Fireside Chat: IoT Platform: A Customer's Foundation for Success

Jason Mann is responsible for growing IoT revenue and providing global focus, strategic direction and alignment across the SAS IoT analytics portfolio. He oversees the research and development, product management and marketing, and execution of the sell-through strategy across the portfolio. “My job is to empower R&D teams to innovate and create the forward-looking solutions that enable customers to seize the opportunity inherent in IoT, solve specific business challenges and capitalize on the insights mined from the data,” said Mann. Prior to his current position, Mann served as Director of Product Management for Industry Solutions and the Internet of Things where he set the strategic IoT direction for SAS. He was also responsible for product management of the manufacturing and supply chain, retail, energy, and health and life sciences industry solutions. Prior to that, he served as Manufacturing Industry Strategist where he led the internal and external positioning of SAS’ distinctive competence and value to the manufacturing industry. Before joining SAS in 2003, Mann worked at Nortel Networks for 10 years where he led the multiyear design and implementation of global manufacturing operations and order management systems. Mann received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University.

Nicole Raimundo proudly serves as the Town of Cary’s Chief Information Officer. Nicole was recently awarded the North Carolina Technology Association’s 2016 Public Sector CIO of the Year Award. She is a passionate technology leader with both private and public sector experience. Nicole promotes the value of partnerships and innovative thinkers in government while continuously pursuing new models of civic innovation for collaborative citizen facing projects. Nicole serves on the Advisory Boards for Wake Technical Community College and Smart Cities Connect as well as is the Chair of the CIO Regional Triangle J Council of Government. Before coming to the Town of Cary, Nicole served as the Chief Operating Officer for the City of Raleigh where she was responsible for the creation and direction of the award winning Open Data program for the City of Raleigh. Previous to that, Nicole spent 15+ years in the private sector leading both onshore and off shore development teams.

Tony Shakib leads Microsoft’s IoT Business Acceleration (IBA) team inside Azure engineering organization and drives the Azure IoT Eco-system and strategic business engagements for top 100 IoT Enterprise Accounts, Partners, Developers and ISV/Startups. Tony is accountable for IoT customer value realization, business development, rapid solution deployment, joint customer GTM programs and accelerating time and process to large-scale commercial deployments. The IBA team focuses on top industries such as IIoT/Manufacturing, Mobility/Connected Vehicle, Smart Spaces/Utilities, Retail, Healthcare and Agriculture. Microsoft IoT team develops unique IoT/AI/ML technologies and digital solutions for all industries. Microsoft is also the leader in the hybrid intelligent cloud and edge architectures and provides a comprehensive Platform-as-a-service and Software-as-a-service (IoT Central) capabilities for rapidly developing and deploying massively scalable IoT applications. Tony has more than 27 years of business leadership and management experience in the communications space. As Vice President of IoT Vertical Business Solutions for Cisco, Tony led Cisco’s Internet of Things business development, Industrial solutions creation, Vertical thought leadership and customer relevancy across Process Manufacturing (Oil & Gas and Mining), Discrete manufacturing, Transportation, Utilities, Smart City, M2M, Retail and Defense verticals.