Pure Leadership Series - AI’s Next Strategic Shift: The Rise of Edge AI

Winston Thomas

Winston brings over 20 years of journalistic experience to CDOTrends.com. As the previous editor at Computerworld Hong Kong, CIO Asia and PCWeek Asia, he followed, edited and wrote how the Internet and the rise of the digital economy impacted businesses across various industries. Most recently, Winston served as N. Asia editor of CMOInnovation. As the Editor-in-Chief of CDOTrends.com, he is bringing together intriguing articles, insights from leading thinkers, in-depth lessons from practitioners, and various thought leadership materials to develop a new resource for CDOs and other digital practitioners. Fascinated by new technology trends, he is constantly looking at how digital is reshaping our future lives.

Besides his communication skills, he is well-versed in building conference and marketing programmes externally and internally. Recently, he produced Total Security Conference 2016, Big Data and Business Analytics Forum 2016 and Future Workplace Forum 2016. Previously, he also launched CIO Asia Awards and helped to create the Computerworld Hong Kong Readers’ Choice Awards (today Computerworld Hong Kong Awards under Questex Asia).

As a copywriter, Winston has contributed to South China Morning Post (for finance and IT sections), Asia Week and IT Malaysia. He has also contributed technology-based articles for inflight magazines, including Cathay Pacific’s The Club and Gulf Air magazine, and recently to Benchmark Magazine.

Previous to his career in the media industry, he was a commodities broker and an abattoir manager in Singapore. He currently holds a B Sc. (Biology) with Merit, loves playing the piano and running marathon events.

Matthew Oostveen

Matthew Oostveen is the Chief Technology Officer for Pure in Asia Pacific & Japan. He is a member of the global CTO organization at Pure that helps empower Pure’s customers to reach new heights of capability and efficiency in their organizations as well as guide them in their journey to future technologies.

Oostveen has deep experience in working closely with customers in the region across a range of technologies. Prior to joining Pure, he had CTO roles with Dell EMC and VCE and also worked at leading companies such as IDC, Microsoft and IBM.

As an industry analyst with IDC Matt has authored and published over 50 research papers on a variety of technology related topics, forecasted the IT market and produced predictions documents on how the future will evolve.

This diverse background has given him a unique perspective of the IT landscape with particular deep expertise in the areas of cloud computing, big data, data analytics, mobility and the future workspace, and how these technologies intersect with one another. More importantly, he has a keen understanding of the dynamics between technology and business imperatives which has enabled him to serve as a trusted advisor to many large enterprises.

Oostveen has degrees from the Queensland University of Technology and Macquarie Graduate School of Management. He currently resides in Singapore with his young family and is a certified life saver.

Allan Song

Allan Song is a Head of Strategy & Transformation within Financial Markets at Standard Chartered, based in Hong Kong. As a transformation leader, his mandate covers Financing & Securities Services teams across 40 markets in Asia, Middle East and Africa, leading a large portfolio of strategic digital transformation programs.

He is passionate about solving complex problems and developing strategic global solutions to improve automation, scalability, client experience, and operational effectiveness. In recent years, his focus areas include intelligent automation, process optimisation, and data strategy – ensuring that Operations and Technology teams in Standard Chartered continue be an industry leader in adopting emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud, in order to future proof against accelerated market disruption.

Allan also serves on the Board of HandsOn Hong Kong as a Technology lead, driving adoption of AI and Blockchain to improve outcomes for non-profit organizations and their beneficiaries in the region. Prior to Standard Chartered, Allan has held senior positions at other financial institutions in Toronto and Singapore, across several Corporate and Investment Banking businesses. He has led technology, operations, business management, business architecture and analytics teams. Allan holds a degree in Computer Science from University of Toronto, specializing in computational complexity theory and data management, and continues to be active in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital asset technology communities.

Nitin Acharekar