Broadband Developments

UC Strategies Group, the leading voice in Unified Communications, has a post up from cofounder Blair Pleasant that answers some additional questions from VoiceCon.

My question is “IsVoiceCon a viable conference?”  or should it be called “AppCon” - Voice is only a feature of Unified Communications.  In fact one of the most impressive things that I saw was IBM’s presence integration within Sametime to accomadate social networks.

Here is Blair’s post and some snips.

Regarding who are the key UC professional services firms, there are several types of organizations – the UC vendors themselves, system integrators, professional services organizations, and large management consultancies. Some of the key professional services providers are Dimension Data, INX, Touchbase, IBM Global Services, and of course the Accentures and companies like Avanade (IT consultancy dedicated to the Microsoft platform). Many vendors recognize the importance of professional services in UC implementations, and several are revving up their practices for UC. Aspect recently announced its foray into UC professional services and systems integration with a new practice designed to assist organizations with the planning, implementation and support of UC products across their enterprises and into their contact centers.

IBM Global Services (IGS) is an important part of IBM’s overall UC program, offering a comprehensive suite of strategy-and-assessment and architecture-and-design services, as well as integration, deployment and managed services. IBM is one of the few companies that really emphasizes its professional services organizations – as well it should. This group provides an important competitive edge to IBM, which recognizes the complexities of UC and how important it is to integrate with existing business processes and applications.

Another question I didn’t really get time to respond to was about mobile UC and the role of fixed mobile convergence (FMC) and UC. Mobile UC capabilities include the ability to transfer mobile calls to a landline phone and vice versa with the click of a mouse. Extending enterprise telephony features to the mobile environment generally involves integration with the corporate IP PBX. Some UC offerings make it possible to transfer mobile calls to your landline phone and vice versa with the click of a mouse. Mobile UC capabilities make it possible to extend the desktop communication environment to the mobile device when needed, giving mobile workers access to features like conferencing, unified messaging, integration with the calendar and enterprise directory, and other communication capabilities – so mobile workers can be just as productive when out of the office as when in the office.

Jim Burton of UCStrategies.com, the leading consulting firm for Unified Communications, is having an impressive gathering of industry execs the here on the first night of VoiceCon San Francisco 2008. Fellow bloggers Alex Lewis, Blair Pleasant, and I are covering the wine tasting event as part of our normal dedicated commitment to blogging

What’s amazing is the quality of executives attending Jim’s event. We are talking shop with senior execs from IBM, Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Cisco, and others. What’s striking is that deals are getting done. I’m writing this now and overhearing conversations of bus dev deals being discussed. ROI models are at the center of the conversation. Alex Lewis was telling me that he and other firms are over 110% capacity (in this down market).

I’ve been down on UC lately but from what I’m hearing there is real awareness to web 2.0. In fact the Cisco VP Laurent Philonenko and I just had a detailed chat about UC and Cisco’s strategy. I’m going to do a followup with Laurent because I’m interested in how they are looking at the presence paradigm and how they tie it together on their platform.

Ok back to more wine being poured.. look for updates later tonight and coverage from VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 tomorrow morning.

Update:

Here is the detailed agenda for VoiceCon SF 2008

Monday, November 10
7:00 am–9:00 am	Continental Breakfast Continental Breakfast sponsored by Polycom (Location: Hall E Lobby)
9:00 am–12:00 pm	Tutorials Preparing Your Next IP Telephony System RFP (Location: Room 130) Procuring a new enterprise communications system through a RFP process can be a harrowing experience, because IP telephony system design, capabilities, and attributes have undergone a series of dynamic changes the past few years. The RFP you issue will reflect how well your understanding of current generation solutions can satisfy your evolving communications requirements. This workshop will review and analyze how to prepare the core RFP requirements for your next IP telephony system by focusing on the following: * System design and topology, including hardware, network, and power requirements * Redundancy and resiliency attributes * Port interface and traffic handling * E911 and security issues * Standards support, including SIP and SOA * Voice terminals: analog, digital, and IP; desktop telephone instruments; mobile communications devices; soft client options * Generic software features * Systems management and administration * Pricing guidelines, including potential hidden fees The workshop will also address network consolidation considerations, i.e. single system solution replacing an existing network of multiple systems, and installed system upgrade options. Allan Sulkin, is President of TEQConsult Group, and is a leading industry analyst and consultant focusing on enterprise communications. He created and hosts the annual VoiceCon Orlando RFP tutorial session. Instructor - Allan Sulkin, President, TEQConsult Group Allan Sulkin, president and founder of TEQConsult Group (1986), is widely recognized as the industry’s foremost enterprise communications market/product analyst. He is celebrating 30 years telecommunications market experience this month and has consulted for many of the industry’s leading vendors participating at VoiceCon. Sulkin has been a long time Contributing Editor to Business Communications Review and its current online incarnation No Jitter, and has served as a Program Director and featured tutorial/seminar presenter for VoiceCon since its 1991 inception. Sulkin is the author of PBX Systems for IP Telephony (McGraw-Hill Professional Publications) and writer of the PBX chapter in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He can be contacted at amsulkin@aol.com SIP Fundamentals and Prospects (Location: Room 131) SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) has become the dominant protocol for IP communications. This tutorial explains what SIP is, how it works, what the major issues for SIP deployments are, and how SIP will evolve in the future. The session focuses on the technical aspects of SIP and how it is used. It analyzes in detail the major components of SIP architecture, SIP addressing and registration, session establishment, SIP message routing and connecting SIP across the PSTN. You will learn about SIP extensions and how SIMPLE works for IM/presence. The tutorial also examines some of the challenges SIP faces, including NAT traversal (and the tools developed to cope with it: STUN, TURN and ICE) and security. The tutorial concludes with an assessment of how SIP may evolve and its role in peer-to-peer environments. You will receive an inventory of SIP resources?books, papers and organizations. David Bryan is a leading expert in SIP and P2PSIP. In addition to his role as CEO at SIPeerior Technologies, he is active in the IETF, where serves as co-chair of the P2PSIP working group. David has published numerous IETF drafts, academic papers and industry trade articles. David heads p2psip.org, the leading community site for P2PSIP. Prior to SIPeerior, David co-founded Jasomi Networks (sold to Ditech), and worked for Cisco and Vovida. Instructor - David Bryan, Founder and CEO, SIPeerior Technologies David is the CEO and founder of SIPeerior Technologies, Inc., a leading vendor of P2PSIP software and products. David is a recognized thought leader in P2P and VoIP, authored the first documents on P2PSIP, and is co-chair of the IETF P2PSIP Working Group. He has published numerous IETF drafts, industry trade articles, and academic papers and is active in the SIP community. Prior to founding SIPeerior, David was co-founder and CTO of Jasomi Networks, a pioneer in the SIP Session Border Controller (SBC) market, which was sold to Ditech Communications in 2005. David previously worked for Cisco Systems via its acquisition of Vovida Networks, where he led a team of developers creating the first open-source softswitch. David holds bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Physics from The Richard Stockton College of NJ, as well as a master’s degree in Computer Science from The College of William and Mary. Building Business Cases for IP Telephony and Unified Communications (Location: Room 123) Whether an enterprise is early in its migration to IP Telephony or further along and now evaluating the concept of Unified Communications, it’s not easy to build a credible business case. IP Telephony and, in particular, UC, are complex , and involve numerous technologies, decision-makers and equipment, software and service providers. This tutorial will be divided into two segments: The first is devoted to IP Telephony businesses cases, the second will cover the UC business case. It will be based on IP Telephony cost data that has been gathered over the past five years from more than 800 companies that have implemented the technology, as well as real-world data from hundreds of IT decision makers on the newer UC products and technologies. This tutorial will cover the following questions: * How do companies build a business case around IP Telephony and Unified Communications? What are the key metrics? * What does it really cost to implement IP Telephony? What are the cost components of a UC business case? * What resources (internal and external) companies must devote to their VOIP and UC rollouts, per end-unit, per year segmented by rollout size and vendor. * What are some of the key pitfalls? Where did companies go wrong? * What are some compelling business case models for both IP Telephony and UC? Robin Gareiss is Executive Vice President and Senior Founding Partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research projects and direction, conducts strategic seminars, develops cost models, and advises leading enterprises, vendors, and carriers. She currently serves as chief financial officer, as well. For the past 17 years, Robin Gareiss has worked closely with hundreds of senior IT executives, analyzing their use of technology and capturing best practices. Ms. Gareiss is a widely recognized expert in voice over IP, convergence, collaboration, carrier services, IP networking, and branch-office technologies. Before joining Nemertes, Ms. Gareiss served as Senior News Editor of InformationWeek, and prior to that, she worked at Data Communications magazine. Ms. Gareiss has a BS in journalism and a minor in education, with honors, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Irwin Lazar is the Principal Analyst and Program Director for Unified Communications and Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, develops cost models, conducts strategic seminars and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, Web 2.0 initiatives, social networking and collaboration. A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for No Jitter and Collaboration Loop and the late Business Communications Review magazine. He is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar serves as the conference director for FutureNet (formerly MPLScon), the chair for Network World IT Roadmap Web 2.0 track, and is on the advisory board for the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Instructor - Robin Gareiss, Executive Vice President & Sr. Founding Partner, Nemertes Research Robin Gareiss Executive Vice President, Senior Founding Partner Robin Gareiss is executive vice president and senior founding partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research analysts and direction, conducts strategic seminars, develops cost models, and advises leading enterprises, vendors and carriers. She currently serves as chief financial officer, as well. For the past 17 years, Robin Gareiss has worked closely with hundreds of senior IT executives, analyzing their use of technology and capturing best practices. Ms. Gareiss is a widely recognized expert in voice over IP, convergence, collaboration, carrier services, IP networking and branch-office technologies. She is a sought-after speaker at conferences and trade shows, including Interop, VoiceCon and Mobile Business Expo, and she is frequently quoted in publications, including Business Week, Entrepreneur magazine, ComputerWorld, and CIO magazine. She also writes the Branch Offices Best Practices column for Network World. Instructor - Irwin Lazar, Principal Research Analyst and Program Director, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Nemertes Research Irwin Lazar is a Principal Analyst & Program Director, Convergence & Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars, and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, and collaboration. Since 1992 Mr. Lazar has been a consultant and analyst, serving a variety of global enterprises and government agencies. Mr. Lazar led efforts to develop security architectures and convergence road-maps, as well as enterprise network architectures, for numerous clients in the health care, pharmaceuticals, banking & finance, energy, government, and retail sectors. Mr. Lazar has led teams of consultants in requirements-gathering and strategy development. He also has evaluated emerging IT trends and analyzed their impact on organizations. A sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for Business Communications Review magazine, provides topics for Network World, and is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar holds a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from Radford University in Radford, VA, and a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve Ordnance Corps as an officer from 1992-2001. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Choices in Unified Communications Solutions: Comparing Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to IBM Lotus Sametime 8 (Location: Room 132) This tutorial is designed to help company CXOs/decision makers, IT and communications managers and technicians gain a good understanding of the architecture and functionality of both Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) and IBM Lotus Sametime, two Unified Communications solutions expected to see widespread deployment. Attendees will gain key insights into the significant differences in how IBM and Microsoft approach the UC market, where their solutions are similar and where they diverge. The tutorial covers telephony call-control capabilities within Sametime and Office Communications Server, describing the unique mechanisms each uses for integrating with enterprise telephony systems. You will leave this tutorial with a thorough overview of Microsoft Office Communications Server, IBM Lotus Sametime, and a foundation to know whether to pursue either or both of these products as part of your enterprise unified communications solution. Brent Kelly has written numerous articles and reports on unified communications and collaboration, focusing on Microsoft, IBM, and telephony vendors layering UC solutions on top of their PBXs. He has spoken and taught seminars on unified communications and on implementing IP Rich Media Communications in North America, Europe, Australia and South America. He leads the Unified Communications practice group at Wainhouse Research. Instructor - Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst & Partner, Wainhouse Research Brent Kelly has written numerous articles and reports on unified communications and collaboration, focusing on Microsoft, IBM, and telephony vendors layering UC solutions on top of their PBXs. He has spoken and taught seminars on unified communications and on implementing IP Rich Media Communications in North America, Europe, Australia and South America. He leads the Unified Communications practice group at Wainhouse Research. Cutting the Corporate Energy Bill: Part 1 - Reducing the IT Power Bill; Desktop to Data Center (Location: Room 124) The cost of power and cooling the data center and communications closets is escalating, and Gartner predicts that by 2009, power and cooling costs will be second to salaries in the IT budget. This tutorial looks at the practical ways the enterprise can reduce electrical power and cooling costs. It won’t try to solve global climate change, but focuses instead on the energy conservation solutions now available and their impact on the enterprise bottom line. Methods for reducing the energy bill by controlling IT devices will be explored, and incentives from the government and power utilities will be presented. Quantitative information will be provided with additional resource websites for the attendee to learn how to calculate the energy cost reduction and cooling requirements. The session provides recommendations on how the lower the costs to support VoIP/IPT servers, PoE for the LAN, AC vs. DC powered devices, UPS and class 2 vs. class 3 phones. Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies. Instructor - Gary Audin, President, Delphi, Inc. Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies.
