Vice President and CTO, VMware’s Asia Pacific and Japan

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Guru Venkatachalam is the Chief Technology Officer for VMware’s Asia Pacific and Japan business. Guru leads VMware’s efforts in Asia Pacific and Japan to build trusted partnerships with customers and partners and deliver solutions aligned to their strategic priorities. He also plays an integral role in further developing the company’s cloud, app modernization, networking, security, and digital workspace platforms.

With over 28 years of experience in IT, Guru has deep expertise in the financial services sector, where he led several large enterprise transformations, as well as global engineering teams supporting the transformation of end-user computing.

Prior to VMware, Guru worked at Citibank for over 20 years. In his final position as managing director and global-engineering head for end-user computing, he led a team of subject matter experts and architects across global locations to deliver solutions focused on enhancing the user experience.

Guru holds an MBA from the University of South Australia and lives with his family in Singapore.

Country Sales Manager, VMware Vietnam

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Pham Viet Thang is Country Sales Manager for Vietnam at VMware. He is responsible for managing all business operations, as well as developing and executing business strategies to accelerate and extend VMware’s presence and leadership in the country.

Prior to this, Thang was the Country Manager for Pure Storage in Vietnam. In that role, Thang was responsible for building up the brand’s presence in the country, handling its market positioning, as well as putting together an ecosystem of channel partners in order to drive sales and business growth.  

In a career spanning over 19 years in the infocommunications and IT (ICT) space, Thang has worked with organizations such as Oracle, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems amongst others. He has also worked as a research engineer in the Institute for Infocomm Research, which is a part of Singapore’s premier research organization, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).  

Thang holds a Master of Science (M. Sc.) in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore. Outside of work, Thang enjoys outdoor sports and activities.

Dean – Faculty of Management Information System, Banking Academy

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Dr. Phan Thanh Duc is a Senior Lecturer, Dean of the Faculty of Management Information System – Banking Academy. He has over 25 years of teaching, researching and consulting information technology in the fields of administration, banking and education. His research focuses on solutions for Business Process Management, Big Data, Information System Architecture, Data Administration. He is a member of the Data Management Association DAMA, a member of the Asia Leadership Fellow Program (ALFP) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Recently, he participated in consulting the Digital Transformation Strategy of Banking Industry as the Team Leader of the National Advisory programme of GIZ (Germany).