Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 | Melbourne

Enzo Compagnoni is Regional Vice President and General Manager for Red Hat in Australia and New Zealand, responsible for driving business growth and customer digital transformation with open source technology.
He brings over 25 years of enterprise IT experience. Since joining Red Hat in 2016, Enzo has served as Senior Director for Enterprise Sales before stepping into his current leadership role. Prior to Red Hat, he held key leadership positions at technology companies including EMC, PeopleSoft, and PTC.

As a leader, Enzo focuses on leading by example, building strong teams, and delivering customer success. He holds a Bachelor of Business from Western Sydney University. 
Outside of work, Enzo enjoys spending time with his wife Clarissa and two sons, reading, and cycling with the St Kilda Cycling Club.

Ashesh Badani is Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Red Hat, where he oversees the company's overall product portfolio across on-premise, public cloud, and edge environments. His responsibilities span strategy, planning, marketing, and operations for core offerings including Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, Red Hat OpenShift®, and Red Hat Ansible Automation.

Previously as SVP of Cloud Platforms, Ashesh helped solidify Red Hat as a hybrid cloud leader, scaling OpenShift into the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform. He has also driven strategy and integration for major acquisitions, including StackRox and CoreOS.

Prior to Red Hat, Ashesh led product management and marketing at Sun Microsystems and brings more than 20 years of experience across the technology and finance industries.

With 25 years in the Supercomputing industry, Sudarshan has a technical foundation starting as a System Engineer at the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC) in Melbourne and progressed to Team Leadership, Project Management and Business Development roles. Sudarshan was the Country Manager for Mellanox Technologies for 8 years prior to being acquired by NVIDIA and is an expert in High Performance Computing (HPC), Cloud and AI infrastructure. Sudarshan graduated from the Melbourne University and holds Bachelors in Mechatronics & Computer Science and Masters in Business & IT.

Derek Waters is an Account Solution Architect working with financial services customers. Prior to working at Red Hat, Derek spent twenty years working in software engineering across industries as diverse as advertising, defence and health care. He spends his time at Red Hat trying to help others avoid the mistakes he made across those twenty years.

Mandi Buswell, Principal Solutions Architect at Red Hat, is a creative technologist and global speaker. A former Technology Award winner at the Women in ICT NZ Awards, Mandi brings over 30 years of global industry experience driving and overseeing transformative change. Her work at Red Hat focuses on Kubernetes, AI, sovereign cloud strategies, and sustainable solutions. Driven by a deep commitment to positive impact, she combines technical expertise with human-centered problem solving to guide organisations through complex emerging technology transformations.

Sigourney is a Director within Red Hat's Business Value Practice responsible for the Australia and New Zealand market. With over 20 years of experience working with large organisations Sigourney regulary engages with senior stakeholders across the region to deliver strategic advisory services that articulate the business value associated with investing in Red Hat capability focusing on how such investments directly support and accelerate enterprise-level outcomes.  Sigourney is deeply committed to the transformative potential of technology and its ability to create meaningful impact for both organisations and their customers. She brings a holistic perspective to her engagements, ensuring that technology, culture, and process are aligned to support strategic initiatives and drive measurable, long-term value.

Shane Bennett is the Group Leader Cyber Integration at Defence Science & Technology Group, Department of Defence. He has more than 25 years across cyber security, intelligence and space operations. At Defence Science and Technology Group, his work focuses on space launch mission systems and cyber mission assurance, supporting Defence and national-security capabilities. He also brings significant experience developing highly classified systems and working with Australia’s Five Eyes partners.

Garry Daniels is Head of Infrastructure Services and Digital Workplace at Westpac New Zealand. He is a senior technology leader with more than 20 years of experience across enterprise infrastructure, digital workplace, technology and operations. He has held leadership roles across New Zealand, Asia, and the UK, delivering large-scale technology programmes, building high-performing teams, and driving operational excellence within global financial services organisations.