10:15 am–10:45 am	Refreshment Break sponsored by Microsoft (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.microsoft.com
12:00 pm–1:30 pm	Luncheon Luncheon sponsored by IBM (Location: Hall D Lunch Room) www.ibm.com
1:30 pm–4:30 pm	Tutorials VoIP and IPT: Basics to Best Practices (Location: Room 131) Legacy PBX systems are being retired and new functionality is essentially only available with IP-based systems. Migrating to Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Telephony (IPT) has moved from “if” to “when.” But despite the growth of these new technologies, many enterprises have limited experience with IP Telephony and VoIP, and once the decision to migrate is made, there are a host of tough challenges to face - from inventorying the readiness of LANs and wiring closets, to WAN performance, IT organizational and staffing issues, security, utility costs and software support, patching and version control. This tutorial analyzes these issues with recommended actions and best practices that will lead to successful VoIP/IPT deployments. It cuts through the hype to the real advantages and presents how VoIP/IPT works and operates. This session will also guide the attendee through the rest of the Voicecon conference with suggested sessions, exhibits and other resources that will make the conference attendance experience as valuable as possible. Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies. Instructor - Gary Audin, President, Delphi, Inc. Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies. SIP Security (Location: Room 123) As SIP moves from the Intranet to the Internet, security has gone from being a nice-to-have feature to a fundamental requirement. This session focuses on communications security aspects of SIP: How do you know you’re actually talking to the person you meant to call? How do you know who’s called you? How do you make sure that other people aren’t listening into your conversation? The IETF has developed (and is still developing) a variety of SIP and RTP-based protocol tools for providing these security services. Topics covered include: * Introduction to communications security * Security for signaling traffic * User authentication * TLS * S/MIME * SIP Identity * Security for media * SRTP * SRTP key management (MIKEY, SDESCRIPTIONS, DTLS-SRTP, ZRTP) * Privacy and anonymity The current state of the work at the IETF and other standards bodies is covered, as is the state of SIP Security implementations across the industry. Solutions for simultaneously providing identity and knowing who is calling, dealing with spam, allowing anonymous calls and providing appropriate wiretap access are described. The instructors will not only describe the various protocol components but explain how these work together as an integrated system that provides security for both signaling and media traffic. This session assumes some familiarity with SIP but no familiarity with cryptography or communications security. Dr. Cullen Jennings currently serves as IETF Real Time Applications Area Director. In that capacity, he has responsibility for the IETF’s activities in voice, video and instant messaging. At Cisco, Cullen focuses on conferencing, security and firewall and NAT traversal. He is responsible for helping set the direction for the technology that will make up the next generation of Cisco’s voice products, especially in conferencing, presence and rich media systems. Cullen is also a key contributor to all the SIP security work at IETF. He was the original designer of SIP certificate management system and the SIP Identity RFC. In addition, he has served as a chair and core member of the IETF IP Telephony (IPTEL), NAT Traversal (BEHAVE), and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WEBDAV) working groups. Instructor - Cullen Jennings, Distinguished Engineer, Cisco Dr. Cullen Jennings currently serves as IETF Real Time Applications Area Director. In that capacity, he has responsibility for the IETF’s activities in voice, video, and instant messaging. Cullen is a Distinguished Engineer in the Voice Technology Group at Cisco Systems, Inc., where he focuses on conferencing, security, and firewall and NAT traversal. He is responsible for helping set the direction for the technology that will make up the next generation of Cisco’s voice products, especially in conferencing, presence and rich media systems. In addition to serving as Area Director, Cullen is a key contributor to all the SIP security work at IETF. He was the original designer SIP’s certificate management system and most recently was responsible for the SIP Identity RFC. In addition to his work on security, Cullen has served as a chair and core member of the IETF IP Telephony (IPTEL), NAT Traversal (BEHAVE), and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WEBDAV) working groups. Cullen came to Cisco from Vovida Networks, which developed an open source toolkit for Voice-over-IP. Cullen has remained involved in the open source community and was one of the founders of the reSIProcate project, which developed and maintains the leading open source SIP stack, to which he contributed the security implementation. He is a regular participant of at the SIPit interoperability event and has tested the SIP security systems of all the major vendors. Cullen is an author of Practical VoIP, published by O’Reilly and is a frequent speaker at major Voice and Security Conferences. Unified Communications: Who’s Offering What? (Location: Room 132) This tutorial is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the options available for Unified Communications (UC). It is intended for enterprise CXOs, decision makers, IT and Communications technical managers, and business managers, who are planning to install UC solutions — either via a new UC system or by adding UC to existing PBX and email systems and business applications. The session information will be based on a template that includes the major types of UC solutions — desktop/mobile productivity tools, audio/web/video conferencing, mobility support;, and communication-enabled business processes. The template, which will be easily adaptable to your enterprise procurements, bids and RFPs, includes: * Diagrams of the required UC software and hardware. * Estimates of the professional services required. * Estimates of the total price for each solution. Marty Parker is principal of UniComm Consulting, offering Unified Communications (UC) consulting services to enterprises. Marty is an active leader in the Unified Communications community. He contributes to the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly and blogs on No Jitter in addition to helping develop UC sessions at VoiceCon. Marty is a co-founder of UCStrategies.com, a UC industry resource site, and is the author and instructor of the BCR Training course, “Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications.” Instructor - Marty Parker, Principal, UniComm Consulting Marty Parker provides Unified Communications consulting support to both private sector and public sector enterprises. As a Principal of UniComm Consulting and as co-founder of UCStrategies.com, Marty is part of a network of talent and ideas to assure clients of the best and latest information about Unified Communications (UC). Marty’s focus is on the applications for UC and how those applications optimize business processes to deliver hard-dollar ROI. This focus is the basis for his BCR Training course, “Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications”; for his articles in BCR Magazine and on NoJitter.com (see “Top UC Applications Now Apparent”, June 2007); and for his on-line UC Resources Center available at UCStrategies.com. Marty is a regular moderator and presenter at InterOp, VoiceCon and in other UC industry venues. His applications and industry-oriented perspectives on UC are based on his roles in sales, marketing, product management and executive positions with IBM and ATT/Lucent/Avaya as well as with a major Telecom VAR, and as founder and CEO of venture-funded startups in the early phases of the voice messaging industry. Speaker - Supplemental Presentation Material Panelist - Gary Gordon, Product Line Manager, NEC Unified Solutions, Inc. Gary Gordon is Product Line Manager for NEC’s Unified Communications. He started with NEC in September of 2004. Gary attended the University of Central Oklahoma where he majored in Business Administration with a minor in Computer Science. Gary previously managed communication and e-commerce business process integration for Fleming Co., a $20 billion wholesale/retail distribution company. He has over 17 years experience working with emerging technologies, including unified communications, SOA, and presence enabled applications. He has 7 years experience in managing PC’s and web based applications on a large IP network. Gary brings strong knowledge and management skills in real-time-communication based applications, communication enabled business process (CEBP), and has additional expertise in sales and marketing. Panelist - Jeff Ridley, Director Product Management, ShoreTel Jeff Ridley, ShoreTel’s Director of Product Management ShoreTel, leads the company’s IP Telephony, Unified Communications and Contact Center product strategies. Jeff has more than 15 years of experience in the communications and mobile computing marketplaces and has been with Shoretel for 8 years. Prior to joining ShoreTel, Jeff was an associate with ViaSphere Ventures where he helped identify new technologies and worked with early-stage hand-held computing companies on defining and developing their products and services. Before that, Jeff spent 10 years providing strategic and technical leadership for enterprise and wireless communications initiatives at NorTel Networks and Intel. Jeff attended Vanderbilt University where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Panelist - Allan Mendelsohn, Sr. Marketing Manager, UC, Avaya Allan is the Senior Marketing Manager for Unified Communications at Avaya. While he resides in Canada, his effectiveness in his global role is a testament to the application of Unified Communications solutions. His marketing, product management, and business development career has spanned 20+ years dealing with the planning and application of voice, data, and information systems to support the needs of business with particular focus on employee productivity and customer service. His applications focus has included: unified communications, messaging, IVR, contact center, CTI, voice over IP, and remote data access. Prior to joining Avaya (via Octel and Lucent) in 1998, Allan led marketing and business development teams at two mid sized organizations entering new stages of growth, which followed his applications marketing tenure at Nortel. Allan holds an MBA in Information Systems (McMaster University) and an Honors BA in Economics and Psychology (York University). Panelist - Asif Rehman, Director, Solutions Marketing, Mitel Asif Rehman brings over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry in positions ranging from research and development to product management to marketing to his current role as Director, Portfolio Marketing. Asif is responsible for developing and communicating Mitel®’s Unified Communications vision and solutions to partners, customers, and the industry at large. A dynamic speaker with in-depth industry and product knowledge, he has positioned Mitel as a thought leader in the industry. Prior to Mitel, Asif held positions in the enterprise voice, carrier wireless, and hosted ASP markets. Asif holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal. Panelist - Moz Hussain, Director, Microsoft Panelist - David Leach, Senior Marketing Manager, Siemens Enterprise Communications David has been one of the chief creative forces behind Siemens emergence as a leader in the presence-based, unified communications landscape over the past six years. Holding various positions within Siemens over the past 20 years, David has spent the last six plus years building the marketing vision and driving the success of OpenScape. Now he is focused on building broad market awareness of the benefits presence offers for business communications in the next decade. Panelist - Sean McManus, Manager, Voice Solutions, Software Product Management Group, Research In Motion Sean McManus is a Manager for Voice Solutions, Software Product Management at Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry® smartphone. Sean is responsible for articulating RIM’s Enterprise Voice Strategy to large global accounts. Sean has over 17 years experience selling and marketing advanced voice solutions, including call centres, unified messaging, IP Telephony and IVR. Prior to joining RIM, Sean worked at IBM Global Services and a number of private firms in the voice and telecom industry. Panelist - David Marshak, Senior Product Manager, Unified Communications & Collaboration , IBM David Marshak leads Real-time Collaboration and Unified Communications product strategy and planning for IBM Lotus Software, including Instant Messaging, Web Conferencing, VoIP, telephony, and video. He is the product manager of Sametime Unified Telephony. Prior to joining IBM in January 2005, Marshak was an internationally known industry analyst and consultant with Patricia Seybold Group for 18 years. Marshak has spoken worldwide to audiences, large and small, on emerging technologies and future trends. He is often called upon to be a featured speaker and panel moderator at numerous industry conferences such as VoiceCon, Collaboration Technologies Conference, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, COMDEX, InternetWorld, Groupware, VON, NetWorld, and Lotusphere, among others. He has appeared as an expert commentator on PBS, CNBC, and on National Public Radio and has lectured on collaboration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Babson College. Marshak has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times, Business Week, and Investor’s Business Daily as well as the technical press. Marshak is the author of Understanding and Leveraging Lotus Notes, the Notes Strategist Series, as well as Mission Critical Lotus Notes (Prentice Hall, 1996). Panelist - Siva Subramanian, Director, UC Solutions, Nortel Organizing for IP Telephony, UC and Converged Networks (Location: Room 130) The migration to IP Telephony and converged networks has already had major impacts on how IT organizations are structured, as staff with backgrounds in voice and data have been brought together into integrated work groups. Now, with Unified Communications, just having voice and data people work together isn’t enough - applications, messaging and security professionals need to become actively involved. This creates challenges in terms of overcoming long-held stereotypes, and opportunities to create a much more dynamic and responsive IT organization. This tutorial will present case studies of different approaches that enterprises are taking to deal with this issue. In addition, the instructors will present a methodology for project management and recommend processes for procurement, integration, security and reliability. Attendees will gain a better understanding of their options for organizational restructuring, and concrete advice on how to achieve more effective implementation of IP Telephony, Unified Communications and Converged Network projects. Mark Berg is a senior consultant with PlanNet Consulting. He has 15 years of communication technology experience, primarily in higher education. He has set IT strategy, designed voice and data physical infrastructure, managed cost-recovery initiatives, and overseen IP telephony projects. Previous posts include senior management positions, including CIO, at two Southern California universities in telecommunications and networking. Mr. Berg received his degree in journalism from Biola University in La Mirada, California. David Stein is a principal with PlanNet Consulting and Director of Operations. He has more than 25 years of consulting, information systems and telecommunications experience, with a primary emphasis on voice, data and video communications and technology infrastructure projects. He has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences, and has authored several articles on IP Telephony that have been published in Business Communications Review and HIMSS. Mr. Stein graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Computer Science. Instructor - Mark Berg, Senior Consultant, PlanNet Consulting Mark Berg is a senior consultant with PlanNet Consulting. He has 15 years of communication