Philip has specialised in Information and Technology assurance, IT governance, control and security for over 20 years, and his main focus is to help organisations to manage and control their use of systems and information technology, and to get the best value from it.
A Chartered Accountant and CISA qualified, Philip is a partner at Grant Thornton, where he heads the firm's Technology Risk Services practice.

Philip is an affiliate member of the Institute of Internal Auditors, and Chairman of the IDEA UK User Group. He has been a member of the FAST board since 1997, and was appointed Chairman of the Federation in 2007.

Phil has over twenty three years of business experience, the last thirteen in the IT sector. He has worked with and managed businesses in the financial sector and has been a Board Director for a number of successful companies.

For the last twelve years, Phil has specialised in Software Asset Management, the last six years at Concorde, a business he co-founded which focuses on the financial benefits organisations can expect to gain from optimising their software within the business. Phil strives to be at the forefront of emerging areas of technology, such as virtualisation Cloud technologies, Bring Your Own Device etc. He is experienced in business leadership and has many years’ experience delivering to global enterprise customers.

Ian is Director, Business to Business at Intellect, the UK Technology Trade Association. The Business to Business group is focused on promoting the application of ICT technologies and business models in key market sectors. In this new role initial priorities have been identified as the application of IT as a Service and Big Data. Intellect represents a substantial proportion of the UK IT Industry for matters related to Government, Policy and European interests. Intellect also works with its members to promote the opportunity for ICT to contribute towards addressing the Growth agenda. See www.intellectuk.org for more information.

Ian is also Director of Cloud and Government IT in the Information and Communications Technologies Knowledge Transfer Network (ICT KTN), part of the programme funded by the Technology Strategy Board, the UK Government’s Innovation Agency. KTNs work closely with academics, leading industry suppliers and early adopters to promote ICT-based innovation in private and public sector organisations. His key areas of industry interest lie in Cloud Computing, Sustainability and Standards, especially for Government and SME applications. He also retains a professional interest in Software Engineering. See www.ictktn.org.uk for more information. Ian is a member of the Cloud Industry Forum Code Governance Board and chairs the Standards committee. The Cloud Industry Forum is championing a Code of Practice for SMEs aimed at raising the standard of cloud service provision to end users. See www.cloudindustryforum.org .

Ian held leadership roles in two previous Knowledge Transfer Networks in the IT area: Digital Systems and Grid Computing Now!, also funded by the Technology Strategy Board. Between 2007 and 2009, Ian contributed to the Open Grid Forum, an open standards body, as Vice President for Enterprise, and acted as a principal in the OGF-Europe FP7 project funded by the European Commission, also aimed at establishing open standards for distributed computing. In 2009/10 he contributed to the UK Government’s G-Cloud Programme as industry lead for the Application Store Requirements Specification.

Ian has worked in ICT since 1972, with early stints at British Airways and International Computers Limited. In 1979, he joined Hewlett-Packard Limited where he enjoyed a substantial career working in Research & Development, Quality and Marketing at HP locations in the US and UK. He held senior management positions in HP’s Corporate Research Laboratories in Bristol and Telecom Systems Business in Edinburgh. 

He has an MSc in the Management of Technology, a joint degree awarded by the Universities of Sussex and Brighton in 1992. He conducted research work in the area of Innovation Management in the Doctoral Programme at Cranfield University between 2004 and 2006. He is a Member of the British Computer Society and a Chartered Information Technology Professional, a past chair of the BCS Distributed and Scalable Computing Special Interest Group, a Member of the Association for Computing Machinery and a Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. 

Andy joined The Federation as a Board Director in 2006 to bring his wealth of commercial experience and knowledge of the Software Industry to the team. As Chief Executive of Fasthosts Internet he today leads the UK’s largest Web Hosting and Dedicated Server operation serving several hundred thousand customers through their Datacenters in the UK and US. In this capacity he Chairs a Sub Committee within FAST focused on the convergence of the Software, Cloud Computing and Hosting Industries. Prior to Fasthosts Andy was CEO of Centennial Software from 2004 to 2008, who are the market leader in provision of IT asset discovery and License Management solutions that many FAST members already rely upon to manage their IT infrastructure from a cost, compliance and risk perspective. During his earlier years on the Board of FAST Andy oversaw the development of the SAM Sub-Committee, launched the SIRB and was instrumental in formalising our partnership with Investors in Software.

In May of 2008 Centennial was acquired by FrontRange Solutions and Andy was subsequently appointed an Executive of the parent company heading up their go-to-market strategy for Infrastructure Management solutions (Centennial and Client Lifecycle Management) until he was recruited by Fasthosts to lead their strategic development. Earlier in his career Andy worked in the IT Security market with four years as Chief Operating Officer of leading content management vendor, Clearswift; Chief Executive of the Content Management division of Baltimore Technologies and Chief Executive of Chubb Information Security and held Managing Director roles for subsidiaries within the publicly traded Chubb Security Group (now UTC) and Securicor Group (now G4S).

