Ben D. Cotton III is an IT consultant at J.P. Morgan Chase, currently using Java data grid technology on a UHPC Linux platform to render and aggregate real-time liquidity risk. He is a Java community process member presently sitting on two active JCP expert groups defining Java standard APIs for Caching (JSR-107) and distributed data grids (JSR-347). Ben graduated from Rutgers University in May 1985 with a BS in computer science. He spent his first 11 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories writing C++ code supporting numerous proprietary telecommunications network analytics and provisioning protocols, and he spent the last 14 years writing Java code supporting low-latency and transactional fixed income/derivatives, electronic trading, clearing, pricing, and risk systems.

Gustavo Fernandes is a developer, consultant, trainer, and architect with a background in server-side software, ranging from JEE to system integration and, more recently, free text and semantic search, big data, NoSQL, and devops/automation tools.

Throughout his career, he devoted many years developing open source-based solutions and products for a wide range of customers from different industries, including finance, betting, social media, telco, and e-commerce.

He's worked in several countries in South America and Europe, he is an occasional speaker at conferences, and he writes a blog and articles. He enjoys contributing to open source projects and when not writing code, and he likes traveling to see the world.

He currently works at Red Hat as part of the Infinispan team.

Zdenek Henek lives in the Czech Republic in Zidlochovice. He is a husband and a father. He enjoys software development, solving problems, and playing chess.

Andrii Kravets is a highly motivated, Agile-minded engineer with more than 5 years of experience in software development and software project management, who wants to make the world better. He has a lot of experience with high-loaded distributed projects, big data, JVM languages, and web architecture. He is a co-founder of Mriya Ideas Lab.

Ugo Landini takes the sentence "The only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys" very seriously. He works as a software architect at Red Hat. He dedicates the rest of his time to what's new in the IT field and is strongly convinced that sharing knowledge is not only a must but also an opportunity for personal growth. A cofounder of the JUG Roma, Ugo is an Apache committer, develops games for mobile devices, and is convinced he can still play a decent football game (soccer for American people). He is also a cofounder and the chair of the technical committee at Codemotion.

Marko Lukša is a software engineer, currently working as a member of the Cloud Enablement team at Red Hat. He has been using Infinispan extensively as part of his work on project CapeDwarf, the open source implementation of the Google App Engine API. He has also contributed to Infinispan—mostly to its grid file system. Before joining Red Hat, he worked at various companies delivering different software solutions in healthcare, telecommunications, and hotel and restaurant management. He currently resides in Ljubljana, Slovenia.