Rick Bakken

Microsoft Lead Data Center Evangelist

Microsoft Global Datacenter Operations

Rick Bakken is responsible for leading the evangelism of Microsoft’s Hyper Scale infrastructure strategies and best practices in engagements with some of the company’s largest customers and partners aside global sales and marketing teams. His role is to work directly with the Microsoft technical & account teams providing expert services with customers and partners in exposing MCIO capabilities as a definitive Hyper Scale infrastructure authority.

As a professional speaker and six-time winner of the Microsoft Executive Briefing Center Distinguished Speaker of the Year Award, he maintains exemplary presentation and communication skills required to assimilate concepts from various sources to disseminate strategic findings and recommendations to key senior decision makers. He delivers executive briefings (MS-EBC), CIO events, datacenter tours and direct to customer engagements in partnership with Microsoft Senior Executives and Field Account & Technical Teams.

A veteran of the IT industry Rick has managed IT operations, sales and marketing, business development, procurement, global strategies, product development, technical support, manufacturing and supply chain. He is a 20-year veteran with Microsoft and holds a BS in International Management from Muskingum University and is a member of the International Coaches Federation (ICF) and is a practicing executive speaker, trainer and coach.