Costa Hasapopoulos
VP, Global Solutions
Hitachi Data Systems

Costa Hasapopoulos, Vice President of Americas Solutions Products at Hitachi Data Systems is responsible for driving the go-to-market strategy, tools, and tactical execution of solutions sales as it relates to Hitachi's Strategic Initiatives of Business Continuity, Tiered Storage, Storage Management, and File Services. Costa is also responsible for leading the Americas Technical Team - a team of over 200 Solution Consultants and Architects who are responsible for architecting storage solutions for HDS's customers.

Costa joined Hitachi Data Systems in 2007 where he is leveraging his 22 years experience in the IT industry. He most recently was the World Wide Vice President of Solutions and Services for McDATA corporation (formally Computer Network Technology) where he was responsible for the strategic direction and tactical execution of McDATA's professional services and solution consulting organization. Costa was also responsible for the overall multi-vendor product and solution sales go-to-market. Prior to McDATA, Costa was the General Manager of Imation Corporation's Storage Consulting organization. His team was a pioneer in the area of Storage Area Networking interoperability, architecture, planning and overall solution integration of SAN and NAS products and solutions. Costa was the co-founder of a $36m Microsoft based IT consulting organization where they specialized in the education, architecture, and implementation of Microsoft based technology solutions for fortune 1000 organizations.

Costa has been a featured speaker at many industry events such as Storage Networking World, Microsoft Tech-ED, Microsoft Developer Conference as well as mutliple IT OEM events. He started his career at Hewlett-Packard after he graduated from Iowa State University with a BS in Computer Science.