On May 19, 2011, Symantec announced that it would acquire Clearwell Systems for approximately $400 million. OPEN SV is excited to secure Clearwell CEO Aaref Hilaly as a keynote speaker of OPEN Forum 2011. In his 11-year career in Silicon Valley, Aaref has helped to create and sell two software companies collectively worth close to half a billion dollars. Most recently, as President and CEO of Clearwell, he grew the company from a handful of engineers at the early stages of product development into a high-growth, profitable company. Clearwell is the leading provider of electronic discovery software, with over 400 customers and 75 partners in 14 different countries. 

Prior to Clearwell, Aaref was Founder and CEO of CenterRun, which he led from inception in 2000 to its acquisition by Sun Microsystems in August 2003. CenterRun was a leading provider of application provisioning software and today forms the basis of Sun's data center automation product suite.

Aaref earned an MBA from Harvard Business School with high distinction as a Baker Scholar. He holds a BA Honor's degree from Oxford University, and a Master's degree from McGill University, where he was awarded the Arthur Tagge Fellowship. While a full-time student, he completed internships at Linklaters, Slaughter and May, and the UN Center For Human Rights in Geneva.

You can follow Aaref on Twitter and learn more about his thoughts about E-Discovery at his blog.