Dr. Derek Zhang is a Delivery Manager - Computer Vision at Auckland Transport. In his role, he leads a team of 25 specialists within the Technology Solutions department, driving the development and deployment of the organisation’s most advanced AI capabilities. The team’s work sits at the intersection of AI innovation, technology leadership, and real-world urban impact turning computer vision from an emerging technology into a critical capability supporting safer roads, more efficient transport networks, and better journeys for Auckland residents. With a PhD in Computer Vision, Derek has played a pivotal role in transforming Auckland Transport’s extensive CCTV network into an intelligent platform.

Udaiya Karuppasamy (UD) is a senior technology leader at Microsoft with nearly two decades of experience helping organisations across Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific navigate cloud, AI and digital transformation. Today, UD leads Azure Cloud and AI sales at Microsoft across Australia and New Zealand, working closely with customers to understand how AI can move beyond experimentation and deliver meaningful business impact. He is at the forefront of conversations around generative AI, agentic AI, data and cloud, helping customers navigate both the opportunities and practical challenges of adopting AI at scale. Throughout his career, UD has led high-performing teams, major strategic partnerships and complex technology transformations, working closely with customers across some of the region’s largest organisations. UD brings a practical, customer-focused perspective to the rapidly evolving AI landscape, drawing on real-world experience to explore how organisations can move from AI ambition to execution — and ultimately transform how they operate, innovate and compete.

John Nelson is the Head of Ecosystem for Red Hat Australia & New Zealand and leads Red Hat’s Cloud and Managed Services ecosystem across Asia Pacific. Joined in 2018, he drives partner-led revenue across hyperscalers, MSPs, systems integrators, and distribution partners, connecting ecosystems into a unified commercial engine.

With a hands-on leadership style, John previously held senior enterprise sales and go-to-market leadership roles at Dell, IBM, and Xerox. He holds postgraduate and executive credentials from Boston University, the Australian National University, Deakin University, and the University of Southern Queensland.

Outside of work, John enjoys spending time with his family, mountain biking, soccer, and tennis with his three children.

Steven brings over three decades of experience in the technology industry, having progressed through various roles including development, infrastructure, operations, and DevOps, before moving into architecture. He currently assists Red Hat customers in implementing intricate business solutions, leveraging the power of Red Hat's Enterprise Open Source technologies.

Nick Day specialises in cloud-native architecture, high-availability platforms, and platform engineering for Telecommunications and Enterprise organizations. With deep expertise across OpenShift, Kubernetes, networking, security and virtualisation he enables teams to build resilient, enterprise-grade platforms that run all workloads.

Akhil Bhaskar (he/him) leads the Specialists organization for the startup segment at Amazon Web Services. Specialists are the leading technical experts across AWS’ entire portfolio of services. Previously, he led the Cloud & AI Infrastructure teams across APJC.

Prior to joining AWS, Akhil has worked in a variety of application development, architecture, sales, and executive roles at both Fortune 50 companies and startups in the United States, Europe, and across Asia-Pacific & Japan. In his spare time, he volunteers at a startup accelerator mentoring startups in the finance, energy, and AI/ML space.

Andreas is leading the MRT (Manufacturing, Retail, Transport) vertical related topics for Red Hat across Asia Pacific. His hands-on experience in startups as well as large scale enterprise transformation programs has given Andreas a solid understanding of business drivers and value creation. Andreas has worked on a wide range of initiatives across different industries in Europe, North America and APAC including full-scale automotive JIT/JIS production systems modernisation, ERP migrations, HR, finance and accounting, supply chain logistics transformations and scalable core banking strategies to support regional business growth strategies. Since joining Red Hat in 2015, Andreas is focussed on helping Red Hat customers to build the necessary capabilities and to make the best-fit technology, methodology and architecture choices. Andreas is a published author on the topics of AI and Technology Operating Models for Cloud and Edge. Andreas got his first Commodore 64 when he was 12 years old and started to work as a software developer in 1996 with Krauss-Maffei in Munich building full mission simulators. Andreas holds an Engineering degree from the University of Ravensburg, Germany.

Throughout his career, Stu has held various roles across corporate, enterprise, vendor, and partner organizations. He is passionate about all aspects of automation and platform lifecycle management.