technology experience, primarily in higher education. He has set IT strategy, designed voice and data physical infrastructure, managed cost-recovery initiatives, and overseen IP telephony projects. Previous posts include senior management positions, including CIO, at two Southern California universities in telecommunications and networking. Mr. Berg received his degree in journalism from Biola University in La Mirada, California. Instructor - David Stein, Principal, PlanNet Consulting Mr. Stein is a principal with PlanNet Consulting and Director of Operations. He has more than 25 years of consulting, information systems and telecommunications experience, with a primary emphasis on voice, data and video communications and technology infrastructure projects. PlanNet Consulting assists enterprises with the entire technology lifecycle. His experience includes traditional voice (PBX, TDM), data and video communications as well as all aspects of their convergence (IP Telephony, Video over IP). He has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences including American Library Association, Interop, ACUTA, CoreNet, BICSI, CISOA and VoiceCon. He has also authored several articles on IP Telephony that have been published in Business Communications Review and HIMSS. Mr. Stein graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Computer Science. Cutting the Corporate Energy Bill: Part 2 - Video, Teleworking and Collaboration (Location: Room 124) Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) can reduce energy, travel and related expenses for the entire enterprise through the judicious use of conferencing - audio, video, telepresence and web — and the emerging tools and technologies for collaboration. This tutorial the new products and services for video, telepresence and collaboration, and explores your options for enabling remote and mobile workers. It will be organized around four frames of reference: * Global Enterprise: Wants to reduce travel and increase efficiency (Telepresence, video, web conferencing). * Enterprise: Wants to tightly connect to customers/partners (Telepresence, video, VPN, presence federation) * Small/remote offices and teleworkers (Video, desktop video, web conferencing, VPN, VoIP, presence) * Road Warriors (desktop video, web conferencing, VPN, VoIP, presence) It will also address the networking requirements for these applications, with an emphasis on managing bandwidth and maintaining quality of service. John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network solutions. John has 29 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. Instructor - John Bartlett, Principal, NetForecast John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video, telepresence, and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering.
2:45 pm–3:15 pm	Refreshment Break sponsored by Microsoft (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.microsoft.com
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Tuesday, November 11
7:00 am–8:00 am	Continental Breakfast Continental Breakfast sponsored by Motorola (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.motorola.com
8:00 am–8:45 am	Early Bird Session Infrastructure and Security Planning for WLANs (Location: Room 123) Wireless LANs are becoming an essential element in the enterprise infrastructure, and as the market matures, buyers face a growing number of choices. In terms of AP architectures, there are centralized versus distributed versus virtual options to consider, and a raft of security options — the pre-standard Draft 2.0 802.11n radio link, WPA2 and 802.1x, Now that voice is moving onto the WLAN, security takes on new importance. This session will bring you up-to-date on the important WLAN developments and provide guidance for selecting your WLAN infrastructure. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the trade-offs between centralized versus distributed WLAN switching architectures, and why should I care? * Has Cisco’s new Motion Architecture really altered the WLAN landscape? * Is it wise to deploy the set of 802.11n Draft 2.0 products when the final standard will not be released until 2009? * Under what conditions do stand-alone access points make sense? * What are the new security threats and what steps can we take to mitigate them? Speaker - Michael Finneran, Principal, dBrn Associates, Inc Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled “Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide” (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. QOS and QOE: Voice Quality Across Distributed Networks (Location: Room 131) Even as enterprises continue to grapple with implementing Quality of Service (QOS), especially for applications over the wide area, we’re now hearing about a new metric: Quality of Experience, or QOE. What’s the difference between QOS and QOE metrics, and can you have one without the other? In this session, you’ll learn what you’ll have to do to ensure that wide-area voice traffic meets network-level QOS requirements, and also provides the user-level Quality of Experience required to make communications effective. KEY QUESTIONS: * What’s the best way to guarantee that real-time multimedia traffic will get the treatment it requires in order to sound best?especially when traversing the WAN? * What are the concrete metrics you should use to determine whether your end users are actually getting acceptable-quality voice? * How is QOE defined, and from whom do these definitions come? * How is QOE different from QOS, and what’s the importance of this distinction? Speaker - John Bartlett, Principal, NetForecast John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video, telepresence, and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. Panelist - Mike Hollier, CTO, Psytechnics Dr. Mike Hollier is a technical and commercial pioneer in perceptual engineering. He directed BT’s research into audio, video and multimedia performance assessment for nearly a decade before leading the incubation of Psytechnics Ltd. in 2000. He left BT to become Psytechnics’ CEO and since October 2002 has served as its CTO. Psytechnics is the global leader in delivering Quality of Experience (QoE) management products for Voice over IP, Video Conferencing, Unified Communications and IPTV in fixed, mobile and converged environments. Panelist - Jim McQuaid, Director of Product Management, NetQoS, Inc. Jim McQuaid drives strategic product initiatives at NetQoS. Most recently, he spearheaded the development and launch of the NetQoS VoIP Monitor product. A graduate of the University of Michigan, McQuaid has worked in network performance analysis, digital signal processing and measurement and control for a variety of established and startup companies including Analog Devices, Bay Networks, Ganymede, NetIQ and NetQoS. McQuaid is the co-author of RFC 1944 and 2544 and was the Chair of the IETF Benchmarking Methodologies Working Group from 1995 to 1998. In recent years McQuaid has focused primarily on application and network performance. He is also a filmmaker who recently completed a film about the end of cheap oil: http://www.afterthepeak.com. Panelist - Bill Tiso, Director and Principal Engineer for Market Development, Embedded and Communications Group, Intel Bill Tiso is a Market Development Director and Principal Engineer with the Performance Processor Division within Intel’s Embedded and Communications Group. Mr. Tiso is responsible for Service Provider (Telco and Cable MSO) customer premises (consumer and small business) platforms utilizing packet based voice, multimedia and data plane content processing from Intel and ecosystem partners, utilizing Intel’s embedded low power IA processors and SOCs. Mr. Tiso leads Intel’s technical strategy team in applying Intel’s low power Atom™ processor for consumer media phone and residential gateway segments. Previously, Mr. Tiso managed the development of many products released by Dialogic Corporation and GammaLink. He holds a B.S.E.E degree from Florida Institute of Technology and an M.S.E.E. degree from Polytechnic Institute of New York, and currently resides in Hilton Head, SC. UC Market Update & Forecast (Location: Room 132) Some vendors and industry experts talk about Unified Communications as if it’s “the next new thing,” while others say it’s already a “done deal.” But how big is the market today, and which vendors are emerging as the major players? In this session, a leading UC analyst will present the findings of a recent study that takes a comprehensive look at the market’s size, players and prospects. KEY QUESTIONS: * Who are the principal players, and how are they positioning themselves? * What are the current and likely future patterns of adoption?e.g., by job type, mobile work, business process? * How much of the vendors’ reported “UC” sales represent traditional IP-PBX and related gear versus “true” UC products that are actually being implemented as part of an enterprise UC vision? * What variables affect adoption of UC products and technologies? Speaker - Blair Pleasant, Principal Analyst, COMMfusion LLC Blair Pleasant is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of ucstrategies.com, an industry resource on the growing UC arena. She provides consulting and market research analysis on voice/data convergence markets, applications, and technologies, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically. Prior to COMMfusion, Ms. Pleasant was Director of Communications Analysis for The PELORUS Group, a market research and consulting firm, and President of Lower Falls Consulting. With 20 years experience, her primary areas of focus are convergence applications, including Unified Communications, Unified Messaging, the contact center, computer telephony integration (CTI), and voice processing. Blair has authored many highly acclaimed multi-client market studies and white papers, as well as custom research reports, and provides market research analysis and consulting services to both end user and vendor clients. Ms. Pleasant received a BA degree in Communications from Albany State University, and an MBA in marketing and an MS in Broadcast Administration from Boston University. Contact Center Market Update (Location: Room 130) As contact centers migrate to IP-based platforms and as Unified Communications evolves from a concept into a set of real-world products and capabilities, the contact center market is being shaken up. This session will help you understand the dynamics of the vendors, their product offerings and market positioning. A top market analyst discusses the key factors you can use to evaluate your options. KEY QUESTIONS: * Which vendors are winning and which are losing in the contact center market battles? * Will new players like Microsoft and IBM be successful using Unified Communications as their entry point into the contact center market? * What are the vendors’ relative strengths and weaknesses? How to they compare on price? What new features and functions are becoming available? * What role should SIP play in planning for next-generation contact centers? * What new developments can we expect from the vendors in the coming 12 months, and how should this affect your current procurement plans? Speaker - Sheila McGee-Smith, President/Principal Analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics Sheila McGee-Smith, the founder of McGee-Smith Analytics, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant focused on the contact center and unified communications markets. She has a proven track record of accomplishment in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for communications solutions and services. Ms. McGee-Smith works on a daily basis with both solution providers and enterprises. Her insight helps them develop strategies to meet the escalating demands of today’s consumer and business customers. Ms. McGee-Smith has spent over twenty years in the telecommunications industry, including 12 years with analyst firm The PELORUS Group. Prior to her career as an industry analyst, Ms. McGee-Smith held sales management, market research and product management positions at AT&T, Timeplex and Dun & Bradstreet. Ms. McGee-Smith was awarded a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, majoring in psychology and an MBA with majors in marketing and management information systems from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Sheila is a regular blogger on CMP’s information portal No Jitter at www.nojitter.com. UC - Which User Interface Will You Choose? (Location: Room 124) Unified Communications (UC) cuts across a wide range of media (voice, text, messaging and video), endpoints (desktop telephone instruments, PCs, mobile communications devices) and applications. As a result, the User Interface will play a critical role - it is the user’s entry point into this complex environment. Today, no single vendor dominates UC, and while you might prefer to have a single user interface, that’s not a viable option, at least not yet. This session will examine your options for creating smooth access and operations among the interfaces currently available. It will give you an understanding of the role intelligent signaling links play between disparate UC components. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the realistic options available for presenting the elements of a UC solution to end users in an efficient and useful way? * What are the trade-offs associated each of the various options? * What should you look for in the signaling capabilities presented by the various vendors? * What are reasonable objectives to set for having a unified user interface? Speaker - Allan Sulkin, President, TEQConsult Group Allan Sulkin, president and founder of TEQConsult Group (1986), is widely recognized as the industry’s foremost enterprise communications market/product analyst. He is celebrating 30 years telecommunications market experience this month and has consulted for many of the industry’s leading vendors participating at VoiceCon. Sulkin has been a long time Contributing Editor to Business Communications Review and its current online incarnation No Jitter, and has served as a Program Director and featured tutorial/seminar presenter for VoiceCon since its 1991 inception. Sulkin is the author of PBX Systems for IP Telephony (McGraw-Hill Professional Publications) and writer of the PBX chapter in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He can be contacted at amsulkin@aol.com Panelist - Brian Meek, Director of the Office Communications & Collaboration Client Group, Microsoft Brian Meek is Director of Office Communicator Client team, where he is responsible for the client experience for the Office Communications Group, and the real-time collaboration and communication portions of Microsoft’s UC strategy. Prior to joining the OCG organization, Brian lead the SharedView project, aka Mojo, an unmanaged service that brings basic collaboration tools to all IW. Further back, Brian was a technical leader in the Live Meeting product team responsible for the platform and programming model. Brian joined Microsoft through the Placeware acquisition, where he served as Principal Architect leading the effort to build a multi-tenant web conferencing service. He started his career in internet advertising, including time as the VP Engineering for Engage Media, formerly Flycast, Inc, where he lead the team that build the first performance based online advertising service. Brian has a son, Joshua, and a daughter Olivia, and is married to Melinda. Brian’s hobbies include digital photography, and bicycling. Panelist - Allan Mendelsohn, Sr. Marketing Manager, UC, Avaya Allan is the Senior Marketing Manager for Unified Communications at Avaya. While he resides in Canada, his effectiveness in his global role is a testament to the application of Unified Communications solutions. His marketing, product management, and business development career has spanned 20+ years dealing with the planning and application of voice, data, and information systems to support the needs of business with particular focus on employee productivity and customer service. His applications focus has included: unified communications, messaging, IVR, contact center, CTI, voice over IP, and remote data access. Prior to joining Avaya (via Octel and Lucent) in 1998, Allan led marketing and business development teams at two mid sized organizations entering new stages of growth, which followed his applications marketing tenure at Nortel. Allan holds an MBA in Information Systems (McMaster University) and an Honors BA in Economics and Psychology (York University).
