Juergen Urbanski

is Managing Director and Co-Founder of TechStrategyPartners, an industry analyst and technology consulting firm focused on IT infrastructure and applications. He possesses more than 15 years of operating experience in technology, telecom, media and financial services across North America, Latin America and Europe.

At TechStrategyPartners, he has responsibility for selling and delivering on business technology consulting, serving leading IT vendors and large enterprises. His expertise spans business applications, including on-demand and on-premise, and IT infrastructure, including cloud computing, storage and virtualization. Recent engagements include:

• Identified sales and marketing performance improvements, including organizational and process best practices, for a client with $400 million annual marketing budget. Evaluated business applications vendors against requirements and defined implementation roadmap
  
• Conducted due diligence on a leading business intelligence vendor, subsequently acquired for more than $5 billion. SWOT analysis of business intelligence vendors included capability to optimize indirect cost and outside spend
  
• Determined how standardization, automation and improved manageability in enterprise clouds can reduce legacy applications operating cost by 30-40%. Articulated how barriers to managing IT as end-to-end business services can be addressed
  
• Evaluated ability of 8 application platforms to increase developer productivity and decrease runtime costs
  
• Assessed how to minimize capex in new virtualization deployments and achieve cost savings and resiliency in business continuity, server software and data center automation
  
• Identified how to serve 50% annual data growth at lower cost and complexity by leveraging advances in storage such as modularization, efficiency, flash solid state disk and scale-out architectures
  
• Improved execution and profitability of IT services delivery by creating and implementing a centralized governance and pricing model between HQ and the worldwide field organizations

Previously, he was General Manager of Sequoia Capital-backed wireless company FON in charge of the North American business. At FON, he set up US operations, restructured the legacy team, drove two service provider deals to proof of concept stage, and was also a frequent media and conference spokesperson (incl. NY Times, BBC, Red Herring, PC Magazine)

Before joining FON, Juergen was Director of Marketing and Product Management with Network Appliance. At NetApp, he had worldwide responsibility for service creation, demand generation and partner development of the company’s Consulting and Integration business. His accomplishments include:

• Led organizational transformation resulting in growth of services portfolio from $20m to $60m/year
  
• Defined and successfully launched 8 new IT services, from market segmentation, market and functional requirements definition, pricing, messaging, to outbound activities and analyst presentations
  
• Successfully changed frontline sales rep behavior, resulting in 60% of sales booked as consultative, higher value engagements vs. 90% booked as tactical ‘days sold’ in the past
• Built a team of team responsible for Consulting & Integration services product management, technical marketing and business development
  
• Drove definition of a new global partner management program encouraging VARs and distributors to sell services. As a result, Avnet accounted for 35% of all NetApp US packaged service sales
  
  

Prior to Network Appliance, he spent four years with McKinsey and Company’s Silicon Valley office. At McKinsey, he led joint McKinsey-client teams on large-scale strategy and organizational performance improvement programs across software, hardware and IT services. Select accomplishments include:

• For a top 3 global technology vendor, evaluated various IT services acquisition targets for revenue and cost synergies, eventually culminating in an acquisition of more than $10 billion
  
• For a top 3 global software vendor, identified operational process improvements that saved each major PC and server OEM $20 to 40 million annually
  
• For a top 5 business applications vendor, reformulated the developer program, piloted it with 35 ISVs in US and Europe and determined worldwide cost savings potential of more than $200 million annually
• For one of the emerging businesses of a top 3 global software vendor, created and implemented a repeatable account acceleration program

Prior to business school, Juergen worked with A.T.Kearney in São Paulo, Brazil on large-scale strategic sourcing and procurement optimization programs for banking and telecommunications clients.

Juergen holds a Master of Business Administration with a major in Finance from the Wharton School as well as a Bachelor of Arts from the European School of Business (ESB) in Reutlingen, Germany’s #1 undergraduate business school.  He is fluent in six languages and serves on the board of Creative Community Catalysts.

George Gilbert

is a Co-founder and Principal of TechStrategy Partners (TSP), a strategy consulting firm to the technology industry.  He has 20 years experience in the software industry, both as a Wall Street financial analyst and in product management and marketing.  George is well-regarded throughout the industry for his strategic insights and is a frequent speaker at conferences.

As Principal of TSP, George served the largest global business applications vendor on a variety of business strategy issues including:

• Synthesized and analyzed a review of the highest priority new product opportunities available to the company in a study that was reviewed by the CEO and the entire executive staff
• Developed a set of requirements and a business plan for how to dramatically expand the installed customer base by reaching "information" workers, beyond the traditional "back office" workers
• Collaborated with a new division to plan how to penetrate the application platform business dominated by IBM

Previously, George was the lead enterprise software analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston, one of the leading investment banks to the technology sector.

• During 7 years as an analyst, Mr. Gilbert covered at various times Microsoft, Oracle, BEA, Veritas, SAP, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, i2 Technologies and Siebel, among others
• George assisted numerous clients in the capital raising process including Actuate, Baan, CommerceOne, E.piphany, i2 Technologies, JDEdwards, Retek, and Selectica
• In the annual client polls in Institutional Investor magazine, Reuters and Greenwich, he reached the top ranks in only three years.  His coverage of the enterprise applications industry was widely considered the most comprehensive and the first to explain the potential size of the industry.  In addition, he was the first to issue sell recommendations before each of the vendors peaked at the height of the bubble in the late 1990's

Prior to being an analyst, George worked at Microsoft as a product manager on Windows Server. Before that, he spent 4 years in product management and marketing at Lotus Development on the Notes team. There he initiated the first systematic customer feedback process. Prior to that, he was part of Lotus' strategic planning and development group.  As part of the strategic planning process, he was co-credited by senior management with identifying the need for compound documents, in what became the precursor to the transformation of the product line from individual products to an integrated suite.

George received his BA in economics from HarvardUniversity.