occasional rave, freely sharing his opinions about the intersection of technology and culture, and hanging with his family and friends in the center of the universe otherwise known as Seattle, Washington.

http://blogs.technet.com/steriley

Don Schmidt is a Principal Program Manager Architect in Microsoftâ's IDA Technical Strategy Group and a recognized authority on Identity Federation and Security for distributed systems. He led the Active Directory Federation Services development team to deliver cross-platform authentication and authorization, with Web Single Sign-on for end users. Don currently works on the architecture of Microsoft's platform for identity management and privacy protection for both enterprise infrastructure and consumer web services, with a focus on CardSpace, Security Token Services and Authorization Services. He is also a spec author for WS-Federation. In this role Don wrote the OASIS WSFED TC charter, and has been driving harmonization with the SAML standard by developing a proposal for WS-Federation to adopt the SAML 2.0 metadata structure. He has become a leading Microsoft spokesman on the topic of federated identity to the analyst community, as well as to key government and industry organizations, such as NIST and the Liberty Alliance. Don is perhaps best known for his passion and commitment for shaping enterprise customer requirements into shipping products. He is considered a trusted adviser by many of Microsoft's largest commercial and government customers with respect to their identity, privacy and security needs. When Don joined Microsoft in 1995 he became the Lead Security PM for Site Server and the Microsoft Commercial Internet System; he provided security oversight and review for all the server components and personally led development of the Membership System which provided LDAP directory services and Internet scale authentication. In 2000 he moved to the Windows Core Security team. As a Lead PM Don drove the design and development of Windows Server security features such as Forest Trust, SID Filtering and Selective Authentication for Active Directory, plus Protocol Transition and Constrained Delegation extensions to Kerberos. Prior to joining Microsoft, Don worked as a Principal Software Engineer and Architect, at both Accent Technologies (five years developing PC authentication, encryption and access control products for government and banking) and Wang Laboratories (seven years developing system software for PC-minicomputer distributed applications). Throughout his career Don has been heavily involved in standards work. He was an acknowledged contributor to the Common Criteria and has been a Microsoft representative in the IETF PKI and LDAP working groups.

Kimberly L. Tripp is a SQL Server MVP and a Microsoft Regional Director and has worked with SQL Server since 1990. Since 1995, Kimberly has worked as a Speaker, Writer, Trainer and Consultant for her own company SYSolutions, Inc. In consulting, Kimberly tackles tough real world problems focused mostly on performance, tuning, system availability and minimizing data loss. In writing, Kimberly contributes regularly for SQL Server Magazine, has written numerous whitepapers for 2005 and is currently working as a coauthor on two SQL Server 2008 titles. In speaking, Kimberly lectures for a variety of events such as Microsoft Tech·Ed and Microsoft ITForum, where she is consistently a top rated speaker. Her comments usually include that she has a gift of being able to discuss complex technical topics with ease and occasional humor. Currently, Kimberly is creating SQL Server 2008 content including articles, labs, whitepapers and workshops. Prior to starting SYSolutions, Kimberly held positions at Microsoft including Subject Matter Expert/Trainer for Microsoft University and Technical Writer for the SQL Server Development Team. You can get more details about Kimberly on her website: http://www.sqlskills.com/ and and her blog: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/Kimberly.

Biography to follow

Buck Woody has been working with Information Technology since 1981. He has worked for the U.S. Air Force, at an IBM reseller as technical support, and for NASA as well as U.S. Space Command as an IT contractor. He has worked in most all IT positions from computer repair technician to system and database administrator, and from network technician to IT Manager. But it is the database field he always returns to. He has been a DBA and Database Developer on everything from an Oracle system running on a VAX to SQL Server and DB2 installations. Buck has a business degree and several industry certifications, including MCSE, MCDBA and Brainbench DBA. He is the author of over 300 SQL Server articles and four published SQL Server books; he is the site personality on InformIT.com's SQL web, and was the President of the Tampa SQL User's Group for 5 years. He was awarded the Microsoft MVP Award in 2006 for SQL Server, and started work in the SQL Server Team at Microsoft a year later. He has over twenty years extensive professional and practical experience in computer networks and network design. Experienced in design and management of business and technical systems, as well as marketing and training those systems to the user community and corporate officers.