9:00 am–10:00 am	Keynotes Keynote Presentation: Avaya (Location: Room 134) Speaker - Charles Giancarlo, Chief Executive Officer, Avaya Charles Giancarlo is acting Chief Executive Officer of Avaya, a position he assumed in June 2008, and he has over 25 years of experience in the communications industry. In 2007, he joined Silver Lake - the leader in private investment in technology and related growth industries — as a Managing Director. From 1993-2007, he was a senior executive at Cisco Systems, serving most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Development, leading the company’s overall product development and management activities. As Chief Development Officer, he directed the activities of over half of all Cisco’s employees and was directly responsible for Cisco’s expansion into a large number of new markets and technologies. Charles was also responsible for all of Cisco’s divisions including Linksys, Scientific Atlanta and WebEx. His first position at Cisco was Vice President of Business Development, where he developed Cisco’s merger and acquisition strategy and practice. Prior to joining Cisco, he founded four communications equipment companies and successfully sold two of them to larger companies. Charles holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications. Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations. In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization’s migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master’s Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
10:00 am–10:30 am	Refreshment Break sponsored by No Jitter (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.nojitter.com
10:30 am–11:30 am	Keynotes Keynote Presentation: Microsoft (Location: Room 134) Speaker - Betsy Frost Webb, General Manager, Unified Communications Marketing, Microsoft In her role as general manager of Unified Communications Marketing, Betsy Frost Webb leads Microsoft Corp.’s marketing and business strategy for unified communications including the company’s e-mail, instant messaging, presence, voice and conferencing solutions. Frost Webb started her career at Microsoft in 1997 and has held product management and global business leadership roles across the company. Before joining Microsoft, she was a consultant with Bain & Company and spent nearly five years at Sprint in a variety of product management and business development roles. Frost Webb holds bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees in economics from the Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She lives in the Seattle area with her family. Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications. Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations. In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization’s migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master’s Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
11:30 am–6:00 pm	Exhibition and Reception Exhibition with Reception sponsored by Avaya (Location: Exhibit Hall D) www.avaya.com
11:30 am–1:00 pm	Luncheon Luncheon sponsored by ShoreTel (Location: Hall D Lunch Room) www.shoretel.com
1:00 pm–2:15 pm	Concurrent Session Fixed Mobile Convergence: The Hows and Whys (Location: Room 131) Fixed mobile convergence is coming, but there are still a wide array of options that range from a simple simultaneous ring feature to solutions that extend presence-enabled directories and visual voicemail to mobile devices worldwide. The cellular carriers are also hinting at plans to introduce their own FMC services based on either Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) or the more comprehensive IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Meanwhile, IP-PBX vendors, technology partners and now WLAN switch vendors are all proposing their own solutions. This session will provide an overview of FMC and mobile unified communications and a description of the various strategies now being proposed. KEY QUESTIONS: * To what extent is FMC really ready for prime time? * Will FMC allow you to reduce your cellular costs? * What are the advantages of rooting an FMC solution in an IP PBX, a WLAN Switch, or an adjunct appliance? * Which of the solutions require dual mode cellular handsets, and will those handsets require special software to operate? * How will the picture change when and if the cellular carriers finally embrace FMC? Speaker - Michael Finneran, Principal, dBrn Associates, Inc Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled “Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide” (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Panelist - Imran Akbar, Vice President and GM of Converged Enterprise Communications, Motorola, Inc. Imran Akbar is the Vice President and General Manager of Converged Enterprise Communications at Motorola. Currently, he is leading Motorola’s initiative into converged communications, which includes bringing forth the single (WiFi) and dual (WiFi and Cellular) mode solutions with voice services like Dispatch (PTT) and PBX mobilization. He also played a key role in the acquisition of Symbol Technologies and its integration into Motorola. Akbar has more than 15 years of experience in the Telecom and IT industries. His responsibilities have included general management, strategy and business development, and corporate finance at Motorola, Unisys and Sprint. Akbar has been with Motorola since 2000. Panelist - Dan Jacobson, Senior Portfolio Manager, Converged Voice Services, Sprint Nextel Dan Jacobson is Senior Portfolio Manager for Converged Voice Services at Sprint Nextel. He leads a dynamic team of individuals responsible for the technical development and life cycle management of integrated wireline and wireless services. His team launched Sprint Wireless Integration, a product which extends the PBX functionality to a mobile handset. Dan has over 20 years of industry experience across a diverse set of disciplines including VoIP, FMC and TDM product development, network, information technology, business development, operations, marketing, regulatory and customer service. Dan received his Masters in Business Administration from Baker University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Panelist - Pejman Roshan, VP of Marketing and Co-Founder , Agito Networks Mr. Pejman Roshan is the Vice President of Marketing and a founder of Agito Networks, responsible for outbound marketing and product management. He brings more than 16 years of wireless expertise and an extensive track record to the company. Prior to founding Agito, Mr. Roshan was Product Line Manager in the Cisco Systems Wireless Networking Business Unit, responsible for software, security, voice and WLAN management products. Roshan joined Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit just after its acquisition of Aironet in 2000, helping drive Cisco into its wireless market leadership position. Prior to his product role at Cisco, Mr. Roshan spent eight years as a network engineer and architect. Mr. Roshan designed and deployed large-scale networks for companies such as Cisco Systems and Automatic Data Processing (ADP). Mr. Roshan’s accomplishments include participation in the IEEE 802.11 task groups responsible for security (802.11i) and QoS (802.11e); co-authoring the Cisco Press book 802.11 Wireless LAN Fundamentals, published by Cisco Systems in 2004; as well as publishing numerous wireless security and wireless voice white papers. Mr. Roshan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from California Polytechnic (Cal Poly) University. Panelist - Rich Watson, Director of Product Marketing, Divitas Networks Enterprise Communications: The New Market Order (Location: Room 132) New shipments of IP end stations outnumber new TDM end stations, and Cisco now outpaces the legacy TDM vendors in annual station shipments. At the same time, consolidation and private-equity buyouts are beginning to change the vendor landscape, while new players with strong balance sheets have recently entered the market. In this session, Allan Sulkin will present system market forecasts and assessments of IP-based applications, handicap the market competitors, and discuss potential realignments among the market-leading equipment suppliers. KEY QUESTIONS: * Which market segments in IP Telephony are hot, and which are not? * Which vendors are moving up in market share, and at whose expense? * Is anyone buying IP applications? Which applications? * How Microsoft and IBM change the dynamics of the enterprise communications market? How might consolidation among vendors further change it? * How are the traditional vendors evolving amid the transition to IP Telephony and Unified Communications? Speaker - Allan Sulkin, President, TEQConsult Group Allan Sulkin, president and founder of TEQConsult Group (1986), is widely recognized as the industry’s foremost enterprise communications market/product analyst. He is celebrating 30 years telecommunications market experience this month and has consulted for many of the industry’s leading vendors participating at VoiceCon. Sulkin has been a long time Contributing Editor to Business Communications Review and its current online incarnation No Jitter, and has served as a Program Director and featured tutorial/seminar presenter for VoiceCon since its 1991 inception. Sulkin is the author of PBX Systems for IP Telephony (McGraw-Hill Professional Publications) and writer of the PBX chapter in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He can be contacted at amsulkin@aol.com Building the New IT Organization: Taking on Converged Networks (Location: Room 124) In the first generation of IP Telephony, the “voice” and “data” folks within IT had to figure out new ways of working together to build the new structures that would send voice over the “data” network. With Unified Communications, many more stakeholders are brought into the equation: Applications developers, datacenter managers, staff in charge of directories and email, just to name a few. In this session, you’ll hear from enterprise executives that have confronted the organizational challenges of both IPT and UC. KEY QUESTIONS: * What processes are needed to open up and maintain the lines of communications among voice, data network, applications developers and messaging/email IT specialists? * What are the most common obstacles and gaps among the various organizations and their requirements/perspectives? How are these obstacles being overcome? * As enterprise communications changes, what parts of IT are taking the lead over which parts of the process? * What role are business unit leaders playing in these scenarios? What role is likely in the future? Speaker - Mark McMath, VP/CIO, Bloomington Hospital Mark McMath joined Bloomington Hospital as Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) in 2003. McMath began his career with IBM in 1981 and has held leadership roles with both for-profit and not-for-profit health care providers. Under McMath’s leadership, Bloomington Hospital has completed a five-year strategic information technology plan for the hospital, and the management and oversight of the selection process, contract negotiations and board approval for a new enterprise-wide system that will give Bloomington Hospital the most current, state-of-the-art information technology. Also under McMath’s leadership, in 2008, Bloomington Hospital was named one American Hospital Association’s 100 Most Wired Hospitals in the Nation. McMath came to Bloomington from Hartford, Conn. where he served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Clinical Laboratory Partners, a provider of diagnostic testing, and information and laboratory management services. He has also held the titles of Chief Information Officer for the Hamilton Health Care System in Dalton, Ga., Senior Account Executive at the Gerber Alley Healthcare Corporation in Chicago, and Director of Information Systems at the Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, Ga. McMath holds a Bachelors of Science degree in management science from Purdue University, and is a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, and the American College of Healthcare Executives. Active in the community, McMath is currently serving as treasurer for Martha’s House, an emergency shelter for adults. He also serves on the City of Bloomington’s Digital Underground Advisory Committee. Speaker - Steven Schafer, Director Global IS, Global Crossing Steven Schafer is Director of GIS Collaboration and Network services at Global Crossing, including Enterprise Messaging, Telephony Services, Platform Services (Active Directory, SharePoint, DNS), and Media Services (Video Conferencing, Streaming). As a Microsoft Technology Adoption Partner, Mr. Shaffer managed the deployment of Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 to the entire company, approximately 5600 user objects prior to OCS October 16, 2007 launch. Mr. Schafer currently directs Unified Communications deployments within Global Crossing and is focusing on several areas, including deployment of OCS as the primary telephony service within Latin America and integration of OCS into internal and customer facing applications. Speaker - Jamie Libow, Engineering Director, Travelers Jamie Libow is an Engineering Director at Travelers, where he leads the Unified Communications group. In this role, he is responsible for setting the strategy, implementing and supporting Unified Communications, Unified Messaging and Electronic Fax technologies. Jamie joined Travelers in 1996 as a participant in the Information Technology Leadership Development Program (ITLDP) and has worked in many departments including Data Network Engineering, Data Network Operations, Distributed/Server Operations, Call Center Technologies, and Voice Engineering. Jamie has a BA in Psychology from Queens College, a BE in Electrical Engineering from Stony Brook University, and an MS in Computer Science from Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Hartford, CT. Moderator - Marty Parker, Principal, UniComm Consulting Marty Parker provides Unified Communications consulting support to both private sector and public sector enterprises. As a Principal of UniComm Consulting and as co-founder of UCStrategies.com, Marty is part of a network of talent and ideas to assure clients of the best and latest information about Unified Communications (UC). Marty’s focus is on the applications for UC and how those applications optimize business processes to deliver hard-dollar ROI. This focus is the basis for his BCR Training course, “Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications”; for his articles in BCR Magazine and on NoJitter.com (see “Top UC Applications Now Apparent”, June 2007); and for his on-line UC Resources Center available at UCStrategies.com. Marty is a regular moderator and presenter at InterOp, VoiceCon and in other UC industry venues. His applications and industry-oriented perspectives on UC are based on his roles in sales, marketing, product management and executive positions with IBM and ATT/Lucent/Avaya as well as with a major Telecom VAR, and as founder and CEO of venture-funded startups in the early phases of the voice messaging industry. UC: How Far Have we Come? What’s Next? (Location: Room 123) In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications’ evolution to date: What’s available now and what’s coming over the next 12 months. This session also will analyze the barriers and issues that must be overcome for UC to fulfill its potential - with a special focus on interoperability. KEY QUESTIONS: * * What are the key indications of UC adoption and market success? * What are the top UC applications in terms of actual implementation? * How much progress has been made on UC interoperability? * What changes are likely to the UC cost architecture over the next 12 months? Panelist - David Marshak, Senior Product Manager, Unified Communications & Collaboration , IBM David Marshak leads Real-time Collaboration and Unified Communications product strategy and planning for IBM Lotus Software, including Instant Messaging, Web Conferencing, VoIP, telephony, and video. He is the product manager of Sametime Unified Telephony. Prior to joining IBM in January 2005, Marshak was an internationally known industry analyst and consultant with Patricia Seybold Group for 18 years. Marshak has spoken worldwide to audiences, large and small, on emerging technologies and future trends. He is often called upon to be a featured speaker and panel moderator at numerous industry conferences such as VoiceCon, Collaboration Technologies Conference, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, COMDEX, InternetWorld, Groupware, VON, NetWorld, and Lotusphere, among others. He has appeared as an expert commentator on PBS, CNBC, and on National Public Radio and has lectured on collaboration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Babson College. Marshak has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times, Business Week, and Investor’s Business Daily as well as the technical press. Marshak is the author of Understanding and Leveraging Lotus Notes, the Notes Strategist Series, as well as Mission Critical Lotus Notes (Prentice Hall, 1996). Panelist - Peter Greco, Director, Solution Management, Siemens Enterprise Communications Peter Greco: Solution Management Director - OpenScape Unified Communications Peter Greco is Solution Management Director of Unified Communications for Siemens Enterprise Communications in the US. His responsibilities include assessing the business and solution requirements of custoemrs in the US and incorporating them into Product development plans, building the business case for unified communications for customers, developing staff skills for supporting UC, and overall US product management. Mr. Greco has served a variety of roles in Sales, Service, and Marketng with Siemens, IBM, and ROLM Communications. He is a graduate of West Chester University. Panelist - Christian Szpilfogel, Office of the CTO, Mitel Appointed to the Office of the CTO in 2005, Christian Szpilfogel brings a breadth of experience in product management, research and development, and a strong business sense to his role as VP of Strategic Business. In this role, Christian is responsible for identifying new business opportunities for Mitel, managing key customer account relationships and developing the company’s overall strategic technology plan. Panelist - Eric Swift, Senior Director, Microsoft As senior director of product management in the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft, Eric Swift is responsible for managing customer and industry requirements, product positioning, and marketing strategies for the next generation of Microsoft Unified Communications products and services, including Microsoft Office Communicator, Microsoft Office Communications Server, and Microsoft RoundTable. Swift has been with Microsoft for six years. Previous to his current position with the Unified Communications Group, he was director of product management in Microsoft’s Application Platform group. Prior to joining Microsoft, Swift held vice president positions at enterprise application integration and CRM software vendors where responsibilities included product management, CRM and Data Warehouse implementations, and technical support operations. Swift has an MBA from Columbia University in New York, NY. Panelist - Ross Daniels, Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications, Cisco Ross Daniels is a Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications. In this capacity, Mr. Daniels is responsible for product positioning, solution messaging, and go-to-market activities for various aspects of Cisco’s Unified Communications portfolio, with primary emphasis on Cisco Unified Contact Center, Messaging, Web and Audio Conferencing, and Presence solutions. Mr. Daniels joined Cisco as part of its November 1999 acquisition of WebLine Communications. While at WebLine, he held a variety of technical sales and marketing roles. Previous positions at Cisco include CTI Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, and Manager of Product Management for Cisco’s enterprise and hosted contact center solutions. Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Daniels spent several years in the business-to-business advertising industry. A regular speaker at industry events, Cisco events, and customer briefings, Mr. Daniels has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Harvard University and a Masters in Business Administration from Babson College. Panelist - Dilshad Simons, VP, UC, Avaya Moderator - Jim Burton, CXO, CT Link/UCStrategies.com Jim Burton is Founder and CEO of CT Link, LLC. Burton founded the consulting firm in 1989 to help clients in the converging voice, data and networking industries with strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and distribution issues. In the early 1990s, Burton recognized the challenges vendors and the channel faced as they developed and installed integrated voice/data products. He became the leading authority in the voice/data integration industry and is credited with “coining” the term computer-telephone integration (CTI). Burton helped companies including Microsoft and Intel enter the voice market and helped AT&T (now Avaya), Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Siemens and Toshiba with their CTI strategies. In the late 1990s, venture capitalists turned to Burton for help in evaluating potential investments in IP PBX start-ups. He went on to help these and other companies with strategic planning and partnering, including NBX (acquired by 3Com, Selsius (acquired by Cisco), ShoreTel (IPO 2007) and Sphere Communications (acquired by NEC). In 1998 Burton recognized the telecommunications industry was on the verge of a major shift, from circuit switch to packet switch (IP) technology and cofounded Circa Communications to develop IP phones to address the emerging market. Polycom acquired Circa in 2000. The Circa acquisition has been a major contributor to Polycom’s growth during the past several years. In the early 2000s, Burton began focusing on wireless services and technologies. In 2005 Burton started helping vendors with their Unified Communications strategy and in 2006, along with several colleagues, created a web site, UCStrategies.com, to provide information for enterprise customers and vendors. Open Source: What’s its Role in Enterprise Voice? (Location: Room 130) Open source PBX software packages, most notably Asterisk, continue to grow, but mostly in smaller installations. And even though some large-system vendors now are OEMing Asterisk, is open source voice ready for prime time? In this session, you’ll learn whether open source PBX software’s growing appeal will spread and, eventually, become mainstream within the enterprise. KEY QUESTIONS: * What level of market share and acceptance has open source PBX software attained? What is expected? * Which products use open source PBX software? * What are the most compelling reasons for choosing open source PBX software? What are the greatest areas of concern in making this choice? * Is open source voice feature-comparable with proprietary systems? * What are the technical challenges of an open source PBX deployment, and how are these overcome? Speaker - Irwin Lazar, Principal Research Analyst and Program Director, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Nemertes Research Irwin Lazar is a Principal Analyst & Program Director, Convergence & Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars, and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, and collaboration. Since 1992 Mr. Lazar has been a consultant and analyst, serving a variety of global enterprises and government agencies. Mr. Lazar led efforts to develop security architectures and convergence road-maps, as well as enterprise network architectures, for numerous clients in the health care, pharmaceuticals, banking & finance, energy, government, and retail sectors. Mr. Lazar has led teams of consultants in requirements-gathering and strategy development. He also has evaluated emerging IT trends and analyzed their impact on organizations. A sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for Business Communications Review magazine, provides topics for Network World, and is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar holds a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from Radford University in Radford, VA, and a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve Ordnance Corps as an officer from 1992-2001. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Panelist - Martin Steinmann, Leader, Next Generation SMB , Nortel Martin J. Steinmann has had a successful career in the technology industry for over 20 years as a marketer, technologist, business leader and venture capitalist on two continents. As part of the Vesbridge Partners’ team his focus as an investor was mainly concentrated on early stage opportunities and recaps in the enterprise software and IT industry including enterprise productivity software, storage solutions, IT security management, unified communications and voice over IP (VoIP) as well as new media and social networking. Martin is also an accomplished marketer and strategic business leader where he served as vice president of marketing for several technology startup companies. He took operational roles with portfolio companies of Vesbridge Partners initiating and executing strategic company repositioning, management team building, business turn-around, and refinancing and M&A activity. He is also the founder and a member of the board at SIPfoundry, the industry’s leading open source community dedicated to VoIP technology and solutions and he gained a lot of experience with open source business models. Prior to joining Vesbridge, Martin was General Partner of Calivia, a strategy consulting and marketing advisory company focused on software startup companies in the telecommunications and IT sectors. Martin also served in various executive roles at Lucent Technologies and at Switzerland based Ascom AG. While at Lucent he was responsible for Lucent’s OEM agreement and subsequent acquisition of Yurie Systems Inc., a deal worth more than $1 billion in cash. Martin earned a BSc and MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a PhD in Physics from the Danish Technical University in Copenhagen. During his PhD work he conducted critical research in tunable multi-section DFB/DBR semiconductor lasers, a vital component for today’s DWDM optical transmission systems. Panelist - Bill Miller, VP, Product Management, Digium Bill Miller / Vice President, Product Management Bill Miller brings over 20 years of telecommunication experience to his role as vice president of product management. Miller joined Digium in June 2006, heading up both marketing and product management. Today, Miller is responsible for managing Digium’s expanding product lines including all hardware, software and appliance families, technology partners and expanding Digium’s open source Asterisk Community. Prior to joining Digium, Miller led 3Com’s voice product management team where he led voice product line revenue growth while re-positioning the enterprise voice products and driving new strategies for the future. Miller has held senior positions in Product Management, Marketing, Strategic Alliances and Business Development for Andes Networks, Fujitsu Business Communications Systems, General DataComm, Rockwell International and Prime Computer. Miller holds a BS in Computer Engineering Technology from Northeastern University. Panelist - Kerry Garrison, trixbox Community Director, Fonality Kerry Garrison is the Community Director for Fonality. In this position he guides the development of the trixbox CE open source telephony project and handles interactions with major vendors as well as the forums. He is the publisher of the popular VOIP blog site VoipSpeak.net and the creator of the video tutorials site asterisktutorials.com. He has been in the IT industry for over 20 years with positions ranging from IT Director of a large multi-site distribution company to developing a large hosted web server platform for a major ISP, to finally running his own IT consulting business in Southern California. Kerry was introduced to the world of Asterisk by a friend and began running his own business on it. After about a year of working with it and writing some articles that became extremely popular on the net, he felt it was time to start putting clients onto Asterisk-based systems. After writing a book on trixbox, he eventually joined the Fonality team in 2006.