Dave Ripani is a Solution Architect at Red Hat, where he partners with customers to drive success across the Red Hat Ecosystem. He thrives on exploring new automation ideas and collaborating with clients to turn those ideas into reality. With past experience as both a Product Owner and in Automation, Dave brings a deep appreciation for building scalable, automated, and user-centric environments. In his spare time, you can usually find him breaking things in his home lab, cheering on the blues, or vibe coding something special.

Andy is a Director of Product & Solutions Marketing at Portworx by Everpure, a role he has held since May 2021. In this role, Andy is responsible for driving the GTM and strategic efforts with key technology and channel partners. Prior to Portworx, Andy held multiple product management and product marketing roles at IBM with a focus on Red Hat OpenShift solutions. Andy has also spent time as a management consultant with a focus on the healthcare and higher education industries. Andy received both his BA and MBA from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where he still resides with his wife, son, and daughter.

Benjamin Blasco is a Solution Architect working with customers and partners to get the best from Linux, automation, and containers. With a history in services and telecommunications, he understands the importance of testing, consistency, and repeatability in managing enterprise environments at scale. He enjoys running, heavy metal, and time with family in Melbourne, Australia.

With over 20 years of experience in Free/Libre/Open Source Software (F/LOSS) and *NIX systems, Joel is a strategic advocate for Open Source adoption, particularly in telecommunications. He combines deep technical expertise with business strategy to bridge technology and organisational culture, engineering scalable open infrastructure like large-scale open routing and private cloud architectures.

A seasoned Linux/RHEL administrator, Joel actively engages with upstream community projects and governance. His background in social and data sciences enables a holistic approach to complex business challenges, driving sustainable open technology solutions.

Connect with him to discuss strategic Open Source initiatives or Linux expertise.

Socials:
https://cloudisland.nz/@jwp
https://linkedin.com/in/aenertia

Simon leads a practice of solution architects across APAC supporting our GSI partners to transform and modernise their clients using technology from Red Hat. With over 20 years of experience consulting with enterprises and government agencies, Simon specialises in emerging technologies, AI, cloud architecture, cybersecurity, and automation. 

Sudesh Krishnamoorthy is a Solution Architect at IBM Consulting focused on cloud-native computing and enterprise AI. He helps organizations across industries deploy Red Hat and IBM technologies. Sudesh brings extensive experience delivering large-scale enterprise deployments on private infrastructure for government and public sector clients.

Shane Boulden is a Solution Architect at Red Hat, supporting Fortune 500 companies and government organisations across Australia and the region to adopt open source technologies. He is a frequent speaker at events including Red Hat Ansible Automates and MilCIS, and recently spoke about the 'StackRox' open source project at Everything Open 2025, held in Adelaide. He has contributed to security-focused open source projects like 'Compliance as Code', StackRox, and Keycloak, and is a contributing author to the second edition of  "The Kubernetes Bible". His recent focus has been looking at applications of generative AI and security, and helping organisations modernise applications with OpenShift Virtualization.

Saanvi Bajaj is a Red Hat Solutions Architect specialising in OpenShift, with previous experiences in product delivery, lifecycle and security in other roles in enterprise organisations. She harbours great enthusiasm for the emerging technologies, and even greater enthusiasm to collaborate with organisations to achieve success through enterprise grade container management and application platform solutions.

Bryon Baker is a Specialist Solution Architect for Red Hat Asia Pacific. Having previously held managerial, engineering and architecture positions at National Australia Bank, Rational Software (USA), Ivar Jacobson International, and Siemens Research (UK), Bryon brings over 30 years of diverse experience in the IT industry.

Bryon’s experience spans embedded systems, electronics engineering, systems engineering, enterprise architecture, AI/ML and product management. Bryon is most passionate about machine learning and distributed system architectures.

Bryon holds a Bachelor of Science from Deakin University with majors in Mathematics and Computer Science.

John Bermingham is a Solutions Engineering Manager – Enterprise at NetApp, with more than a decade of experience helping enterprise organisations navigate data, infrastructure and technology transformation.
Beginning his NetApp career in pre-sales engineering, John progressed through senior technical and strategic roles, including Senior Presales Engineer, Account Technology Strategist and Senior Solutions Engineer, before moving into his current leadership role. This breadth of experience gives him a unique perspective that spans hands-on technical engineering, customer strategy and enterprise technology leadership.

