Eric Hicks is an IT professional with over 20 years of increasing responsibility for IT success in the manufacturing space, the Internet space, and the lifesciences space. Eric has performed in a variety of roles, including Linux/Unix administration for Akamai technologies during the dot com boom, overall responsibility for all IT functions for both pre and post IPO technology companies, as well as for large biotechs and research organizations. Although starting in a highly technical arena, his career has moved more and more into aligning technology with business needs, and building effective teams who execute business strategy and (hopefully) make it look easy. Eric is familiar with large scale disaster recovery and business continuity needs and planning, business intelligence needs assessment and technology development, and strategic deployments of a variety of enterprise technologies including SharePoint, Cognos, LAN/WAN optimization, and now cloud technologies, both public and private.