2:15 pm–2:45 pm	Refreshment Break sponsored by No Jitter (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.nojitter.com
2:45 pm–3:45 pm	Concurrent Session Integrating Mobility with UC (Location: Room 123) In the mobile UC environment, users will be provided with presence-enabled directories, visual voicemail, and the full range of desktop UC capabilities on their mobile device. But getting from where we are today to that mobile UC future is going to require investment by all parts of the industry - carriers, enterprises, equipment and software vendors. In this session, a panel of wireless carriers, VOIP and desktop application vendors, and consultants will describe their best solutions for mobile employees, and how to integrate those with our wired communication systems. KEY QUESTIONS: * What UC capabilities are available on mobile devices/services today? Can these integrate with the IP Telephony and UC infrastructures, and do they need to? * What are the key impediments (such as bandwidth or battery life) to end users’ enjoying the same functionality on a wireless UC application as its wired counterpart? * Can wireless UC solutions be implemented in conjunction with the enterprise infrastructure, or will service providers only offer these as their own standalone services? Do we have to wait for FMC to become widely available? * Are video and collaboration solutions viable UC applications for mobile users today? * What does the picture look like for operations and service workers versus office workers? Speaker - David Leach, Senior Marketing Manager, Siemens Enterprise Communications David has been one of the chief creative forces behind Siemens emergence as a leader in the presence-based, unified communications landscape over the past six years. Holding various positions within Siemens over the past 20 years, David has spent the last six plus years building the marketing vision and driving the success of OpenScape. Now he is focused on building broad market awareness of the benefits presence offers for business communications in the next decade. Speaker - Isabelle Guis, Senior Manager - Mobility Solutions, Cisco As a senior manager, Isabelle Guis is responsible for the marketing strategy of Cisco Mobility Solutions with a heavy emphasis on developing marketing activities for Context Aware Mobility, Fixed Mobile Convergence (including Mobile Unified Communications), and Mobility solutions for Healthcare and Manufacturing. Isabelle was instrumental in the launch of Cisco Motion, Cisco vision and associated strategy to empower IT to meet and exceed business mobility demands. She leads the efforts to grow Cisco mobility eco-system so technology partners can integrate with the Cisco Motion open architecture and API. Her team also drives messaging and tools on products and solutions to help enable sales and partners to promote the vast potential business opportunities offered by Cisco Mobility solutions. Prior to Cisco, Isabelle served at Nortel Networks for seven years in a variety of roles in the Enterprise and Service Provider divisions from R&D engineer, to product line pricing, product manager and product marketing manager. As a senior product marketing manager for Nortel, Isabelle was responsible for the Wireless LAN 2200 series portfolio. She also has strong international wireless experience, having launched 3G technologies in Europe and North America, and was instrumental in the company’s involvement in WLAN technologies for both Hot Spots and Enterprises. Isabelle holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Supelec in France and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Speaker - Eran Shtiegman, Principal Group Manager, Office Communications Group, Microsoft As Group Manager for mobility within the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft, Eran Shtiegman is responsible for the roadmap, feature set and execution of mobility related efforts within UCG including Office Communicator Mobile. Previous to his current position Eran was the Group Program Manager for Office Communicator where he was responsible for both the release of Office Communicator 2005 and 2007. Eran has been with the UCG team since joining Microsoft 6 years ago. Prior to joining Microsoft Eran worked at a variety of companies in the VoIP space including Vocaltec Communications where we was Director of Product Management. Eran has a Bachelor in Computer Science from the University of Rochester. Speaker - Sean McManus, Manager, Voice Solutions, Software Product Management Group, Research In Motion Sean McManus is a Manager for Voice Solutions, Software Product Management at Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry® smartphone. Sean is responsible for articulating RIM’s Enterprise Voice Strategy to large global accounts. Sean has over 17 years experience selling and marketing advanced voice solutions, including call centres, unified messaging, IP Telephony and IVR. Prior to joining RIM, Sean worked at IBM Global Services and a number of private firms in the voice and telecom industry. Moderator - Jim Burton, CXO, CT Link/UCStrategies.com Jim Burton is Founder and CEO of CT Link, LLC. Burton founded the consulting firm in 1989 to help clients in the converging voice, data and networking industries with strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and distribution issues. In the early 1990s, Burton recognized the challenges vendors and the channel faced as they developed and installed integrated voice/data products. He became the leading authority in the voice/data integration industry and is credited with “coining” the term computer-telephone integration (CTI). Burton helped companies including Microsoft and Intel enter the voice market and helped AT&T (now Avaya), Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Siemens and Toshiba with their CTI strategies. In the late 1990s, venture capitalists turned to Burton for help in evaluating potential investments in IP PBX start-ups. He went on to help these and other companies with strategic planning and partnering, including NBX (acquired by 3Com, Selsius (acquired by Cisco), ShoreTel (IPO 2007) and Sphere Communications (acquired by NEC). In 1998 Burton recognized the telecommunications industry was on the verge of a major shift, from circuit switch to packet switch (IP) technology and cofounded Circa Communications to develop IP phones to address the emerging market. Polycom acquired Circa in 2000. The Circa acquisition has been a major contributor to Polycom’s growth during the past several years. In the early 2000s, Burton began focusing on wireless services and technologies. In 2005 Burton started helping vendors with their Unified Communications strategy and in 2006, along with several colleagues, created a web site, UCStrategies.com, to provide information for enterprise customers and vendors. Finding the Payoff from Communications-Enabling Applications (Location: Room 130) Everyone agrees that the largest payoff from migrating to IP Telephony, UC and converged networks will be new applications. But, what applications are actually being developed and deployed? This session will present enterprise technologists who have “walked the walk” of communications-enabled applications; they’ll discuss what has worked, what hasn’t and why. KEY QUESTIONS * What types of communications-enabled apps can yield significant business benefits when integrated with communications capabilities? * What are the technical challenges to implementing and running these new applications? * How does an enterprise IT organization support function change as these apps come online? * What strategy works best: Relying on internal development teams or external ISVs and other providers? Speaker - Rick Tillotson, Assistant IT Director, TASB Rick Tillotson Assistant Information Technology Department Director - Telecommunications Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) www.tasb.org 512.467.0222 rick.tillotson@tasb.org As an IT manager, Rick Tillotson provides innovative networking and telephony technology, procedure and management solutions for the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) headquartered in Austin. Rick and his people make sure that TASB’s staff and the technology work together providing exemplary customer service to the public and to the member school boards. Created in 1949, TASB is a voluntary, nonprofit, statewide educational association that serves and represents local Texas school districts. TASB promotes educational excellence for Texas schoolchildren through advocacy, visionary leadership, and high quality services to school districts. With 100% dues paying membership of 1036 Texas school boards and a staff of over 400, TASB has a variety of programs and services including an investment pool, risk management services, an online school policy service, an in-house law firm, an online purchasing co-op, board member education, and governance services. This variety creates a welcome challenge for Rick Tillotson and the rest of the IT division. Rick has often been quoted in the trade press, written numerous articles, and is a frequent speaker and presenter. Accolades include the 1999 International Who’s Who of Information Technology, the July 2004 cover story in Communications News, a 2005 Computerworld Honors Laureate and a 2005 Computerworld Honors Program finalist. Rick is a former long time board member and conference chair for FOCUS, the AT&T user group. He was also a long time board member and past-president for JUST-US, the Siemens Communications user group, and just recently was elected back to the board. Speaker - Marty Parker, Principal, UniComm Consulting Marty Parker provides Unified Communications consulting support to both private sector and public sector enterprises. As a Principal of UniComm Consulting and as co-founder of UCStrategies.com, Marty is part of a network of talent and ideas to assure clients of the best and latest information about Unified Communications (UC). Marty’s focus is on the applications for UC and how those applications optimize business processes to deliver hard-dollar ROI. This focus is the basis for his BCR Training course, “Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications”; for his articles in BCR Magazine and on NoJitter.com (see “Top UC Applications Now Apparent”, June 2007); and for his on-line UC Resources Center available at UCStrategies.com. Marty is a regular moderator and presenter at InterOp, VoiceCon and in other UC industry venues. His applications and industry-oriented perspectives on UC are based on his roles in sales, marketing, product management and executive positions with IBM and ATT/Lucent/Avaya as well as with a major Telecom VAR, and as founder and CEO of venture-funded startups in the early phases of the voice messaging industry. Speaker - Steve White, Chief Architect, KITS Steve is Chief Architect at KITS, a firm that specializes in delivering enterprise level solutions to a variety of industries and verticals including Defense, Government and Public Safety. Steve leads Research and Development at KITS, a unit that focuses on delivering SOA-based products and solution frameworks for commercial markets and includes Unified Communications (UC) efforts. Under his direction, KITS has released RadioConnect for Sametime, a product delivering radio communications into IBM Lotus Sametime, the leading UC platform. With over 20 years of proven information technology leadership, Steve has been responsible for architecting and delivering enterprise solutions to Fortune 1000 companies such as Exxon, Dell, American Express, Sharp Healthcare, IBM, HP, CompUSA and Alcoa. Speaker - Tony Kaperick, Communications Analyst, INX Tony Kaperick INX Communications Specialist / Business Analyst Tony is the leading UC communications specialist for INX. With more than 5 years of experience in leading IP telephony/Unified Communications envisioning, planning and deployment processes, Tony brings strong business analyst skills, application integration awareness, and balancing of the user experience with cost-effective support for strategic goals of the organization. Tony draws on such diverse experience as Communications Officer and then Electronics Repair Officer in the US Navy, Peace Corps community development specialist in the jungles of South America, application developer for a community foundation, and program manager for a public sector technology consulting/web application development organization. Presently, Tony focuses on helping more complex organizations through the envisioning, analysis and planning stages of Unified Communications solutions - providing thought leadership around the strategic delivery framework and shaping the INX team’s tools, methods and processes for helping our client’s realize the successes that unified communications promises. Hard Phones, Softphones and Next-Gen Systems (Location: Room 124) Product developers continue to create new features and functions, but as the Unified Communications trend continues and as user expectations change, what specs will tomorrow’s hard- and softphones have to meet? In this session, a leading consultant will present an analysis and then discuss his conclusions with a panel of vendors. You will gain an understanding of the issues and tradeoffs as you prepare for ongoing investment in desktop endpoints. KEY QUESTIONS: * How do you ensure phones’ compatibility and integration with emerging Unified Communications platforms? Is SIP compliance enough? Is SIP compliance possible? * What hardware capabilities (Gigabit Ethernet cards, firmware upgradeability) do you require for future-proofing? * What is the price/performance of the latest phone sets? How does this compare to softphones? What are the life cycle expectations for hard phones? * What degree of multi-vendor interoperability can we expect in the next generation of hard phones? * What quality and security challenges need to be overcome before softphones go more mainstream? Speaker - Stephen Leaden, President, Leaden Associates Stephen Leaden is founder and President of Leaden Associates, Inc., an independent Telecommunications IT consulting firm providing specialized support in Telecommunications technologies and ROI strategies. Mr. Leaden has been in the Telecommunications field over 25 years, with 17 of those with his own firm. Clients include recognized enterprise clients in healthcare/education, manufacturing, financial services, publishing, and government vertical market segments. Mr. Leaden’s firm focuses as an extension of IT staff to facilitate the design, procurement, project implementation, and outsourcing for converged voice and data solutions. During their engagement, Leaden Associates proactively adds value via ROI strategies integrated into the projects they serve on. Mr. Leaden’s practice has focused on Voice over IP and Unified Communications and key market trends in these areas - he has spoken at national and International conferences on VoIP, has written four papers on VoIP strategies, troubleshooting and security, and has been quoted in national industry publications including BCR Magazine, Computer World, Information Week, and the Washington Post among others. Mr. Leaden is on the faculty of BCR Training and teaches two day training courses entitled “Optimizing Enterprise Networks” and “Cost Control of Wired and Wireless Networks: Best Practices”. Mr. Leaden is Past President and member of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, a national Telecommunications association that requires objectivity and professionalism as a prerequisite for membership. Mr. Leaden’s degree is from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Panelist - Gary Mading, Senior Product Manager, Aastra Gary Mading is Senior Product Manager at Aastra, an open-standards VoIP equipment manufacturer for enterprises. In this role, he manages the product strategy for Clearspan, Aastra’s open-standards, all-SIP IP-PBX for large enterprise customers. Gary has over 20 years of experience developing and marketing communication products including large telecom switches, transmission systems, broadband access products and enterprise communication systems. He has held senior positions for large communication companies such as Alcatel and Motorola. Panelist - Chalan Aras, Vice President, Marketing, Polycom Chalan Aras is vice president of marketing for Polycom’s Voice Communications Solutions division. Aras came to Polycom from Ditech Networks where he was vice president of marketing, product management and strategy. Prior to Ditech Networks, Aras also served as vice president of marketing and product management at Jetstream Communications and as the director of PLM for all video products at First Virtual Corp. Aras holds an MBA from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a Ph.D. in computer engineering from North Carolina State University, and is the recipient of five patents. Panelist - Dieter Rencken, Senior Product Manager, Phones, ShoreTel Dieter Rencken Senior Product Manager, IP Telephones ShoreTel, Inc. Mr. Rencken brings with him over twenty years of Product Management and Engineering experience in the Communications Industry. He is responsible for product management of IP telephones at ShoreTel. Previously, he held senior positions at Polycom, Siemens Information and Communication Networks, Inc. as well as other communications and technology companies. Upgrading Your Data Nets for Voice and Video (Location: Room 131) As you implement voice and/or video on your legacy data network, and as you scale that implementation, the challenge of delivering acceptable quality and sufficient security becomes more complex. And these challenges intensify as you attempt to serve all your users in all your locations and in all of the users locations. This session will give you a detailed understanding of the technical problems you can encounter, the steps to take to overcome them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make voice and video run over a data network. KEY QUESTIONS: * What is required to deliver adequate quality of service (QOS) for voice and video on an IP network that previously handled only data? Can you run VOIP or video over the Internet with acceptable QOS/quality of experience (QOE)? * How do you implement security on this upgraded data network? * How do you extend your upgrade across the WAN? * How do you extend your upgrade to serve mobile workers? Speaker - John Bartlett, Principal, NetForecast John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video, telepresence, and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. Panelist - Manfred Arndt, Convergence Solutions Architect, HP ProCurve Manfred Arndt is the Convergence Solutions Architect and HP Distinguished Technologist for ProCurve Networking. He is responsible for architecting IP telephony and multimedia capabilities in HP ProCurve’s network products. He also participates in several TIA and IEEE subcommittees, helping defining networking and telecommunications standards and is a co-author of the ANSI/TIA-1057 (LLDP-MED) standard. Arndt has 20 years of experience as System Architect, Technologist, Software Engineer and R&D Software Development Manager in several networking startups and the high-tech industry. Prior to joining HP ProCurve, he led the development of a pre-standard WiMAX broadband wireless access system, which included advanced QoS and scheduling algorithms to support business grade VoIP and video conferencing. At Fluke Networks, he architected and developed various network diagnostic products, including a 10/100/Gigabit integrated network analyzer that combined advanced network discovery, SNMP analysis, RMON2 monitoring and a high-performance protocol analyzer. Arndt is a regular participant in the Interop speaking program and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also holds three networking patents. Panelist - Paul Liesenberg, Enterprise Architecture Technology Manager, Cisco Paul Liesenberg is an Enterprise Architecture and Technology Manager for Cisco, where he develops methodologies that optimally align next-generation infrastructures and overarching business processes. Prior to Cisco, Paul was VP of Strategic Marketing for ZettaCom and Bivio Networks. Previously, Paul was with Cisco through the acquisition of StrataCom, and earlier worked in Nortel’s Data Networks Division and Siemens’ Public Networks’ R&D division. He holds two patents in the area of VoIP and holds an M.Sc. from TUM (Technische Universitaet Muenchen). Panelist - Ravi Kumar, Portfolio Leader, Mobility Solutions, Nortel Ravi Kumar Portfolio Leader Mobility Solutions business Experience -More than 20 years work experience at Hewlett Packard, Alteon Web systems and Nortel . - Areas of focus are Wireless, Application switching and Security. - Recognized speaker at many industry events - Interop, HP users form, Oracle users forum, Nortel users group, Voicecon, etc. - Author of several patents in the security and networking area. EDUCATION - Masters in Business Administration, Santa Clara University. - Masters in Computer Science, Texas Tech University. Panelist - Gregory Heath, Director of Convergence Solutions, Extreme Networks Gregory Heath is the Director of Convergence Solutions for Extreme Networks, Inc. the leader in open converged networks. In his position, Heath is responsible for developing customer-oriented network infrastructure solutions that embrace today’s need for a converged voice, video and data network. During his 18+ year career in communications, he has held various roles in marketing and engineering management and has gained tremendous expertise in multimedia applications that are transported over Ethernet networks. Extreme Networks designs, builds, and installs Ethernet infrastructure solutions that help solve the toughest business communications challenges. The company’s commitment to open networking sets it apart from the alternatives by delivering meaningful insight and unprecedented control to applications and services. Extreme Networks believes that openness is the best foundation for growth, freedom, flexibility and choice. The company focuses on enterprises and service providers who demand high performance, converged networks that support voice, video and data over a wired and wireless infrastructure. For more information, visit: http://www.extremenetworks.com Pricing and Budgeting for UC: Bang for the Buck and Investment Protection (Location: Room 132) The migration to IP Telephony requires a vision that will likely include Unified Communications. This broader view is needed to ensure that business and capex decisions that are being made now for IP Telephony will serve your organization when you add UC capabilities. This session will help you make sense of how UC “fits” into current communication budgeting and procurement activities. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the important UC-related questions you should ask when you go into procurement for a new system? * How is the overall cost architecture — hardware, software, professional fees, and maintenance — changing? How will these changes affect your total cost of ownership? * What buying methodologies for IPT and UC will help you negotiate the best technology, price and service support? * What are the new Unified Communications software license fees and models; how will they affect your total cost of ownership and buying decisions? Speaker - Doug Carolus, Director, N’compass Mr. Carolus is Director of Consulting Operations for the independent technology consulting firm, N’compass Solutions in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Prior to joining N’compass, Douglas managed PlanNet Consulting’s Communications Technology practice and earlier held technical and sales management positions with AT&T and Lucent Technologies within their enterprise communication systems business units. With over 20 years of telecommunications experience, Mr. Carolus’ focus has been on enterprise-based voice communications technologies supporting complex engagements with clients such as Best Buy, Broadcom Corporation, Clark County Government in Las Vegas, Nevada, Lockheed Federal Credit Union, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Quest Software, Target Corporation, Medtronic, and Tennessee Valley Authority. His professional experience covers a wide range of enterprise communication services and technologies which include: Services: ? Strategic Technology Planning ? Acquisition: “Go to Market” Specifications (RFx), Evaluations, and Contract Negotiation ? Implementation Management and Oversight Technologies: ? Enterprise-class TDM and IP Telephony Systems ? Voice and Unified Messaging ? Contact Centers ? Unified Communications ? Communications infrastructure; structured cabling and technology spaces Previously, he has presented on the subject “IP Telephony Pricing and Software Licensing Models” at VoiceCon from 2006 through 2008 and also spoken at other industry events such as ACUTA, IPComm, IP University, and Voice Report webcasts. Mr. Carolus’ academic training includes undergraduate studies in Business Administration from the University of Texas and an MBA from University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Speaker - Jason Wright, Director of Technology & Development, N’compass Jason is the Director of Technology and Development for N’compass. He has over 17 years of IT experience with a strong record of success creating robust IT architectures and infrastructures. Prior to joining N’compass Jason was the Vice President of IT for Retek, a worldwide provider of mission-critical software and services to the retail industry, where he was responsible for the complete lifecycle of business systems and information technology. Jason provides strategic direction to Fortune 1000 clients, aligning their technology needs with solutions that reflect the priorities of the business, IT and Facilities departments. His technology expertise and industry knowledge includes LAN/WAN networks, data center infrastructure and technology, IP enterprise applications, and emerging unified communications. Jason has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota.