Today, John works closely with enterprise customers and technical teams to address complex challenges across data management, hybrid cloud, virtualization and modern infrastructure. He is passionate about turning complex technology into practical solutions that help organisations modernise their environments, simplify operations and unlock greater value from their data.

With a career spanning technical depth, strategic consulting and engineering leadership, John brings a pragmatic, customer-focused perspective to the evolving world of enterprise IT and hybrid cloud.

Jason Stringer is an OpenShift Sales Specialist at Red Hat, where he helps customers build the platforms that power AI, hybrid cloud and modern applications. With more than 20 years of enterprise IT experience accross Red Hat, Cisco, IBM and HP, Jason specialises in helping organisations modernise their infrastructure and confidently adopt new technologies.

Jamie Richardson is Senior Solutions Engineer at Veeam Software, focused on cloud-native applications, Kubernetes and cyber resilience. Over two decades in the industry he has worked in solution engineering roles across APAC at VMware, architected developer and multi-cloud platforms for VMware Tanzu, served as CTO at Oreta, and driven service innovation at Telstra. A hands-on technologist, Jamie is known for translating disruptive technology into practical outcomes for customers.

James is a seasoned technology leader with over 20 years of experience in engineering, technical marketing, and product management. As Senior Director of Product Management, he is responsible for Red Hat’s developer and application related technologies including Red Hat Developer Hub, Podman Desktop, Secure Software Supply Chain, and several other products.

He has worked in numerous roles including sales engineering, technical marketing, and product management while at Red Hat over more than 17 years. Prior to Red Hat, James held leadership roles in engineering and architecture at several startup companies and large technology organizations.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business.

Outside of work James enjoys running, reading, and spending time with his wife and six children.

Ramy is a Specialist Solutions Architect for Red Hat. He is a veteran software engineer with a lifetime involvement in software development. During his career, Ramy has been involved in the development of various exciting projects like telecom billing & rating systems. Before he joined the world of Open Source Software, he spent 10 years in the telecom industry working for companies like Ericsson & Vodafone. He has a broad perspective on the development lifecycle and on what works (and does not work) when it comes to software projects.

Steve has spent two decades helping Australia's largest organisations get more out of the platforms they have already bought. A founding member of an award-winning enterprise integration consultancy acquired by Capgemini, he now leads strategic platform engagements at Kestrel Eight across hybrid cloud, enterprise integration and data resilience. His work covers mapping the estate, sequencing the migration and supporting clients through the change.

Adam has spent over 25 years founding and leading business and IT advisory companies that deliver complex IT programs for Australia's largest organisations. He has guided major transformations from legacy infrastructure to modern, outcome-driven operating models, building the leadership teams and commercial strategy behind that change. He founded Kestrel Eight to bring that same discipline directly to clients: the right tools, the right people, and results clients actually get.

Tertius Bouwer is an Automation Specialist for Red Hat, with expertise in automation leveraging Ansible technology, supporting the automation journeys of organisations across Australia and New Zealand.

Tertius has a keen focus on driving organizational growth and efficiency through automation. He harnesses the power of Ansible to streamline processes and optimise workflows for clients across diverse industries in Australia.
Having honed his skills over the past 20 years, Tertius possesses a deep understanding of how automation can revolutionise business operations, enabling companies to achieve their objectives with greater speed and precision. Tertius combined technical acumen with a customer-centric approach, he excels in crafting tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of each client.

Mina George is an Automation Specialist Solutions Architect at Red Hat, with over 20 years of experience in managing and automating infrastructure services in multi-cloud environments across the telecom, ICT, finance industries, and government sector.

Mina has extensive hands-on experience in designing, implementing, and operating solutions using multiple products in the Red Hat portfolio, as well as non-Red Hat industry-leading technologies. Driven by a zero-touch automation mindset, Mina excels at evaluating organisational challenges, identifying opportunities for process improvement, and designing solutions that drive business growth and optimise systems and workflows.