With over 20 years in helping businesses protect their commercial assets (from physical to electronic) and improve their performance, Andy is ideally placed to advise the Board on a broad range of commercial matters. Andy holds an MBA and Diploma in Company Direction.

Richard’s work with The Federation compliments more than 20 years software industry experience, primarily in sales and marketing roles. Richard is currently Business Development Director, EMEA in EMC’s corporation’s Backup and Recovery Solutions (BRS) division. EMC is the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology, see www.emc.com (NYSE:EMC).

Prior to EMC, Richard held roles including Country Manager UK&I for F-Secure, General Manager, Software, at Computer 2000 Distribution and as business development manager for Autodesk, a manufacturer of the market leading “AutoCAD” and related product range.

Having graduated with a BSc from the Open University and subsequently completed a MBA also with the Open University, Richard, originally from Manchester, now lives with his family in Surrey. www.linkedin.com/in/richardhales

Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, Dawn Osborne was a partner at Rouse Legal (formerly Willoughby and Partners) for nine years having trained and qualified with the media and intellectual property practice of Denton Hall. She became a partner of Palmer Biggs Legal in June 2009. Altogether Dawn has over fifteen years experience exclusively in intellectual property including trademarks, copyright, database rights confidentiality/privacy and designs.

At Palmer Biggs Dawn handles general intellectual property enforcement work for fashion and entertainment clients and a large number of luxury goods and big brand companies.

Dawn also specialises in Internet law/e-commerce. She regularly advises businesses in relation to the content or hosting of web sites, the use of brands/IPR on the Net and the protection and enforcement of IPR in cyberspace. She is regularly involved in the recovery of domain names for clients and has been involved in a number of successful applications to the Court and many domain name dispute resolution proceedings in this regard. She is an arbitrator for the WIPO and NAF ICANN, and the .eu and the Nominet domain name dispute resolution processes.

Dawn also has a particular interest in ADR, as well as being a panellist for the domain name dispute resolution procedures mentioned above. She is an INTA neutral, an accredited mediator for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators and Dawn routinely represents clients in mediation proceedings.

Zak has worked in the Licensing and SAM arena for the past 15 years. Recently Zak has set up the UK, Ireland and Finland operations of SoftwareONE and also assisted in developing its Global SAM initiate. SoftwareONE is recognized as the fastest growing LAR globally and now has operations in 17 countries around the world all adopting SAM services. Previously, Zak was the Sales Director at Bytes where he started the licensing team and helped grow the business from £6M to £180M.

Zak is a co-founder and director of IiS (Investors in Software) and has been instrumental in the development of the ISO 19770-1 , ISO SAE (ISO Self Assessment Engine) and assisting organizations along the path to becoming certified through the iiS Rapid Adopter Programme (RAP).

Previously, Zak worked in the finance industry and originally worked as a Software Developer after graduating from Manchester University with a Bsc(Hons) degree in Computer Science.

Nick is a Partner in the Dispute Resolution Group specialising in all forms of Intellectual Property (particularly copyright law), Human Rights and Cultural Property disputes. Nick was previously Head of Litigation at the MCPS-PRS Music Alliance and managed the music industry anti-piracy unit for ten years. During this time Nick pioneered the use of private prosecutions of copyright infringers for the music industry. Nick is a former Director of the Anti-Counterfeiting Group, past Chair of its enforcement sub-committee and a former vice Chairman of the Alliance against IP Theft. He was previously Chair of the Online anti-piracy committee of BIEM, the international umbrella organisation of music industry collecting societies. Nick is also a fully accredited mediator and has conducted several mediations.

Alex has spent the last 25 years working in the IT industry.   Following his completion of ICL’s graduate training scheme Alex moved to US software publisher Borland, managing the emerging retail business as IT superstores were established in the UK.  

He then spent 12 years at Microsoft, joining in 1994, gaining diverse experience within the organisation, from Enterprise sales through to Channel management. 

In November 2003 Alex moved from running the £500m UK Channel Distribution business to run Microsoft’s anti-piracy and Software Asset Management (SAM) teams.  This role incorporated Microsoft’s anti-counterfeiting efforts through to corporate governance and working with influential third parties such as government ministers and pan-industry organisations to help draw attention to the scale of software piracy.   As head of the UK SAM business, Alex ran a team of compliance and audit professionals as well as supporting the development of an ISO standard driving commercial awareness for intellectual property protection.   

In 2006 Alex was joined Centennial Software as world-wide head of sales; a fast growing UK business developing software for the compliance and SAM market.  He saw the business through to acquisition by FrontRange Solutions in 2008.  Alex stayed in the merged businesses as Director of Infrastructure Management. 

In 2010 Alex joined Fasthosts Internet with direct accountability as Managing Director of Rise – their Cloud IaaS hosting proposition aimed at Channel Partners.  Alex developed the Rise proposition to a profitable recurring revenue stream and in 2011 Rise was awarded Microsoft’s prestigious prize of world-wide Hosting Partner of the Year. 
In February 2013 Alex joined FAST as Chief Executive.  He had been serving as non-Executive Director since 2008.  
Outside of work, Alex is married with four children, a keen cyclist, skier and real tennis player.