4:00 pm–5:00 pm	Concurrent Session Managing Your Cellular Spend (Location: Room 123) Cellular service has become the fastest growing element in the enterprise communications budget, but remains poorly managed. As organizations move from a strategy based on reimbursing employees to centrally managed cellular service contracts, how should they manage this purchase to ensure they get the best value? This session is designed to give you practical guidance regarding cellular service management and some basic strategies to get your cellular spend under control KEY QUESTIONS: * What type of cellular pricing options are available for voice and data? * Should I be looking at negotiating for indoor antenna system as part of the contract? What about cellular gateways? * Will the open handset initiatives and FMC have a major impact on cellular costs? * What is the status of the IRS position on withholding taxes for personal use of company cell phones? Speaker - Robert Harris, Consultant, Communications Advantage, Inc. Robert Lee Harris is president of Communications Advantage Inc., a consulting firm specializing in strategic technology acquisition, implementation and cost management. His firm’s TEM strategies are directly credited with saving enterprises more than $5 million. He’s been involved in the research and implementation of TEM software solutions since 2003. Robert has also served on the board of directors of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants and was a frequent contributor to the magazine Business Communications Review. Speaker - Stephen Leaden, President, Leaden Associates Stephen Leaden is founder and President of Leaden Associates, Inc., an independent Telecommunications IT consulting firm providing specialized support in Telecommunications technologies and ROI strategies. Mr. Leaden has been in the Telecommunications field over 25 years, with 17 of those with his own firm. Clients include recognized enterprise clients in healthcare/education, manufacturing, financial services, publishing, and government vertical market segments. Mr. Leaden’s firm focuses as an extension of IT staff to facilitate the design, procurement, project implementation, and outsourcing for converged voice and data solutions. During their engagement, Leaden Associates proactively adds value via ROI strategies integrated into the projects they serve on. Mr. Leaden’s practice has focused on Voice over IP and Unified Communications and key market trends in these areas - he has spoken at national and International conferences on VoIP, has written four papers on VoIP strategies, troubleshooting and security, and has been quoted in national industry publications including BCR Magazine, Computer World, Information Week, and the Washington Post among others. Mr. Leaden is on the faculty of BCR Training and teaches two day training courses entitled “Optimizing Enterprise Networks” and “Cost Control of Wired and Wireless Networks: Best Practices”. Mr. Leaden is Past President and member of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, a national Telecommunications association that requires objectivity and professionalism as a prerequisite for membership. Mr. Leaden’s degree is from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Unified Communications: Results from the Test Lab (Location: Room 132) How do the Unified Communications applications and capabilities of major vendor systems hold up under stress testing in the lab? Can these new systems deliver the promised benefits reliably? In this session, an expert from a leading test lab details the results of testing done on UC applications. KEY QUESTIONS: * How do the leading vendor’s UC Solutions stack up? * Who offers the most reliable distributed enterprise solution? * Who offers the best UC mobility client? * Which offer complete end to end secure solutions? * Which solutions integrate best with MS OCS and IBM/Lotus SameTime? Speaker - Rob Smithers, CEO, Miercom Rob is Charmin and CEO of Miercom, the nation’s leading network product testing organization with 20 years service to the industry. Headquartered in central New Jersey, Miercom has field offices in San Jose, CA and Research Triangle Park, NC. With two decades of experience, Rob is masterful in the testing and competitive positioning of network products. Rob is a frequent speaker at industry events, including VoiceCon, Networld + Interop and trade shows. His organization is the test lab for Network World Magazine (VoIP, Storage and Disaster Recovery). Miercom also is the premier test lab for Business Communications review, featuring test reviews in BCR’s NoJitter online publication. As CEO, Rob directs the course of Miercom’s new business development and oversees the company’s involvement in key areas of emerging industries including voice-over-IP, security and business continuance. Rob has an electrical engineering degree from Lehigh University and he serves as a reserve officer for U.S. Army Civil Affairs, Military Police and Engineer Corp. Rob spent three years deployed in Iraq and other places around the world helping fight the global war on terrorism. He also spent two years conducting vulnerability assessments of military installations throughout the nation and conducted anti-terrorism training for a number of those facilities. Leveraging his practical expertise in assessing products and conducting risk assessments, Rob takes a bottom-line approach to helping clients find best-in-class solutions to problems and protecting their infrastructures. He offers strategic consulting for companies wishing to build fault tolerant, state-of-the art networks. SIP Trunks: Where, WHEN and How Much? (Location: Room 131) Many large enterprises would like to begin migrating from PRIs to IP/SIP trunks, because the potential savings could be very significant. But these services are not ubiquitously available, and interoperability issues still exist. So when will you be able to adopt SIP trunks across your enterprise, and how will the affect your services costs and operational expenses? This session will help you get answers. KEY QUESTIONS: * What is the true status of SIP trunk availability? Who are the leading providers? * How do the costs of SIP trunk services compare with PRIs? * What interoperability issues remain and what is being done to overcome them? * How will SIP trunk implementation affect other issues in your IP Telephony deployment such as security and quality of service? Speaker - Eric Burger, Chairman of the Board, SIP Forum Eric is the Chairman of the Board of the SIP Forum. He was Deputy Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of the Communications Products Division at BEA Systems, primarily focusing on real-time multimedia communications and the telecommunications industry vertical. Eric has made numerous contributions on protocols to the IETF (SIP, SIPPING, SIMPLE, LEMONADE, SPEECHSC, VPIM) and markup to the W3C (VoiceXML, CCXML, and MSCML). He is the inventor of the Applications and Services Infrastructure concept, bringing the web development paradigm to telephony applications. Service providers, application developers, and equipment manufacturers have since adopted SIP+XML as one of the motivations to moving to a SIP-based real-time communications infrastructure. Prior to BEA Systems, Eric was a Founder and CTO at SnowShore Networks; CTO at Brooktrout Technology; and CTO of Cantata Technology. He has held various positions with ADC/Centigram, The Telephone Connection, MCI, Cable & Wireless, Texas Instruments, and Valid Logic Systems. Eric holds SBEE, MBA, and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Catholic University of Leuven, and Illinois Institute of Technology. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, Senior Member of the ACM, Benefactor of the Internet Society, and Patron of the AAAS. He was a Lecturer at George Washington University and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at George Mason University. Speaker - Rupesh Chokshi, Director of Product Marketing Management, AT&T Rupesh Chokshi has Product Management responsibilities in AT&T’s Business Voice over IP (VoIP) Product Marketing Management organization. Mr. Chokshi’s primary focus is to bring new technology and emerging services and capabilities to the market place to meet Customer needs. Mr. Chokshi has held several leadership positions in key functional areas like Global Business, Customer Service, Enterprise Architecture, Network and Systems Development. He has a wealth of experience and background with VoIP, Voice, IP Data, VPN, and Wireless Technologies. Mr. Chokshi began his career with AT&T Labs in 1997 where he developed simulation models and operational support systems for Contact Centers. Mr. Chokshi holds a M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Clemson University, South Carolina and BS in Engineering from S.P. University Gujarat, India. Speaker - Alla Reznik, Director of VOIP Services, Verizon Business Alla Reznik Director Voice over IP Services Alla Reznik is a Director of Voice over IP (VoIP) services for Verizon Business. In this position, she leads marketing and strategic positioning of the company’s global VoIP product portfolio. Ms. Reznik has more than a decade of experience in the telecommunications field. She began her career with Verizon Business (formerly MCI) in 1997, leading product marketing and development efforts for ISDN, Access, DSL, Secure Gateway, IP VPN, Private Line and Optical services and, most recently, Ethernet, IP and VPLS. Before joining MCI, Ms. Reznik worked at AT&T International in Washington, DC in the capacity of Business Development manager where she promoted AT&T’s business with foreign governments. Prior to starting her career in telecommunications, Ms. Reznik worked at the World Bank. Moderator - David Rohde, Senior Consultant, TechCaliber Consulting David Rohde is a senior consultant with TechCaliber Consulting, LLC, with broad experience in analysis of carrier enterprise services and telecommunications industry structure. David has been a senior research analyst at the Yankee Group, a writer and columnist for Network World, and tariff analyst for the Center for Communications Management Information. At TC2 he has assisted retailers, hospitality companies, financial institutions and others particularly in the procurement and migration of multimillion-dollar enterprise data networks across a range of frame relay, MPLS and dedicated Internet solutions. David also specializes in analysis of the financial position of national and global carriers with regard to their financial stability and capability to invest in particular areas of network deployment that are most important to enterprise users. David is a regular author in Business Communications Review and a frequent speaker at telecom industry conferences. Enterprise Video: Finding the Right Investment Mix (Location: Room 124) Videoconferencing is enjoying strong market growth, and technology improvements such as telepresence are getting wide attention. So what is the business case for doing videoconferencing?travel avoidance, worker productivity, time to market? And how do you choose among the various configurations in the market? KEY QUESTIONS: * What’s the technology difference between telepresence, high-definition videoconferencing, and traditional room-based systems? What’s the cost difference? * How do you determine the right mix of video technologies - from high-end telepresence to desktop video? * What demands do the various videoconferencing options place on the enterprise network? On the IT staff? * How do you make the business case for a new videoconferencing deployment? * How can desktop video be incorporated into videoconferencing implementations? Speaker - Joan Vandermate, Vice President of Marketing, Video Solutions, Polycom Joan Vandermate is Vice President of Marketing of Video Solutions at Polycom, responsible for positioning and marketing the company’s visual communication and collaboration platforms, management applications, recording and streaming solutions, and security products. Prior to joining Polycom, Vandermate was Vice President of Product Management at Siemens Communications, where she held management positions in product marketing and product line management, including rollout responsibilities for Siemens HiPath IP softswitches and telephones. Before joining Siemens, Vandermate worked for more than a decade in the personal computing and internetworking industries. Speaker - David Hsieh, VP Marketing, Cisco David Hsieh is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience in building and marketing software and services. At Cisco he has marketing responsibility for Cisco’s Emerging Technologies - innovative new businesses created from an internal venture model. Prior to Cisco, Hsieh was a co-founder of FaceTime Communications, a leader in instant messaging solutions for large enterprises. He also served as a VP of Products at WebEx, entrepreneur-in-residence at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Vice President of Product Marketing at Sybase and Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development at LBMS. Hsieh is a graduate of Northwestern University. Speaker - Warren Barkley, Director, Office Communications Group, Microsoft Warren Barkley is the Director for the Office Communications Partner Engineering team in the Unified Communications division at Microsoft. Mr. Barkley’s team is responsible for the development of the hardware and software eco-system that surrounds Microsoft’s Office Communications solutions. Mr. Barkley joined Microsoft in early 1997 and has held various positions in the field and product development organizations. He worked primarily on networking technologies including TCP/IP, Network Location Awareness, Wireless (WLAN and WWAN) and network security. Warren was extensively involved with the development of native wireless support in Windows XP and worked broadly with the WiFi industry to define and implement new security standards. Barkley holds several US and Worldwide patents in various networking and real time media technologies areas. Warren Barkley started his career in technology as an IT manager for a large government agency in Canada. He moved to Seattle where he worked for a consulting group that performed software integration and infrastructure deployment for high-tech startups and large organizations. Barkley has several degrees from the University of Victoria and University of British Columbia. He resides in the Seattle area with his two young sons where he enjoys playing hockey and cycling. Moderator - John Bartlett, Principal, NetForecast John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video, telepresence, and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. IP Contact Centers: Executive Forum (Location: Room 130) In this session, a leading contact center market analyst will lead a roundtable discussion among representatives of vendors concerning the trends and technologies shaping the IP contact center market. The audience will learn what IP contact centers require from the underlying network (and the staff that supports it); the risks and rewards of moving to an IP contact center, and how to plan for the future in this critical area of the enterprise. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the main benefits to migrating to an IP contact center implementation? What are the biggest challenges? * Is it preferable to migrate your contact center to IP before the enterprise embarks on its IP-PBX migration, or wait until afterward? Or does it matter? * What role will Unified Communications tools, systems and architectures play in the contact center? * What about emerging models?in particular, hosted options?for next-gen contact centers? * How does the cost of purchasing and supporting an IP contact center compare with the cost of a traditional center? Panelist - Jim Hickey, Director of Product Management, Contact Center Solutions, Avaya Panelist - Al Baker, Global Vice President, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Inc. Al Baker is a global Vice President for Siemens Enterprise Communications, Inc., with international responsibilities focused on the business development and transformation of Siemens’ Unified Communication (UC) based Customer Interaction (CI) solutions business. Al has over 20 years of experience in sales, product management, product marketing and channel support in the areas of enterprise telecommunications (TDM, IP, SIP), enterprise applications (software) and contact center / customer interaction solutions (CRM). Since 1995 Al has been responsible for leading the development, business planning and launch of 10+ software based applications into over 50 countries. Al holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University in Chicago/Evanston Illinois, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Palo Alto, California. Panelist - Nicolas De Kouchkovsky, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Genesys Panelist - Ross Daniels, Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications, Cisco Ross Daniels is a Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications. In this capacity, Mr. Daniels is responsible for product positioning, solution messaging, and go-to-market activities for various aspects of Cisco’s Unified Communications portfolio, with primary emphasis on Cisco Unified Contact Center, Messaging, Web and Audio Conferencing, and Presence solutions. Mr. Daniels joined Cisco as part of its November 1999 acquisition of WebLine Communications. While at WebLine, he held a variety of technical sales and marketing roles. Previous positions at Cisco include CTI Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, and Manager of Product Management for Cisco’s enterprise and hosted contact center solutions. Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Daniels spent several years in the business-to-business advertising industry. A regular speaker at industry events, Cisco events, and customer briefings, Mr. Daniels has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Harvard University and a Masters in Business Administration from Babson College. Panelist - Larry Ciccarelli, Multimedia Applications Business Development Leader, Nortel Moderator - Sheila McGee-Smith, President/Principal Analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics Sheila McGee-Smith, the founder of McGee-Smith Analytics, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant focused on the contact center and unified communications markets. She has a proven track record of accomplishment in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for communications solutions and services. Ms. McGee-Smith works on a daily basis with both solution providers and enterprises. Her insight helps them develop strategies to meet the escalating demands of today’s consumer and business customers. Ms. McGee-Smith has spent over twenty years in the telecommunications industry, including 12 years with analyst firm The PELORUS Group. Prior to her career as an industry analyst, Ms. McGee-Smith held sales management, market research and product management positions at AT&T, Timeplex and Dun & Bradstreet. Ms. McGee-Smith was awarded a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, majoring in psychology and an MBA with majors in marketing and management information systems from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Sheila is a regular blogger on CMP’s information portal No Jitter at www.nojitter.com.
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Wednesday, November 12
7:00 am–8:00 am	Continental Breakfast Continental Breakfast sponsored by VoiceCon Europe 2009 (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.voicecon.eu
8:00 am–8:45 am	General Session Morning Call: Building the New Collaborative Enterprise (Location: Room 134) Call it Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or call it ways in which we get to know one another, there are a whole new set of online tools and services like blogs, wikis and Facebook that are now part of the popular culture. This session will explore their role in a much different environment - within the enterprise. We start from the proposition that these new tools for accessing, collecting and storing information are already being used within the enterprise, but the question is how to maximize their value without compromising essential network security and corporate governance processes. This discussion will focus on what’s real today and what’s likely to happen in the future. Panelist - Dan York, Director of Emerging Technologies, Voxeo Dan York is Director of Emerging Communication Technology in the Office of the CTO of “Voxeo Corporation”:http://www.voxeo.com/ focused on analyzing/evaluating emerging technology, participating in industry standards bodies, addressing VoIP security issues and leading Voxeo’s move into “social media” with the deployment of “blogs”:http://blogs.voxeo.com/ and podcasts. Since the mid-1980’s Dan has been working with online communication technologies and helping businesses and organizations understand how to use and participate in those new media. Along the way, Dan served on the Board of Directors of Linux International and was the President and co-founder of the “Linux Professional Institute”:http://www.lpi.org/ (LPI), today the leading global certification program for Linux professionals. He developed “single-source” publishing systems using DocBook XML, assisted in the development of XSLT stylesheets for the Linux Documentation Project and developed several small open source programs as well. Dan moved into the world of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) in 2001 and is today the Best Practices Chair for the “VOIP Security Alliance”:http://www.voipsa.org/ as well as the producer of “Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast”:http://www.blueboxpodcast.com/ where since October 2005 each week he and co-host Jonathan Zar discuss VOIP security news and interview people involved in the field. A dynamic speaker with over 25 years in information technology, Dan routinely presents at conferences, has authored multiple books on Linux and networking and has written numerous articles in print and online. His writing can be found online at “Disruptive Telephony”:http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/ , “Disruptive Conversations”:http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/ and “Voxeo’s weblogs”:http://blogs.voxeo.com/ . More information about Dan can also be found on his home site of “www.danyork.com”:http://www.danyork.com Panelist - Irwin Lazar, Principal Research Analyst and Program Director, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Nemertes Research Irwin Lazar is a Principal Analyst & Program Director, Convergence & Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars, and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, and collaboration. Since 1992 Mr. Lazar has been a consultant and analyst, serving a variety of global enterprises and government agencies. Mr. Lazar led efforts to develop security architectures and convergence road-maps, as well as enterprise network architectures, for numerous clients in the health care, pharmaceuticals, banking & finance, energy, government, and retail sectors. Mr. Lazar has led teams of consultants in requirements-gathering and strategy development. He also has evaluated emerging IT trends and analyzed their impact on organizations. A sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for Business Communications Review magazine, provides topics for Network World, and is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar holds a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from Radford University in Radford, VA, and a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve Ordnance Corps as an officer from 1992-2001. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Moderator - Eric Krapf, Co-chair, VoiceCon, Editor/Lead Blogger, No Jitter Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, CMP Media’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine’s editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America’s Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas.
9:00 am–10:00 am	Keynotes Keynote Presentation: IBM (Location: Room 134) Speaker - Bruce Morse, Vice President, Unified Communications & Collaboration Software, IBM Bruce Morse is Vice President, Unified Communication Software, IBM Lotus Software. In his role, Mr. Morse has overall responsibility for IBM’s Unified Communications and Collaboration software business unit, including setting strategy, delivering innovative software products such as IBM Lotus Sametime, catalyzing associated IBM hardware and services offerings and building key industry alliances. Mr. Morse has over twenty five years of software and hardware experience in the IT industry and has held key executive positions in marketing, product management, engineering, business development, mergers and acquisitions, and finance. Prior to his current role, he led IBM’s industry software solutions organization helping clients leverage SOA and IBM software to improve their business processes. Mr. Morse also led IBM’s Contact Center Software and Client Technologies business units, and played a leading role in establishing WebSphere Portal as the market leader in enterprise portals. Mr. Morse received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University, Chicago Illinois, and has participated in graduate courses in business administration. Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications. Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations. In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization’s migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master’s Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
10:00 am–10:30 am	Refreshment Break sponsored by Hewlett Packard (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.hp.com
10:30 am–11:30 am	Keynotes Keynote Presentation: Kaiser Permanente (Location: Room 134) Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest private integrated health care delivery system, providing comprehensive health care services to more than 8.7 million members in nine states and the District of Columbia. The company has developed a vision to deliver real-time, personalized health care that is supported by technology-enabled practices and tools. Kaiser Permanente’s health IT agenda is widely recognized by policy makers and industry experts as industry leading. At the core of this agenda is the belief that technology can help make care safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable. In his keynote, Phil Fasano, senior vice president and chief information officer of Kaiser Permanente, will outline the company’s health IT vision and illustrate how unified communications is a key enabler of that vision. Mr. Fasano will also provide several examples of technology-enabled tools at Kaiser Permanente that demonstrate the value of health IT and describe how unified communications contributed to their success. Finally, attendees will hear how Kaiser Permanente plans to leverage unified communications capabilities with new technologies and innovations in ways that will form stronger linkages among clinicians and support systematic, patient-focused care. Speaker - Phil Fasano, Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Kaiser Permanente Information Technology Phil Fasano joined Kaiser Permanente in February 2007 as senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO), taking on leadership responsibility for the information technology (IT) function across the KP Program. He is a member of KP’s National Leadership Team and the Kaiser Permanente Partnership Group (KPPG) as well as the leader of KP-IT. Phil came to KP from Capital Sourcing Group, Inc., a consulting company he founded to serve Fortune 500 companies and the federal government. Before that, he was senior vice president and chief business information officer with Capital One Financial Group, where he drove the transformation of this leading credit card provider toward a diversified financial services. He also reshaped the company’s IT organization to reduce costs and drive management improvements that improved consistency of delivery for business initiatives, strengthened governance, and shortened time to market. Phil’s prior position was senior vice president and global business executive for JP Morgan Chase. In this role he led a relationship management organization designed to acquire and retain new business as well as the IT function, and reinvigorated a strong customer focus. Phil has also held executive IT and business leadership positions with American Financial Group, Deutsche Financial Services Corporation, Bankers Trust, and Kidder, Peabody & Co. Phil received an M.B.A. from Long Island University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the New York Institute of Technology. Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications. Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations. In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization’s migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master’s Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
11:30 am–6:00 pm	Exhibition and Reception Exhibition with Reception sponsored by Siemens (Location: Exhibit Hall D) www.siemens.com
11:30 am–1:00 pm	Luncheon Luncheon sponsored by Mitel (Location: Hall D Lunch Room) www.mitel.com
1:00 pm–2:15 pm	General Session User Forum (Location: Room 134) The VoiceCon User Forum will present case studies about decision-making for migrating to new communications infrastructures, architectures and services?what went right and what didn’t. The speakers will discuss benefits and problems, and offer perspective and advice that reflect their real-world experience. In addition to discussing the technical issues, the speakers will address the impact the new technologies and architectures are having on end users and the IT/telecom organization. Panelist - Robert Fort, CIO, Virgin Entertainment Group Robert Fort is an internationally recognized and awarded business leader and innovator with over 25 years of progressive information technology experience. Continually on the leading edge of technology adoption, he’s championed and implemented, in multiple industries, some of the earliest and most successful ERP, business intelligence, self-service kiosk, and VoIP implementations. Robert has held senior management roles at MGM/UA, A&M Records, Nestlé USA, Koo Koo Roo, and others. In his current role as CIO for Virgin’s North America Megastores, Robert participates in the development of the company’s strategic direction, and is responsible for IT strategy, innovation, prioritization and daily operations. Robert successfully championed and architected the company’s cultural shift to real-time reporting via implementation of an enterprise data warehouse that details customer traffic, sales and inventory information. He also architected the company’s highly regarded “digital preview stations”, including the world’s largest single store kiosk implementation in Times Square. During his tenure, Virgin migrated to a converged voice and data network, and has implemented new POS, customer loyalty, digital signage, VoIP, system monitoring, collaboration and unified communications applications. Robert is a member of the National Retail Federation CIO Council and RIS News, Kiosk.Com and Microsoft Retail Advisory Boards. In 2005, he was selected one of the Top 15 Pacesetters by RIS News Magazine. In 2006 Robert was named one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders. Most recently he was voted one of RIS News Magazine’s 2008 Top 10 Influential retail executives. Panelist - Tony Hildesheim, Vice President of Information Technology, Washington State Employees Credit Union Tony Hildesheim is currently the Vice President of Information Technology at Washington State Employees Credit Union. WSECU is the second largest credit union in the state of Washington with approximately 140,000 members. Tony has over 20 years of IT management experience in both the private and public sectors. Tony’s experience as an IT director at the county and state level along with work in the private sector provided him opportunities to work with a variety of lines of business in deploying both data and telecommunication solutions. His passion for ensuring the business need is well defined and then aligning a technology to meet that need has been a cornerstone of his success. Panelist - Stephen Campbell, Director Network Services, Beckman Coulter, Inc. Steve Campbell has been with Beckman Coulter for over 19 years. Previously an engineering manager with Coulter Corporation, Mr. Campbell migrated into Information Technology and has been instrumental in supporting the Oracle Global Connect project driving Beckman Coulter’s global network infrastructure upgrade. His responsibilities also include Unified Communications, Collaboration and Messaging, the strategy and the deployment of all global voice and data communications, including the call center upgrades, known as the TIGER and Sabertooth projects. Panelist - Suzanna Grueser, Director IT Operations , Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Moderator - Eric Krapf, Co-chair, VoiceCon, Editor/Lead Blogger, No Jitter Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, CMP Media’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine’s editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America’s Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas.