Paul S. Randal is the Managing Director of SQLskills.com, which he runs with his wife Kimberly L. Tripp. He is also a SQL Server MVP and a regular author for TechNet Magazine. Paul started in the industry in 1994 working for DEC on the VMS file system and its check/repair tools (the equivalent of chkdsk for NTFS. In 1999 he moved to Microsoft to work on SQL Server, specifically on DBCC. For SQL Server 2000, he concentrated on index fragmentation - well, removing it! - writing both DBCC INDEXDEFRAG and DBCC SHOWCONTIG, plus various algorithms in DBCC CHECKDB to support it being able to run online. Paul then spent the first 3 years of SQL Server 2005 development rewriting the DBCC CHECKDB and repair code-base, gaining extensive insight into disaster recovery scenarios and problems through close partnership with the SQL Server PSS (Product Support) group. Paul spent the remaining two years of SQL Server 2005 development leading/managing a 9-person development team in the Core Storage Engine. His team was responsible for data access and storage (DBCC, space allocation, indexes & heaps, pages & records, text/LOB storage, snapshot isolation, bulk load etc). For SQL Server 2008, Paul decided to put his customer passion to better use and switch to a Program Management role within the Storage Engine team - first with responsibility for the entire Storage Engine for a year, and then with a narrower, more hands-on focus on the Core Storage Engine. This involved both feature set definition plus customer and partner engagements. It was during this phase of Paul's career that he first started public speaking, with his first session being on DBCC Internals at TechEd US 2006. This was also where he met Kimberly, and they were subsequently married July 29th 2007. In 2007, after 8.5 years on the SQL Server team, Paul left Microsoft to join Kimberly running SQLskills.com and pursuing his new-found passion for presenting and consulting. Paul regularly presents at conferences and user groups around the world on high-availability, disaster recovery, database maintenance, and Storage Engine internals. His popular blog is at http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/ and he can be reached at paul@sqlskills.com.

Bob Beauchemin is a database-centric application practitioner and architect, instructor, course author, writer, and Director of Developer Skills for SQLskills. He's been an application developer and DBA with relational databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, and DB2 as well as non-relational databases including IMS/DB, IDMS, and others. Over the past three years he's been teaching his SQL Server 2005 course to over 500 students worldwide through the Ascend program. He is lead author of the books "A First Look at SQL Server 2005 For Developers" and "SQL Server 2005 Developer's Guide", author of "Essential ADO.NET" and has written articles on SQL Server and other databases, database security, ADO.NET, and OLE DB for MSDN, SQL Server Magazine, and others.

http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/bobb

Jesper M. Johansson is a Principal Security Architect working on risk-based security vision and security strategy for a well-known Fortune 200. He is also a contributing editor to TechNet Magazine. His work consists of ensuring security in some of the largest, most distributed systems in the world. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems, has more than 20 years experience in security, and is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Enterprise Security. His latest book is the Windows Server 2008 Security Resource Kit.

Biography to follow

Johan Arwidmark is a consultant and all-around ubergeek specializing in Enterprise Windows Deployment Solutions. Johan speaks at several conferences each year, including IT-Forum, MMS and TechEd. He is also actively involved in deployment communities like deployvista.com, itproffs.se and myitforum.com, and has been awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Setup & Deployment Johan is known for an energetic and humorous style, tackling complex concepts using simple "Real World" scenarios and lots of live demos. His areas of expertise include: Enterprise Windows Deployment Tools and Solutions, BDD/MDT, WinPE, USMT, WDS and SCCM 2007

Edwin Yuen is the Technical Product Manager in the Windows Enterprise Management division for System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Edwin came to Microsoft with the July 2006 acquisition of Softricity. Edwin also has 13 years of technical consulting experience in both the commercial and federal space. He has a BS in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Biography to follow

