Flexential's Chief Innovation Officer, Jason Carolan, boasts an impressive background in driving next-generation network-enabled technologies. His cross-functional team translates market trends into strategic initiatives that guide investment decisions across the company's development. Jason is a recognized expert in distributed computing, network systems, and cloud computing. With over 25 years of leadership positions in IT, software development, and technical sales and support, he has worked for various companies, including Sun Microsystems, where he was honored as a "Distinguished Engineer." Jason joined Flexential in 2011 and has held different technology and business leadership roles, including CTO. He led a team at VMware to develop and implement some of the first cloud provider technologies. With several patents in data center resource management, networking, virtualization, and security, Jason was a lead author of "Building N1 Grid Solutions," an early book highlighting the combination of virtualization and automation benefits. He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and the Wall Street Journal CIO Network. He guest lectures at Galvanize Denver and CU-Boulder on cloud and open-source licensing/methodologies and was a former member of the University of Denver AMPLIFY committee, which seeks to develop the Business/Engineering ecosystem.