2:15 pm–2:45 pm	Refreshment Break sponsored by Hewlett Packard (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.hp.com
2:45 pm–3:45 pm	Concurrent Session Choosing the Right Mobile Device Ecosystem: RIM, Windows, Symbian, iPhone, or “Other” (Location: Room 130) More and more critical business applications are migrating from laptops to PDAs and smartphones, but, these small form-factor devices introduce a number of new considerations into the design process. There are issues with display sizes, input mechanisms and ruggedness; and desirable features like bright displays and high-speed network interfaces are power hungry, which impacts battery life. For applications support we can now choose among Windows Mobile, RIM, Symbian, LiMO, iPhone, and the developing Google Android platform, but more importantly, the developer communities that are growing up around each of those. Finally, we have to determine whether to design apps to run directly on the mobile device itself or whether wireless networks can provide reliable access. In this session we’ll get to ask the major vendors what they have, how Apple’s iPhone has impact their plans and how they see the market developing. KEY QUESTIONS: * What’s keeping organizations from advancing their mobility plans beyond push email? * How are the other manufactures adjusting their product plans based on the iPhone? Can we QWERTY on a touch screen or are buttons really better? * What are prospect for fixed mobile convergence, or should we simply stick with the cellular carriers? * How big a concern is mobile malware and what are the overall security concerns with mobile devices? * Does the iPhone solution provide the type of management and security features enterprise users need? Panelist - Russ Knister, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Motorola, Inc. Russ Knister leads product marketing for Motorola’s Converged Enterprise Communications (CEC) product division, with responsibility for strategic planning, channel development and marketing. Prior to CEC Russ worked in Corporate Development’s acquisition integration team as the integration manager for Good Technology. He also led business development for the Mobile Office product group in the Enterprise Mobility business. Before that he led business development and ecosystem development for the Seamless Mobility (Windows Mobile) product group in Mobile Devices (MDb), which he joined from the MDb strategy team. Russ came to Motorola in 2002 from IBM Global Services’ Strategy Practice. He joined IBM when it acquired Mainspring, an eStrategy consulting firm. Prior to Mainspring he ran Professional Services at Installshield Software Corporation and before that was a senior engagement manager at McKinsey & Company focused on electronics and telecommunications clients. Russ holds an MBA from Harvard, and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Michigan. Panelist - Mario DiPrizio, VP of Architecture and Engineering, Motorola, Inc. Panelist - Aaron Williams, Senior Technical Product Marketing - Software & Services, Nokia As the Americas Senior Technical Product Manager, Aaron Williams is responsible for managing the Marketing activites for Nokia Mobilible Unifed Communications for the Americas. In this role, Aaron oversees the creation and execution of the organization’s go-to-market strategy, Cisco & Alcatel-Lucent collaboration and product development activities for Call Connect. Aaron is based in San Diego and reports to the Director of Mobile UC, Olli Makinen in Espoo, Finland. Aaron began with Nokia in March of 2004. Prior to joining Nokia, Aaron served as Senior Sales Engineer for ICG Communications. In this position, he served on the S.W.A.T team and executed the sale of over 5000 VoicePipe seats, a managed business service offering of VoIP and data services. Aaron has an impressive track record of success leading sales and marketing teams in the Americas and APAC. Aaron has successfully served as Senior Sales Engineer for Crossbeam Systems, Vividon, InfoLibria and 5 years as a Network Engineer for 3Com Commworks Carrier division. Aaron holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from the University of San Diego, CA. Panelist - David Heit, Director Enterprise Product Management , Research In Motion Mr. Heit has been with Research In Motion (RIM) since 2000. As part of his efforts at RIM, Mr. Heit has established the BlackBerry extensibility strategy, succeeding in transforming BlackBerry into a wireless platform for all applications. Mr. Heit was also integral in leading the collaborative development and release of the BlackBerry solution for Novell GroupWise. Prior to his time at RIM, Mr. Heit spent 14 years with NCR Corporation and AT&T Global Information Solutions in Product Management, Sales Management and Consulting roles. He has experience working with products ranging in areas such as document management and workflow, financial transaction processing equipment, automatic handwriting recognition and high volume document image archives. Mr. Heit has worked with many Fortune 1000 organizations re-engineering business processes with new technology techniques. This has ranged in areas from tax processing to field data collection. Mr. Heit is a sought after public speaker, having participated in a variety of industry events and trade shows on a number of different topics. Examples include speaking at CTIA IT & Entertainment on Location Based Services and the Mobile Web, JavaOne on the Future of Java in Wireless Communications, and at Gartner CRM on Utilizing BlackBerry for Salesforce Automation. Mr. Heit holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier Univeristy in Waterloo, Ontario. Moderator - Michael Finneran, Principal, dBrn Associates, Inc Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled “Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide” (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Troubleshooting Converged Enterprise Networks (Location: Room 131) It has never been easy to trace the cause of voice service degradation or failure, and when voice becomes embedded in other applications, it’s going to be even more challenging to determine what’s going on. This session will provide an update on the latest tools and technologies for troubleshooting converged networks?how and when to perform root-cause analysis, how to measure, monitor and manage voice quality on an ongoing basis, and how to use the data generated by monitoring and management systems to get an overall picture of the network’s health, and the voice application’s behavior. KEY QUESTIONS: * What tools are available for performing root-cause analysis on problems that occur with voice traffic running on an IP network? * What are the right metrics for tracking voice quality?MOS scores or more automated measurements? How do you derive?and act on?this information in real-time? * What tools are available for remote management of voice infrastructure at sites where there are no full-time IT staff? * How do the various IT management teams share information and reports so as to expedite troubleshooting? Speaker - Terry Slattery, Principal Consultant, Chesapeake Netcraftsmen Terry Slattery is a Principal Consultant at Chesapeake Netcraftsmen, an advanced network consulting firm that specializes in high-profile and challenging network consulting jobs. Terry is consulting in network core switching and routing. He is the founder of Netcordia, inventor of NetMRI, and has been a successful technology innovator in networking during the past 20 years. He has a long history of network consulting and design work, including some of the first Cisco consulting and training on the east coast. As a consultant to Cisco, he led the development of the current Cisco IOS command line interface. Prior to Netcordia, Terry founded Chesapeake Computer Consultants, which became a Cisco premier training and consulting partner. At Chesapeake, he co-invented and patented the v-LAB system to provide hands-on access to real hardware for the hands-on component of internetwork training classes. Terry co-authored the successful McGraw-Hill text “Advanced IP Routing in Cisco Networks,” is the second CCIE (1026) awarded, and is a sought after industry speaker and advisor. Speaker - Steven Guthrie, Product Marketing, CA Steve Guthrie has spent the past decade in the networking and telephony markets as an active participant in the emergence of LANs, WANs and IP technologies and most recently with unified communications such as IP voice, video, presence and messaging. As the director of product marketing for CA’s Network and Voice Management Solution, which includes the CA eHealth Network Performance Manager, CA SPECTRUM Network Fault Manager, and CA eHealth for Voice Systems Manager offerings, Guthrie is responsible for understanding how enterprises, public-sector agencies, telcos and managed service providers use network and voice management solutions and for communicating these experiences and industry best practices to help other organizations optimize their converged network investments and achieve high end-user satisfaction. Additionally, he works in conjunction with product management to understand the needs of large enterprises, telcos and MSPs and define solutions that span these customers’ existing networks as well as the networks they are building to support the fast-growing demand for IP services for voice, video and data. Prior to joining CA, Inc., Guthrie was director of global product marketing for Integrated Research. of Sydney, Australia, which develops and sells the PROGNOSIS IP telephony management software solution for large enterprises and managed service providers. Prior to this, he was vice president of marketing at Xelor Software, a start-up based in the Boston area that was focused on solving new and complex business problems associated with time-sensitive, real-time IP communications contending for valuable and expensive bandwidth with data-centric applications. Prior to his appointment at Xelor, Guthrie was director of marketing at Pingtel, where he was recognized for his role in making the Pingtel phone a ubiquitous symbol of IP telephony and SIP-based communications. Speaker - Mike Hollier, CTO, Psytechnics Dr. Mike Hollier is a technical and commercial pioneer in perceptual engineering. He directed BT’s research into audio, video and multimedia performance assessment for nearly a decade before leading the incubation of Psytechnics Ltd. in 2000. He left BT to become Psytechnics’ CEO and since October 2002 has served as its CTO. Psytechnics is the global leader in delivering Quality of Experience (QoE) management products for Voice over IP, Video Conferencing, Unified Communications and IPTV in fixed, mobile and converged environments. Moderator - David Yedwab, Partner, MS&A Partners David Yedwab is a Founding Partner in Market Strategy and Analytics Partners LLC. He is a seasoned technology marketing executive with over 25 years experience providing marketing, sales, technology and business strategy advice to many of the world’s largest and most successful companies including - Cisco, AT&T, BellSouth, Apple, NTT, NEC, Nortel, Samsung and Siemens. His specialties are business and product strategy, distribution channel development, product marketing and competitive differentiation. Mr. Yedwab has appeared on CBS News 48 Hours, CNBC and Bloomberg Business Radio. He is often quoted in national business publications such as Fortune, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily and the Internet and telecommunications trade press. Prior to starting Market Strategy and Analytics Partners, Mr. Yedwab managed the Public and Private Networking practices of The Eastern Management Group. This has included engagements covering market and distribution requirements and strategies for next generation networks; marketing programs designed to help enterprise providers to increase their revenues and market shares; the implications of the business transformation driven by the Internet, broadband and mobile networks; the emergence of the e-commerce and its challenges and opportunities for private and public networks. Mr. Yedwab received his Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was a National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Participant. He also received an M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology. Leveraging VOIP Investments for Unified Communications (Location: Room 132) OK, you’ve got an IP Telephony infrastructure in place and now you’re hearing all about Unified Communications. You’ve got to figure out what enhancements are needed to enable your VOIP infrastructure to support Unified Communications, integrate UC with other applications. In this session, a panel of equipment suppliers will outline the steps for evolving PBXs and IP-PBXs to deliver Unified Communications integrated with business processes and applications. KEY QUESTIONS: * What elements of an IP Telephony infrastructure will also be used in a UC deployment? What “traditional” telephony elements might become obsolete in a UC future? * What’s the future of the PBX/IP-PBX in a UC migration? * What new sorts of infrastructure elements might have to be added to an IP Telephony implementation to support UC? What servers, applications or other elements that already exist in the enterprise must be integrated with the IP Telephony elements? * How should your plans for Unified Communications affect your plans for rolling out IP Telephony? Panelist - Craig Cotton, Director, Product Marketing, Cisco Craig Cotton is Director, Product Marketing, in the Voice Technology Group responsible for the marketing and strategic development of advanced Unified Communications solutions for Enterprise, Commercial and public sector customers. Specifically, Craig leads the product management team responsible for the Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Emergency Responder and the Cisco Media Convergence Servers. Craig has been at Cisco since 1998. Craig has more than 18 years experience in the voice and data unified communications market Previous experience includes 8 years in various voice application sales and marketing positions at Lucent Technologies/AT&T, marketing PBXs, messaging systems, CTI applications and IVR products. Craig holds a BS in Media Studies from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Panelist - Marisa Viveros, Vice President, IBM Marisa Viveros is a Vice President at IBM Corporation, leading IBM Converged Communications Services. She is responsible for creating service products to address the near and long-term growth opportunities in the unified communications market. Her objective is the delivery of superior offerings to clients through the Global Technology Services Group, by leveraging IBM software and hardware assets, along with an extensive network of partners. Ms. Viveros also defines strategic directions, oversees marketing and sales for this market segment. Panelist - Sean Olson, Group Program Manager, Office Communications Group, Microsoft Sean Olson is the Group Program Manager for the Office Communications Server product at Microsoft. His team is responsible for all engineering aspects of conferencing, instant messaging, presence, and voice within the server product. He has over 10 years experience in the area of real time communications and voice over IP and is an industry expert in the SIP and SIMPLE standards. Since joining Microsoft in 2002, he has delivered five releases of the Office Communications Server product line working on everything from protocols, to security, to performance. Panelist - Lawrence Byrd, Director - UC Architecture, Avaya Panelist - Jeff Ridley, Director Product Management, ShoreTel Jeff Ridley, ShoreTel’s Director of Product Management ShoreTel, leads the company’s IP Telephony, Unified Communications and Contact Center product strategies. Jeff has more than 15 years of experience in the communications and mobile computing marketplaces and has been with Shoretel for 8 years. Prior to joining ShoreTel, Jeff was an associate with ViaSphere Ventures where he helped identify new technologies and worked with early-stage hand-held computing companies on defining and developing their products and services. Before that, Jeff spent 10 years providing strategic and technical leadership for enterprise and wireless communications initiatives at NorTel Networks and Intel. Jeff attended Vanderbilt University where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Moderator - Don Van Doren, Principal, UniComm Consulting, LLC Don Van Doren has worked for most of his professional career as a systems developer and consultant applying innovative technologies, systems, and processes to meet business goals. He is now Principal of UniComm Consulting, President of Vanguard Communications, and a co-founder of UCStrategies.com. UniComm Consulting and Vanguard Communications are each independent consulting firms focused, respectively, on unified communications (UC) and contact centers. UCStrategies.com is the industry web portal site for information on UC issues and developments. Vanguard’s two decades of consulting work in contact centers help people, processes, and data processing and communications systems technology come together to solve an important business objective - providing an efficient and effective means to interact with a company’s customers. For the last several years, Don’s research, client work, and writing has been increasingly focused on the emerging field of unified communications. Several years ago, he and Marty Parker, a colleague from early voice messaging days, began working together on these issues. In 2007 they created UniComm Consulting, an independent consulting firm to concentrate on helping enterprises to understand the potential for UC in their business, develop strategies appropriate to their goals and opportunities, identify specific applications and associated ROI, help identify supplier partners, and assist with implementation, including project management, change leadership, and metrics. In addition to his client projects through Vanguard and UniComm Consulting, Don writes articles and columns and speaks frequently at industry conferences on these subjects. Don has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and an MBA from the University of Michigan. Contact Don at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com. IP Telephony Pricing & Licensing: Getting Your Money’s Worth (Location: Room 124) The migration to IP Telephony puts higher emphasis on software than hardware, and that is changing the entire cost architecture for enterprise communications. This session will help you make sense of the new pricing structures and help you avoid confusion over budgeting and pricing. KEY QUESTIONS: * To what extent have IP Telephony vendors shifted costs from hardware to software fees? How will this affect the final system price and TCO? * How does the new cost architecture impact your negotiating strategies? * What license fees are typically charged on top of the cost of IP phones, messaging systems and other elements? How much do these fees run? * What are the hidden costs in the new licensing structures, and how do you find them? * What pricing and licensing concepts are likely to be new to voice network managers who haven’t dealt extensively with data network gear? Speaker - David Stein, Principal, PlanNet Consulting Mr. Stein is a principal with PlanNet Consulting and Director of Operations. He has more than 25 years of consulting, information systems and telecommunications experience, with a primary emphasis on voice, data and video communications and technology infrastructure projects. PlanNet Consulting assists enterprises with the entire technology lifecycle. His experience includes traditional voice (PBX, TDM), data and video communications as well as all aspects of their convergence (IP Telephony, Video over IP). He has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences including American Library Association, Interop, ACUTA, CoreNet, BICSI, CISOA and VoiceCon. He has also authored several articles on IP Telephony that have been published in Business Communications Review and HIMSS. Mr. Stein graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Computer Science. Speaker - Trent