Brian Komar is the President and co-founder of IdentIT Inc., a consulting firm specializing in identity integration and network security solutions. Together with Paul Adare, Brian's business partner, IdentIT Inc. delivers and identity integration consulting engagements for Microsoft's customers. Brian has written several books related to computer security during the past few years, including the Windows Server® 2008 PKI and Certificate Security, Microsoft Windows Security Resource Kit, Windows Server® 2003 PKI and Certificate Security, and Firewalls for Dum¬mies. In addition to writing books, Brian has written white papers related to PKI for Microsoft including: Implementing and Administering Certificate Templates in Windows Server 2003, "Troubleshooting Certificate Status and Revocation",  Planning and Implementing Cross-Certification and Qualified Subordination Using Windows Server 2003 and Certificate Revocation Checking in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008  and he developed course 2821, Designing and Managing a Windows Public Key Infrastructure, the Microsoft Official Curriculum course on PKI. Brian is also a frequent speaker at IT industry conferences such as Microsoft Tech Ed, Windows Connections, and Microsoft IT Forum. Brian specializes in sessions that look under the hood at security and discuss practical implementation of security based on experiences from the field. In his spare time (which isn't much), Brian likes to play volleyball, hike with his wife Krista, and play golf. If you wish to contact Brian, you can reach him at brian.komar@identit.ca.

Jason has been with Microsoft for 10 years within Microsoft's Mobile Communication Business Jason is responsible for business development for mobility solutions for Major Enterprise accounts.  Jason has responsibility for enabling Enterprises to become more mobile, agile, flexible, opportunistic, and achieve the next level of productivity. With the latest innovation in mobile devices and networks--organization cans, for the first time, extend the central nervous system of the business beyond the office walls. His blog is at http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonlan

Jason Leznek is the Senior Product Manager for Windows Vista Networking. He has been with Microsoft for almost ten years and was the Product Manager for Windows Server Update Services and Group Policy prior to joining the Windows Vista team. Prior to that, he spent seven years in the field working with Microsoft enterprise customers.

Michael Niehaus is a senior software development engineer in Microsoft's Solution Accelerator Team.  He is the lead developer for the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, a free collection of tools and guidance for deploying Windows and Office faster and more efficiently.  Prior to joining Microsoft in 2004, Michael spent his entire career in enterprise IT, focused on deploying and managing Microsoft software.

http://blogs.technet.com/mniehaus

Scott Schnoll (MCT, MCSE, MCSA) is a Principal Technical Writer on the Exchange User Education team at Microsoft where he authors content on a variety of topics related to Exchange Server, including clustering, high-availability, storage and performance. He is a frequent speaker at major industry conferences, such as Microsoft TechEd, Microsoft IT Forum, Comdex and MCP TechMentor. Prior to joining Microsoft, Scott authored Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Distilled (Addison-Wesley, 2004) and he was the lead author of Exchange 2000 Server: The Complete Reference (Osborne McGraw-Hill, 2000). Scott is a former long-time Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server, Windows and Rights Management Services.

As Senior Architect in Microsoft's Platform Architecture Team, Miha Kralj is responsible for leading architectural communities and helping the global architectural profession to mature and grow to meet the strategic challenges of the changing IT landscape. He joined Microsoft in 1998 as a Consultant, where he worked on major projects across Eastern Europe and then Asia-Pacific region. Prior to Microsoft, Miha worked for IBM Corporation in Central and Eastern Europe. He is a Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). In his spare time Miha reads widely and considers what the future holds for the IT industry.

Eduardo studied at Boston University Computer Engineering. He worked for EDS in Mexico managing the Engineering Center, which designed and implemented outsourcing solutions, and then became the Data and Print Center Director, where he managed Data Centers and Printing Centers for over 35 customers IT environments. He then joined Dell Mexico where he managed the sales of servers and storage. He has managed and designed Intel, UNIX and Mainframe solutions, as well as directed several large and complex IT operations. He joined Microsoft in 2005 as the Enterprise Technology Strategy Manager for Latin America, and has been recently promoted to become the Enterprise Technology Architect for the Latin America Region. Eduardo has been actively collaborating in the creation and utilization of the Infrastructure Optimization Models worldwide, developing content and delivering multiple conferences in the United States, across Latin America and Europe such as: Tech Ed, Management Summit, and IT Forum.

