Keynote Speakers

A Ceph developer prior to Inktank, Josh has been working on Ceph for over a decade, across many parts of the system and surrounding projects. Currently he helps lead Ceph development as a member of the Ceph Executive Council, and works as a manager at IBM.

Laura Flores is a Software Engineer at IBM. She is a member of the RADOS team. Her work primarily encompasses developing the Ceph read balancer, maintaining and improving performance in the Ceph mgr, and coordinating upstream testing. Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & English Literature from the University of Iowa.

Vincent Hsu is an IBM Fellow, VP and CTO of IBM storage. He oversees the technical strategy across IBM storage portfolio. He represents IBM in Ceph governance board and actively participating in Ceph community activities. Vincent Hsu has been in storage industry over 30 years across wide spectrum of storage products and technologies. He holds a MS degree in Electrical and Computer engineering and a MBA.

Brett Kelly serves as Technical Director at 45Drives, where he has contributed to the company’s evolution from an early-stage startup to an established provider of large-scale Ceph storage solutions. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from Dalhousie University and brings extensive expertise in both hardware and software product design. Over his career, he has overseen the development and release of the 45Drives product portfolio, aligning technical innovation with the demands of high-performance, open-source storage environments.

Joachim Kraftmayer is a seasoned Ceph expert with over 12 years of hands-on experience in open-source storage solutions and more than 25 years working in open source technologies. As the Ceph DACH Community Leader and Ambassador, Joachim plays a pivotal role in the Ceph ecosystem, contributing to its growth and innovation. He is a longstanding member of the Ceph Foundation, Linux Foundation, and CNCF Foundation, bringing deep expertise in cloud-native technologies. One of the most senior Ceph consultants globally, his extensive senior-level skills in software development and Linux engineering make him an invaluable authority in Ceph support and implementation.

Matthew Leonard has a background in software engineering, embedded systems, and aerospace engineering. After joining Bloomberg in 2013, Matthew spent half of his career in the application engineering space before moving into his role leading the company’s Storage Engineering teams. Before joining Bloomberg, he designed software for experimental spacecraft and the F-18 Hornet. Matthew earned a bachelor’s degree in software engineering from the University of Western Ontario and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Toronto.

Anthony Middleton is the Community Manager of the Ceph Foundation, bringing over seven years of experience growing global tech communities. Based in Chicago, he has led community programs for organizations such as Confluent and Hedera, where he supported thousands of members through data-driven strategies, inclusive programming, and deep engagement. He’s excited to help lead the Ceph community into its next chapter of growth.

Joseph Mundackal manages the Storage Distributed Upstream Engineering team at Bloomberg. It focuses on providing Ceph clusters for Bloomberg’s internal private cloud compute and storage, and, more broadly, the company’s software-defined storage (SDS) environment.

Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2013, Joseph worked on embedded systems for set-top boxes at EchoStar. He earned a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Colorado – Denver and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Purdue University.

Neha Ojha is the Program Director of the Core RADOS Development Team at IBM and an elected member of the Ceph Executive Council, where she leads the project’s open-source community initiatives. Before her current role, Neha served as the Project Technical Lead for Ceph’s RADOS component for nearly five years. She holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dan is CTO for CLYSO, developing and supporting solutions with Ceph, open infrastructure, and cloud native products and services. Dan contributes to the open source Ceph Foundation and community as Executive Council Member since 2021 and Board Member since 2015. Previously Dan was Chief IT Architect at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) and introduced and managed Ceph there between 2013 to 2022. He has a PhD in distributed systems from the University of Victoria.