Tariq Farooq is an Oracle Technologist/Architect/Problem-Solver and has been working with various Oracle Technologies for 20+ years in very complex environments at some of the world's largest organizations. He is the founding President of the IOUG Virtualization & Cloud Computing Special Interest Group. He is an active Community Leader/Organizer, Speaker, Author, Forum contributor, and Blogger. He is the founder of www.brainSurface.com, a Social Networking & IT Collaboration site for the various Oracle Communities with thousands of signed-up users. Tariq founded, organized and chaired various conferences including, amongst others, VirtaThon, the largest online-only conference for the various Oracle domains; the CloudaThon & RACaThon series of conferences; and the first ever Oracle-centric conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2011. He was the founder and Achor/Show-Host of the VirtaThon Internet Radio series program. He was also the Track Manager for the Virtualization and Cloud Computing Tracks for COLLABORATE 2012 & 2013. Tariq is an Oracle RAC Certified Expert, holds a total of 14 professional Oracle Certifications and, is the author of 100+ articles, whitepapers & other publications. Tariq has presented and spoken at almost every major Oracle Conference/Event all over the world, including Oracle OpenWorld, COLLABORATE, BrainSurface, VirtaThon, IOUG, OOUG, OUGLC, TCOUG, UKOUG, The OTNExpert+ Conference & others. Tariq has been awarded the Oracle ACE and ACE Director awards from 2010 - 2013.