Ross joined Microsoft in 2001 as a Messaging Systems Engineer working for Microsoft IT focusing on Exchange Server 2000 and SharePoint designs. After a stint in Microsoft IT, Ross moved to Premier as an Alliance Support Consultant supporting a variety of customers' Exchange and Active Directory implementations. For the last several years, Ross has been a member of the Exchange Center of Excellence (ECoE). The ECoE's goal is to provide high impact, value, and volume expertise to Microsoft customers, Microsoft field personnel, and the product groups. Ross is a jack of all trades and deeply focuses on most aspects of Exchange including high availability, storage, security, client access, and transport.

Ken has been working on collaboration technologies at Microsoft for over 16 years. He spent the first 12 years working on Exchange 4.0 - 2003) designing & implementing both deployment and storage aspects of Exchange. Ken was one of the very first Exchange administrators in the world as he was responsible for deploying the dogfood Exchange servers to the Exchange team and then onto the larger corporate deployment withing Microsoft. For last 4 years he has working on Office Communications Server, initially in a technical evangelist / partner development and more recently as a Group Program Manager responsible for releasing and sustaining the Office Communications Server suite of products. Ken is originally from Canada and holds a B.Sc from Simon Fraser University.

An author and educator specializing in SharePoint Products and Technologies, Bill English (MVP) is an industry leader on this exciting product set from Microsoft. Since 2000, Bill has authored 13 books on Exchange and SharePoint products. Bill is the co-owner of Mindsharp (www.mindsharp.com), a company that offers top-notch educational opportunities on the SharePoint platform. He has presented at Comdex, The Microsoft Exchange Conference, TechMentor, TechEd, Advisor Live, TechEd Europe and Networld Interop. You can find his blog at his AdminCompanion book site. Bill lives in Minnesota with his wife and two children where he enjoys boating, photography and golf during summer, which is the six best days of the year!

Kevin Kline is the Technical Strategy Manager for SQL Server Solutions at Quest Software. A Microsoft SQL Server MVP since 2004, Kevin is a founding board member and past president of the international Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS). He has written or co-written several books including SQL in a Nutshell (O'Reilly & Associates), Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization (APress) and Database Benchmarking: Practical Methods for Oracle & SQL Server (Rampant). Kevin contributes to SQL Server Magazine and Database Trends & Applications and blogs at SQLBlog.com and SQLMag.com. Kevin is a top rated speaker at conferences worldwide such as Microsoft TechEd, the PASS Community Summit, Microsoft IT Forum, DevTeach, and SQL Connections, and has been active in the IT industry since 1986.

Francois Doremieux is Director for Engineering Strategic Customers Engagements in the Office Communications Product Group at Microsoft. Since his arrival at Microsoft, over five years ago, he has been part of the Office Communications Group and instrumental in driving strategy and implementation for Microsoft's voice and telephony capabilities. Prior to joining Microsoft, Francois was responsible for Level(3) Communications' VoIP offering with oversight on technical strategy, business development, product management and product development. He has been involved with VoIP and connected technologies for the past 14 years, working with companies such as Comcast and AT&T. He is a frequent speaker in international events on VoIP and Unified Communications. His current role involves working closely alongside Microsoft's leading customers during their deployment of Microsoft Unified Communications solutions, formulating technical strategy, and supporting execution. His role also involves working collaboratively with the developer teams, framing specifications on the basis of the customer experience. In addition, his primary technical domain of expertise is interoperability with IP-PBX. Francois holds advanced engineering and business degrees from the Ecole Centrale in Paris, the University of Paris, the University of Tokyo and Stanford University.