Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner is a co-founder of SAP AG, where he served as the CEO until 2003 and has since been chairman of the supervisory board. SAP AG is today the leading provider of enterprise software solutions. In his role as chief software advisor, he concentrates on defining the mid- and long- term technology strategy and direction of SAP. Hasso Plattner received his diploma in communications engineering from the University of Karlsruhe. In recent years, he has been focusing on teaching and research in the field of business computing and software engineering at large. In 1998, he founded the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany. At the HPI, approximately 480 students are currently pursuing their Bachelors' and Masters' degrees in IT Systems Engineering with the help of roughly 50 professors and lecturers. The HPI currently has about 100 PhD candidates. Hasso Plattner leads one of the research groups at HPI which focuses mainly on In-Memory Data Managementfor Enterprise Applications and Human-Centered Software Design and Engineering.

Dr. Alexander Zeier graduated from the University of Wuerzburg in business management and successfully completed his studies in information technology at the TU Chemnitz. He worked for a few years as a strategic IT consultant, before gaining his Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management (SCM) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He has 20 years experience with IT/SAP Systems and started working for SAP in 2002 as product manager with overall responsibility for the SCM Software, SAP's first large In-Memory Application. Since 2006 he has been Deputy Chair Enterprise Platform and Integration Concepts of Prof. Hasso Plattner at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, focusing on real-time In-Memory Enterprise Systems. During that time he has also been Executive Director for the European Section of the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation. Since March 2012 Dr. Zeier has been working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as Visiting Professor, lecturing and conducting research in the area of In-Memory Technology & Applications, and Supply Chain Innovation. He is the author of more than 150 journal articles and papers and has also published six books on IT and SAP.