Dr. Christoph is a seasoned computer science professional with extensive experience in research organizations, in the software industry as well as advisor and board member of various industry and research organizations. His areas of expertise are Business-to-Business and Enterprise Application Integration, Workflow and Process Management, Multi-tenant System construction as well as Semantic Computing.
He is author of several books and journal articles on integration, workflow management and semantics. He is active in the professional community as keynote speaker, conference and workshop organizer as well as program committee member. Christoph holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Erlangen, Germany, and worked in several organizations, including BEA Systems, Cisco Systems, Digital Enterprise Research Institute, Oracle Corporation, The Boeing Company and Digital Equipment Corporation. He co-founded the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) in Ireland.

Dr. Sigurd Harand is an experienced IT executive and seasoned businessman. In 1965 Dr. Harand joined IBM, where he had various appointments as systems engineer, manager and executive in Austria, USA, USSR and Eastern Europe respectively. In 1995 Dr. Harand accepted an appointment as Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Bundeslaenderversicherung – UNIQA, Vienna, Austria’s largest Insurance company. From 1999 until 2002 he acted as CIO of mobilkom. After a two years assignment as Vice President Business Development Customer Care and Billing Systems at Amdocs an Israel/USA based Public Company, he accepted an assignment as Research Project Manager at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute the National University of Ireland,(NUIG), Galway, Ireland. In addition to his duties as Research Project Manager he acted until December 2007 as Manager for Business Development and Industry Liaisons. Dr. Harand works now as IT Executive Consultant cross Europe and has regular appointments as reviewer / evaluator at the EU funded FP7 programmes and for other international research organizations. Dr. Harand holds an Engineering Degree in Physics (Diplom-Ingenieur, 1965) and a Doctor's degree in technical science (Dr. techn. 1972) at the Technical University of Vienna in Mathematics. He lives in Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Klaus Gheri is a Vice President of Barracuda Network and runs product management for the Barracuda NG Firewall product line out of Barracuda’s European development center in Innsbruck, Austria. Prior to the acquisition of Austrian based phion AG by Barracuda Networks, Inc. in late 2009 Klaus served as phion’s CTO and co-founder responsible for product and technology strategy and strategic business relationships. Klaus holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Auckland, NZ. After an international research career in quantum communication he left academia as an Associate Professor to start an entrepreneurial career. In this new role Klaus has been a key player in the architectural design and development of phion’s enterprise firewall product line which has meanwhile become the Barracuda NG Firewall. Klaus has over ten years of experience working in the security area and has spoken at many of the leading national and international security events.

Mr. Robert Wardrop is Chief Executive Officer of Belvall Investments Ltd, which provides advisory services to investment management firms. He is an advisor to EcoFin, an international investment management firm based in London and chairs the investment committee of a fund managed by the firm. He is an investor and Director of Asia Broadcast Satellite, a Hong Kong based operator of satellites, and Clarity Health, a Seattle-based provider of information services to the health care industry. Prior to founding Belvall, Robert spent 10 years as the Managing Director responsible for European investments of a subsidiary of the Anschutz Corporation, one of the largest privately owned companies in the United States. Previously, he was the Managing Director of Mediatek Communications in Brussels and Paris, engaged in business development and project finance assignments in the European telecommunications sector. Mr. Wardrop began his career in 1979 at Procter & Gamble in brand management. He is a native of Canada with British citizenship.

Mr. Wardrop is a member of the Global Advisory Board for the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, a member of the Advisory Board for the Queen’s School of Business in Canada, and a Visiting Lecturer in Private Equity, Venture Capital & Entrepreneurship at Imperial College in London, UK. He earned his M.B.A. (with Honors) from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and his Bachelor of Commerce degree (with Honors) from Queen's University in Canada.