Big data, Power BI, mobility… what do they really mean to your business and how can they improve your bottom line? Leveraging the information you already have in new ways can help you do not only more with less, but NEW with less. Hear about the innovative ways companies and governments are leveraging one of their biggest assets to increase insights, efficiencies and safety.
Speaker
Joel Cherkis
Joel Cherkis is the general manager of Government Sales within the Worldwide Public Sector division at Microsoft Corp. Harnessing an extensive background in technology, Cherkis leads a team of sales and technology professionals who provide global strategic support to government customers by delivering solutions that are focused on providing citizen-based services and enabling government workplace and datacenter modernization. He works in close collaboration with governments and Microsoft partners around the world to ensure that Microsoft’s software and cloud services deliver the level of insight and accountability their constituents expect.
Cherkis, who joined Microsoft in 2004, most recently served as the chief technology officer and general manager for the Worldwide Technology Office, Public Sector and as general manager of the U.S. Government Solutions team, where he supported industry solutions focused on health and human services, justice and public safety, homeland security, Department of Defense initiatives, e-government, and emerging technologies.
Before joining Microsoft, Cherkis spent nine years at Oracle Corp. where he served as a worldwide technical instructor teaching database design, architecture, and data modeling before he moved on to developing technologies that enabled governments and corporations to build efficient applications that lowered their overall ownership and operation costs. Cherkis began his career as an application developer with Mobil Oil Corp. where he developed mainframe- and midrange-based applications that managed refinery, pipeline, and product packaging systems in addition to helping develop the company’s global customer accounting systems.
With more than 20 years of IT and software development experience, Cherkis has spent the past 10 years helping customers and partners better utilize collaborative solutions and the processes of infrastructure consolidation while staying focused on understanding how and when technology should be used to solve government problems.
Cherkis has a bachelor of business administration degree in computer information systems with a concentration in decision support systems from James Madison University. A native of Washington, D.C., Cherkis is an avid skier and mountain bike rider and enjoys spending time with his family and taking advantage of the outdoor recreational amenities the Pacific Northwest has to offer.