BA Insight Bloggers

Sean Coleman

Sean Coleman
CTO and Chief Customer Officer

Sean is a technologist at heart with a passion for working with customers, which was the driving force behind the evolution of his career to his dual position of CTO and Chief Customer Officer. In this position he plays an active role in contributing to BA Insight’s product and market strategy, while also working as an executive sponsor to many of BA Insight’s innovative customers. He continues to work closely with global enterprises of all sizes to ensure visionary and successful implementations of cognitive solutions enterprise-wide, covering a variety of platforms including Azure Search, Elasticsearch, SharePoint Online, and SharePoint On-Premise. He is a regular contributor to the BA Insight Blog, the Shared Insights podcast, and attends and speaks at multiple industry events such as Elastic{ON}, ILTACON, and SharePoint/O365 Symposium.

Prior to joining BA Insight, Sean was critical to the success of IBM’s Smarter Workforce initiative where he served as Director of Global Implementations, as part of the acquisition of Kenexa. Prior to that he served as Director of Worldwide Customer Support and Director of Development at OutStart. Sean holds a Master of Science degree in management and strategic leadership from New England College and a Bachelor of Science degree in business and management information systems from East Carolina University.

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Mark Ferraz

Mark Ferraz
Director of Customer Success

Mark has over fifteen years of experience designing, managing, and implementing complex projects for some of the world’s largest companies. He works closely with customers to ensure they are successful in achieving their long-term vision and shorter-term goals.  He is also a brand ambassador, content contributor and speaker at industry events and conferences. In addition to being a contributing author of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices, Mark co-authored the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator’s Companion, both published by Microsoft Press. Mark appears as a speaker at industry conferences such as SharePoint Best Practices Conference and SharePoint Technology Conference.

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Jeff Fried

Jeff Fried
Chairman of the Advisory Board

Jeff Fried is focused on strategic applications of search technology. He came to BA Insight from Microsoft where he served as technical product manager for all Microsoft enterprise search products. Jeff was also VP of Advanced Solutions at FAST Search and Transfer, where he scoped out high end search solutions, rolling them into delivery and into future product features.

Jeff is a frequent speaker at numerous industry events, including the US and European SharePoint Conferences. He also holds 15 patents, has authored more than 50 technical papers, and has led the creation of pioneering offerings in next generation search engines, networks, and contact centers. He is a co-author of several books, two recent ones being: Professional SharePoint 2010 Development and Professional Microsoft Search.

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Matthew McDermott

Matthew McDermott
Founder and Director, Aptillon and Member of the BAI Advisory Board

Matthew is a Founder and Director at Aptillon, Inc., a consulting company dedicated to SharePoint. He is also a Principal Consultant for AbleBlue in Austin, TX. An eleven-time Microsoft SharePoint Server MVP, he splits his professional time between consulting, training and presenting on all things SharePoint and Office 365. Matthew specializes in Office 365 and SharePoint integration, strategy and implementation, helping his clients solve business problems with SharePoint and Office 365. Matthew is a speaker, content author, blogger and specialist in SharePoint and Office 365 technologies focused on search, collaboration, and web content management. Matthew has led SharePoint implementations for Fortune 500 companies since 2002.

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Massood Zarrabian

Massood Zarrabian
CEO

Massood Zarrabian joined BA Insight as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board in 2013. A software veteran with over 35 years of experience, Massood has a strong track record of building and growing profitable software companies. Massood has been instrumental in transforming BAI into an innovative technology company that helps organizations implement intelligent search by connecting enterprise systems with O365, SharePoint Server, and Elasticsearch while taking advantage of Microsoft’s and Google’s AI services. BA Insight’s software portfolio now includes support for O365, introduced in 2015, as well as support for all recent versions of SharePoint on-premise (including SharePoint 2019).It has also been expanded to support Elasticsearch on-premise, Elastic Cloud and Elastic Cloud Enterprise.

Prior to joining BA Insight, Massood served as CEO and Chairman of Certeon, which helped enterprises eliminate traditional network constraints and accelerated application performance.Before that he served as President and CEO of OutStart from 2001 to 2012, which was acquired by Kenexa. Previously, Massood served as President and CEO of ServiceSoft Technologies, where he led the company’s successful merger with Broadbase Software.

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Mike Gregory

Mike Gregory
Director of Systems Engineering

Mike Gregory is Director of Systems Engineering at BA Insight where he is responsible for working with the sales team on pre-sales initiatives and product implementations. During his 25+ years’ experience in Enterprise Software he has advised hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies and federal agencies with support in Enterprise Search, Knowledge Management, Enterprise Learning, Content Management, CRM, Call Center Management and Human Resources.

