Alex Berson is an internationally recognized expert, thought leader, author, and advisor in various areas of information technologies. Throughout his professional career, Alex held leadership technology and management positions in companies such as JPMorgan, BearingPoint, Entrust, Merrill Lynch, enCommerce, Dun & Bradstreet, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Solomon Smith Barney, and others. He's currently a chief technology architect for a major global financial services institution.Alex holds graduate and post-graduate degrees in Applied Math and Computer Sciences and has an extensive scientific background in applied research with specific concentration on advanced areas of algorithmic computations, linear programming, computer simulations, and computing architectures. He taught under-graduate and graduate classes and lectured on these topics throughout his career. Alex combines his extensive scientific background and practical industry experience by focusing his professional activities on advanced multi-disciplined areas of information technology such as Identity Management and Information Security; Master Data Management (MDM) and Customer Data Integration (CDI); CRM and Business Intelligence; Database technologies, including Column-store and very large databases (VLDB); data warehousing and data mining; service-oriented architecture (SOA); mobile computing; enterprise application integration (EAI), messaging, and middleware. Throughout his career, Alex continues to successfully apply his knowledge, experience and vision to creating complex ground-breaking solutions for financial services, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and technology industries..Alex is a member of the Board of Directors of the Wall Street Technology Association (WSTA) and is a member of Standard & Poor's Vista Research Society of Industrial Leaders (SIL). He actively participates in professional associations such as IEEE Computer Society, ACM, and Aberdeen Group's Technology Forecasting Consortium; standards organizations including OMG, OASIS, Open Group; various industry consortia such as the Data Warehousing /Institute (TDWI), and technical advisory boards of several technology companies.Alex has published numerous direction-setting technical articles in trade magazines and on-line publications, and is the author and co-author of a number of best-selling professional books, including Master Data Management and Data Governance; Master Data Management and Customer Data Integration for a Global Enterprise; Building Data Mining Applications for CRM; Data Warehousing, Data Mining and OLAP; Client/Server Architecture; SYBASE and Client/Server Computing; and APPC: Introduction to LU6.2.