Lee Calcote is an innovative product and technology leader, passionate about empowering engineers and enabling organizations. As Founder and CEO of Layer5, Lee Calcote is at the forefront of the cloud native movement. Previously, Calcote stewarded technology strategy and innovation across SolarWinds as head of CTO technology initiatives. He led software-defined data center engineering at Seagate, delivering predictive analytics and modern systems management. Calcote held various leadership positions at Cisco, where he created Cisco’s cloud management platform, pioneered software-defined network orchestration, and autonomic remote management services.

In addition to his role at Layer5, Calcote is a maintainer of open source projects: Meshery, Service Mesh Performance (SMP), and Service Mesh Interface (SMI). Calcote serves as chair of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) TAG Network, and formerly, in the Distributed Management Task Foundation (DMTF) delivering Redfish 1.0, and in the Center for Internet Security (CIS) delivering the Docker Benchmark 1.0.

Calcote serves on Cisco’s advisory board, and formerly advised startups Twistlock and Octarine, acquired by Palo Alto Networks and VMware, respectively. As a Docker Captain and Cloud Native Ambassador, he is a frequent speaker in the cloud native ecosystem. Calcote is the author of The Enterprise Path to Service Mesh Architectures, Istio: Up and Running, and Service Mesh Patterns with O’Reilly and title with other publishers. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a master’s degree in Business Administration and retains a list of industry certifications.