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Jason McCullagh

Jason McCullagh
Technical Account Executive

Jason McCullagh, Manager of Technical Services for EMEA. He has over 10 years of experience working as a SharePoint consultant and as an Intranet Manager. Jason started out with SharePoint 2003 and has worked with all versions up to the latest on premises SharePoint and SharePoint Online. Jason has a passion for all things SharePoint with a particular focus on the end user and business perspective, often acting as the conduit between the business and IT. He has worked with companies of all sizes, from all over the world, to help them realise the power and benefits that SharePoint can bring to a company.

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Mark Aschemeyer

Mark Aschemeyer
Sales Director

With 25 years of technology-based sales experience, including 15 years selling SharePoint-based solutions, Mark has helped hundreds of companies transform their internal search environment into a modern, intelligent, internet-like, enterprise search experience.He is a firm believer in listening closely to customers, being honest, and always providing value. Prior to BA Insight, Mark held executive sales positions at Beezy and HiSoftware.

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paul

PAUL KANEVSKY
Chief Innovation Officer

Paul has 25+ years of experience bringing innovation to some of the world largest enterprises and early stage start-ups. Author of multiple patents and the architect of some of the largest digital transformation initiatives on Wall Street, Paul holds a graduate degree in Computer Science from Columbia University. He started his career by creating some of the first commercial video games while still in high school, then worked at AT&T Bell Labs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, UBS, and a number of startups that he co-founded.

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Christian Buckley

Christian Buckley
Founder and CEO of CollabTalk LLC

Christian is an Office Servers and Services MVP, author and technology evangelist, and the Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC, an independent research and technical marketing services firm based in Salt Lake City. You can find him at @buckleyplanet and www.buckleyplanet.com.

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Randy Brown

Randy Brown
Sales Director

Randy has over two decades of technology sales experience in the areas of collaboration, compliance, and information security. Randy works as a partner and trusted resource with Fortune 1000 companies across all industries enabling their employees to access needed information do their jobs, helping them significantly improve productivity. Randy previously held sales director roles at Cryptzone, Colligo, and Oracle where he also worked closely with technology resources in enterprise organizations.

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Peter Roth

Peter Roth
Sales Director

Peter first joined the search market in 1999 and has been selling in the SharePoint world since 2006. He has helped hundreds of companies with website and intranet search, search analytics, and knowledge worker productivity. By focusing on relationships and learning through listening, Peter has worked with large and well-known organizations throughout the US and Europe. Prior to BA Insight, Peter was with Infusionsoft, Collabware, and KnowledgeLake.

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Dennis Hiel

Dennis Hiel
Sales Director

Dennis has over 20 years of technology sales experience including the last five years at BA Insight. He excels at partnering with his customers to find joint success. While at BA Insight he has helped leading knowledge organizations like DLA Piper, Merck, Pfizer, JNJ, Nationwide, and many others transform their SharePoint search capabilities to improve productivity through greater access to enterprise information.

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Tony Malandain, Director of Product Development

Tony Malandain
Director of Product Development

Tony Malandain is BA Insight’s Director of Product Development and one of the original co-founders of the company. Tony architected and built the first version of the product which gained significant momentum on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). In his current role he is responsible for driving the definition and design of our existing products. With over 15 year’s experience in the industry he has a passion for architecting software and building software development teams.

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Don Miller

Don Miller
Sales Director

Don Miller has been helping companies improve both internal and external search end user experiences since 1998. He played a critical role in sales and new feature product development for NetGenesis, helping them file for an $80 Million IPO. NetGenesis was the industry leader in analyzing search behavior with search analytics and click stream analysis. In addition to his search and metadata expertise acquired through leadership roles at Mondosoft, Interse and ConceptSearching, he has worked at leading companies in enterprise content management, records management and networking to provide prospects and customers a holistic view to get the most of their SharePoint and Search experiences. He has also been a speaker at numerous SharePoint and technical events including Sharefest, MER, SPTech, and SharePoint Saturday.

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Rick Fafard

Rick Fafard
Technical Director of Professional Services

Rick is BA Insight’s Technical Director of Professional Services, responsible for the design and successful implementation of its search-driven technology. With over 20+ years’ experience, Rick has become a seasoned veteran with deep expertise in information technology, SharePoint, and software engineering. His technical expertise combined with his superior project management skills, help to ensure the success of customers both domestic and international.

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Brad Freels

Brad Freels
Former Sales Director

Brad has been helping companies improve SharePoint, specifically around search and content management, for over 15 years. A 12 year veteran of Microsoft, he has worked with many large enterprises, strategically aligning their business needs with technology-based solutions. Passionate about both technology and business process, Brad works with champions to improve the end user experience and provide timely access to relevant information to make faster decisions.

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Debbie Braunert

Debbie Ferolito
Chief Marketing Officer

Debbie is an accomplished marketing leader with over 20 years of results-driven marketing experience responsible for driving BA Insight’s marketing strategy and execution. Most recently, Debbie served as Vice President of Marketing for SoundBite Communications, where she successfully positioned the company for an IPO and facilitated growth strategies that led to a $100M acquisition by Genesys. Prior to SoundBite, Debbie led all marketing efforts at Pedestal Software, which was acquired by Altiris for $65M. She holds a Master of Business Administration degree with a marketing concentration and a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing from Bentley University.

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Agnes Molnar
Managing Consultant, Search Explained

Agnes Molnar is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP and serves as Founder and Managing Consultant for Search Explained. With a strong focus on Enterprise Search and Knowledge Management, she has been working with SharePoint technologies since 2001, and has architected dozens of SharePoint and FAST implementations for commercial and government organizations throughout Europe and the Americas. A co-author and contributor to several SharePoint books, including Real World SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Unleashed, Agnes is a regular speaker at technical conferences and symposiums around the world. On her blog (www.Aghy.hu), Agnes regularly writes on the topics of enterprise search best practices, and SharePoint & FAST technologies.

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Sue Feldman

Sue Feldman
CEO Synthexis and Co-founder, Cognitive Computing Consortium

Sue has been one of the best regarded analysts in Enterprise Search for over 30 years. Among other things, she was VP for Search and Discovery Technologies at IDC and authored a book, The Answer Machine (Morgan & Claypool, 2012). In the past five years, Sue has focused on cognitive computing, founding the consulting firm Synthexis and co-founding the Cognitive Computing Consortium. Sue is in a unique position to contribute a broad, realistic perspective of the overall cognitive search landscape.

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Joel Oleson
Former Director of Enterprise Search Strategy

Joel is a former BA Insighter who was responsible for partnering with the company’s global customers and prospects to advance their enterprise strategies. He is a recognized SharePoint practitioner and was the first full-time SharePoint Administrator hired by Microsoft. He architected the first version of SharePoint Online currently known as Office 365. He was also acknowledged as a top Microsoft SharePoint Online influencer by Forbes.

Joel is a frequent keynote speaker at numerous SharePoint events around the world. He is a popular blogger and the founder of SPYam, a SharePoint and Yammer community with over 6,000 members. Joel loves to travel and build communities. He has launched over 30 SharePoint communities and has visited over 120 countries in his quest to visit every country in the world.

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Rem Purushothaman

Rem Purushothaman
Former Search Strategist

Rem was part of the BA Insight team from 2012 to 2015 as an Enterprise Search Expert helping the sales team and our clients envision and plan critical search initiatives. He was Director of Search Architecture and was engaged with the sales team on a variety of search initiatives that include pre-sales consulting engagements, customer implementations, and support of our search partners.

Rem has more than a decade of experience in the enterprise search space and has led and managed teams responsible for enterprise search implementations at major companies. Prior to joining BA Insight, he worked at one of Microsoft’s top national consulting partners, PointBridge (acquired by Perficient). He was a Search Solutions Architect and the in-house expert on Microsoft Search technologies including FAST ESP and FAST Search for SharePoint.

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Dave Schubmehl

Dave Schubmehl
Research Director for IDC's Search, Content Analytics and Discovery at IDC

Dave Schubmehl is Research Director for IDC’s Search, Content Analytics and Discovery research. His research covers information access technologies including content analytics, search systems, unstructured information representation, unified access to structured and unstructured information, Big Data, visualization, and rich media search. This research analyzes the trends and dynamics of the content analytics, search and discovery software markets and the costs, benefits and workflow impacts of solutions that use these technologies. Mr. Schubmehl has over 25 years of experience working in the fields of enterprise search, information access and content analytics delivering products and services.

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Jillian Derby

Jillian Derby
Former Senior Marketing Manager

Jillian Derby recently worked as Senior Marketing Manager at BA Insight responsible for the development and execution of various marketing programs and initatives. With a decade of experience, she has a passion for content marketing, event management, and social media marketing. Prior to her role at BA Insight she held positions at Rising Media, Inc., SoundBite Communications and IDG World Expo. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Worcester State University.

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Jeff Bodem

Jeff Bodem
Former Director of Business Development, North American Legal Market

Bodem serves as BA Insight’s director for North American legal markets and as a twenty-year veteran in the legal industry he joins us to talk about the evolution of technology in the field. From the prominence of the legal library to an exploding set of technology requirements, firms have seen technology as a key driver in firm success. Jeff leads us through some of the challenges that have plagued progress in the field, and the opportunities that have come with advances that have lead to cutting costs and increasing efficiencies in the firm.

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