Wright, Principal Consultant, PlanNet Consulting Trent Wright currently provides independent communications consulting services as a part of PlanNet Consulting after over thirteen years working in a wide variety of IT Infrastructure and Telecommunication roles. Over the course of his career, he has worked as a telecom analyst, infrastructure manager, consultant, and technical specialist. This breadth of experience provides excellent coverage of many operation and technical issues, generally focusing on designing, procuring, and implementing communication platforms and IT infrastructure environments. By providing independent consulting services, the above client engagements and others have addressed numerous business and technology issues, including: ?Developing feasibility studies and strategic plans to implement IP Telephony, Call Center and similar critical voice and data applications. ?Providing a full range of procurement support for IP Telphony and network electronics and services capable of supporting IP Telephony, ERP, CRM, and other high-priority applications. ?Assessing network capabilities and defining activities to address critical application requirements. ?Analyzing specific applications and transactions to assist in problem identification and resolution. ?Providing business decision support for technology issues using quantitative and qualitative data. ?Assisting clients in identifying and remedying operational issues and concerns ?Delivering project management oversight for the implementation of critical voice and data systems Mr. Wright’s technical training includes various certifications with most major manufacturer phone systems. Mr. Wright holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), bringing a common-sense, results-oriented approach to solution identification, implementation and deployment. Developing Voice Applications Using Mashups and SOA (Location: Room 123) One of the key opportunities as we move to software-based communications is the potential for application developers to readily and relatively simply build new voice applications and to combine functionalities of existing applications. This may take place in different ways?either via vendor-specific application programming interfaces (APIs), or via standard interfaces such as Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). This session will examine the different ways of creating new types of voice applications and “mashups,” and will help you understand which technical approach may be right for a given situation. * What are SOA’s technical elements? How mature are they and the standards? * How widely deployed is SOA today? How extensively is it being used in conjunction with voice systems? * How does SOA differ from an API-based approach? How is each approach likely to be best employed in creating new voice applications? * What are the most important APIs for developers and IT professionals who are interested in voice mashups and communications-enabled applications? * What are some real-world examples of voice mashups and/or communications-enabled apps that leverage APIs and SOA? Panelist - Crick Waters, Co-Founder, Ribbit Crick Waters Co-founder, EVP Strategy and Business Development Ribbit Corporation Crick co-founded Ribbit on the simple premise that voice has value, and that value is in the application of voice. Where the convergence of computers and telephony has been ongoing for some years - the fusion of voice, computers, and applications is the new “value frontier” for telephony. Crick leads Ribbit’s strategy and business development bringing the new frontier of voice-enabled applications to developer, enterprise, and carrier markets. Prior to starting Ribbit, Crick lead development and delivery of consumer voice and data services including fiber-to-the-home, VoIP, DSL, Wi-Fi, and voice over DSL services for AT&T Consumer Services. Crick was Director of Value Added Services at NorthPoint Communications where he was responsible for creating services delivered over the company’s high speed data network. During his tenure, he launched one of the Nation’s first voice over DSL services. Prior to NorthPoint, Crick was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Applied Process Technology, a Silicon Valley company, where he brought this company’s innovation in water treatment technology to market. Crick has also held leadership positions at three separate divisions of International Paper in technology management, process and product development, and business management. Prior to his civilian life, Crick devoted seven years to developing nuclear reactor instrumentation and control technology for the U.S. Navy’s submarine, the U.S.S. Seawolf. Crick has served on the Boards of Directors of the DSL Forum and the International Packet Communications Consortium. He has B.S.E.E and M.B.A degrees from Duke University, and a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering. Panelist - Shantanu Sarkar, Senior Manager, Unified C, Cisco Shantanu Sarkar Manager - Engineering Voice Technology Group / CTO Cisco ssarkar@cisco.com 408 902 3466 Shantanu Sarkar is involved with Technology Strategy and Business Development for Cisco Unified Communications and mobility. A 12-year Cisco veteran, Shantanu has been involved in Enterprise VoIP from its earliest days, including the first VoIP call from space. Shantanu’s contributions in voice include signaling, collaboration, endpoints and applications. Previously, Shantanu has led engineering teams at Hughes Network Systems, Motorola and Digital Equipment Corporation. Shantanu holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and a Masters degree in Computer and Information Science from the Ohio State University. He is also the author of 24 patents in VoIP and associated areas. Moderator - Dan York, Director of Emerging Technologies, Voxeo Dan York is Director of Emerging Communication Technology in the Office of the CTO of “Voxeo Corporation”:http://www.voxeo.com/ focused on analyzing/evaluating emerging technology, participating in industry standards bodies, addressing VoIP security issues and leading Voxeo’s move into “social media” with the deployment of “blogs”:http://blogs.voxeo.com/ and podcasts. Since the mid-1980’s Dan has been working with online communication technologies and helping businesses and organizations understand how to use and participate in those new media. Along the way, Dan served on the Board of Directors of Linux International and was the President and co-founder of the “Linux Professional Institute”:http://www.lpi.org/ (LPI), today the leading global certification program for Linux professionals. He developed “single-source” publishing systems using DocBook XML, assisted in the development of XSLT stylesheets for the Linux Documentation Project and developed several small open source programs as well. Dan moved into the world of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) in 2001 and is today the Best Practices Chair for the “VOIP Security Alliance”:http://www.voipsa.org/ as well as the producer of “Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast”:http://www.blueboxpodcast.com/ where since October 2005 each week he and co-host Jonathan Zar discuss VOIP security news and interview people involved in the field. A dynamic speaker with over 25 years in information technology, Dan routinely presents at conferences, has authored multiple books on Linux and networking and has written numerous articles in print and online. His writing can be found online at “Disruptive Telephony”:http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/ , “Disruptive Conversations”:http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/ and “Voxeo’s weblogs”:http://blogs.voxeo.com/ . More information about Dan can also be found on his home site of “www.danyork.com”:http://www.danyork.com
4:00 pm–5:00 pm	Concurrent Session Case Studies: Mobility in the Enterprise (Location: Room 131) We’ve heard a lot about the concept of the “mobile enterprise,” but what’s the reality? In this session, IT/telecom executives from enterprises that have made a major commitment to mobility and wireless communication describe what they’ve done, why they made the decisions they made and what have been the lessons learned. KEY QUESTIONS: * What caused these organizations to become early adopters? * What have they learned about the benefits and limitations of mobility? * What are the challenges to managing and maintaining a network of mobile devices - and people? * Are they satisfied with their mobility solutions and what difficulties do they wrestle with? * Will they stay with their existing mobility solution or migrate to WiMAX, LTE, or some other mobile service in the future? Speaker - Greg Ireland, Executive Officer, Thirteenth District Court, New Mexico Gregory Ireland is the Executive Officer of the Thirteenth Judicial District Court in Los Lunas,(Albuquerque) New Mexico. He holds two masters degrees in administration from the University of Denver, College of Law. He has been an executive officer of general and appellate jurisdiction courts in both urban and rural areas since 1984. He has been recognized to speak nationwide and has often coached court organizations in subjects such as caseflow management, electronic document filing, and best practices for litigants who represent themselves in court proceedings. He has been influential in helping courts to adopt technology standards such as “Courtroom 21.” Numerous articles concerning the use of advanced technology in the courts he supervises have appeared in diverse publications such as Pro AV magazine. Speaker - Renee Behr, IT, Holland & Knight Renee Behr, Messaging Engineer, Holland & Knight Renee is currently an integral part of the Holland & Knight Messaging team responsible for architecture and implementation of services spanning the full spectrum of messaging and Unified Communications. She has been in IT for over 8 years performing roles ranging from hardware support to software development and from systems administration to messaging engineering. Renee has performed numerous upgrades, infrastructure conversions and new technology implementations and has worked with messaging from Exchange 5 through Exchange 2007 Moderator - Michael Finneran, Principal, dBrn Associates, Inc Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled “Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide” (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Network Management: Finding the Right Tools (Location: Room 132) As IP Telephony deployments scale from pilots to enterprise-wide implementations, the need for effective, real-time management scales as well. But what tools do you need to manage voice traffic and make sure it’s performing as it should? In this session, you’ll get taxonomy of the network management technology marketplace, which will help you understand the metrics and methods that drive successful IP Telephony management. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the key metrics you must measure and manage? What tools are available to capture these metrics? * How can you get visibility on the level of voice quality actually being delivered? * How does the management of voice systems fit into the overall enterprise IP network management structure? * What will it cost to implement an effective network management system? Speaker - Kevin Porter, Senior Network Management Strategist , HP ProCurve As Senior Network Management Strategist, Kevin Porter is responsible for defining and marketing network management solutions with an emphasis on infrastructure security and converged communications. He is a participant of the Trusted Network Connect subgroup of the Trusted Computing Group Consortium and a Board Member of the OpenSEA Alliance, created to promote the development of an open-source 802.1X supplicant for secure network access. During his 20 years at HP, Porter has been instrumental in helping ProCurve deliver a consistently competitive network management platform, allowing customers to monitor their networks with common tools and applications that work seamlessly across both wired and wireless infrastructure. Porter has served in various capacities, including marketing director, R&D project manager and software engineer. He was a principal member of the team that launched network traffic monitoring solutions that formed the basis for sFlow traffic sampling technology used by many network vendors today. In addition to being a frequent speaker at Interop trade shows, Porter is also a U.S. patent holder for network device detection. Speaker - Eric Bear, VoIP Solution Program Director, Fluke Networks Eric Bear is the Director of VoIP Solution Sales with Fluke Networks. Prior to coming to Fluke Networks, Eric was the Vice President of Product Management and Business Development at Viola Networks in Israel (acquired by Fluke Networks). He has been in the VoIP industry for the past 12 years in various senior sales and marketing positions. Prior to Viola, he worked at Qovia, a VoIP management company acquired by Cisco; Telchemy, a leading vendor of embedded VoIP call quality software and a supplier to Fluke Networks; and Telogy Networks, which made embedded software in VoIP phones/gateways before being acquired by Texas Instruments in 2000. He spent the first nine years of his career at GTE and MCI in various engineering and product management roles, including an 18-month assignment in Japan for GTE. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Bradley University in Peoria, IL, and a master’s degree in engineering management from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Speaker - Teresa Dixon, Director of Product Management, Unimax Teresa is responsible for defining, developing, and delivering product strategy for the company. Teresa joined Unimax in 1996. At Unimax, she has moved from lead technical engineering positions to managing various vendor business relationships to defining which products and services best meet the needs of the converged enterprise system management market. Prior to joining Unimax, Teresa spent 13 years at Unisys where she held lead positions in Engineering, Product Management, and Project Management. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Honors Degree in Math and Quantitative Methods from the University of St. Thomas. Moderator - David Stein, Principal, PlanNet Consulting Mr. Stein is a principal with PlanNet Consulting and Director of Operations. He has more than 25 years of consulting, information systems and telecommunications experience, with a primary emphasis on voice, data and video communications and technology infrastructure projects. PlanNet Consulting assists enterprises with the entire technology lifecycle. His experience includes traditional voice (PBX, TDM), data and video communications as well as all aspects of their convergence (IP Telephony, Video over IP). He has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences including American Library Association, Interop, ACUTA, CoreNet, BICSI, CISOA and VoiceCon. He has also authored several articles on IP Telephony that have been published in Business Communications Review and HIMSS. Mr. Stein graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Computer Science. Voice Messaging: Are PBXs Still Needed? (Location: Room 124) Voice messaging systems became part of the communications landscape because phones need to be answered whether the called party was available or not. But with presence, IM and related UC applications and capabilities emerging, there are new ways to calculate the value voice messaging does?or doesn’t?deliver. This session will analyze the new options becoming available for call answering, and the different ways to calculate ROI for new investment. KEY QUESTIONS: * What is the best way to get voice messaging, call answering, and auto-attendant services? * Is it better to have voice mail built into the PBX software, or on separate servers? * What is the impact of speech auto-attendants on voice mail? * Is speech a separate solution with multiple applications, or is it a feature of voice messaging, or both? * Is there any reason not to just store voice mail in the email servers? Speaker - Blair Pleasant, Principal Analyst, COMMfusion LLC Blair Pleasant is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of ucstrategies.com, an industry resource on the growing UC arena. She provides consulting and market research analysis on voice/data convergence markets, applications, and technologies, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically. Prior to COMMfusion, Ms. Pleasant was Director of Communications Analysis for The PELORUS Group, a market research and consulting firm, and President of Lower Falls Consulting. With 20 years experience, her primary areas of focus are convergence applications, including Unified Communications, Unified Messaging, the contact center, computer telephony integration (CTI), and voice processing. Blair has authored many highly acclaimed multi-client market studies and white papers, as well as custom research reports, and provides market research analysis and consulting services to both end user and vendor clients. Ms. Pleasant received a BA degree in Communications from Albany State University, and an MBA in marketing and an MS in Broadcast Administration from Boston University. Panelist - Brad Herrington, Solutions Marketing Manager, Interactive Intelligence As a Senior Manager-Solutions Marketing, Brad is responsible for the product direction and marketing strategy of the contact center products at Interactive Intelligence. His experience includes more than 20 years in the contact center industry, including the past 12 years with Interactive Intelligence focused on both the traditional and IP telephony markets. Panelist - Tom Minifie, VP of Product Management, AVST Tom Minifie has been the Vice President of Product Management with AVST since its inception in 2003. In this role, Mr. Minifie is responsible for the strategic direction of the company’s CallXpress product line. Previously, Mr. Minifie served in a variety of executive level positions in the sales, business development and marketing organizations of Applied Voice Technology (AVT) and Captaris. Mr. Minifie is a recognized authority in the field of Unified Communications and a frequent speaker on the topics of voice messaging, unified messaging, interactive voice response, personal assistant and speech recognition applications. Mr. Minifie has also spent considerable time cultivating strategic technical relationships with several industry leaders, including Aastra / Ericsson, Alcatel - Lucent, Cisco Systems, Mitel and NEC Business Network Systems. Prior to joining the communications industry, Tom held various sales and marketing positions within the high tech industry. Tom earned a BA in Economics from the University of Washington. Panelist - Kevin Johnson, Director, Marketing, Mitel Kevin Johnson is Director of Analyst & Consultant Relations at Mitel and is responsible for Mitel’s global analyst and consultant relations programs. Kevin has 20+ years experience in the business communications industry. He has held previous positions in Product Marketing, Channel Marketing, Product Management, and Research & Development with expertise in business communications products and IP Telephony technologies. Kevin is a seasoned speaker and is recognized in the voice and communications industry in North America for his contributions at industry conferences. Panelist - Tony Everson, Director, Americas Unified Communications Practice, Dialogic Tony Everson is the Director of Dialogic’s Unified Communications practice in the Americas. Tony is focused on helping the broader Microsoft Unified Communications ecosystem develop cohesive go-to-market strategies and market readiness that incorporate Dialogic Media Gateways. Prior to his current position, Tony held several sales and management positions for Dialogic Inc, Intel Corp. and Compaq Computer Corp. Panelist - Diane Shariff, Director, UC Solutions, Avaya Diane Shariff is global director of Unified Communications Solutions, Avaya. Shariff has held leadership positions in product management and marketing at Avaya, driving solutions in self service speech, contact center and communication-enabled business applications supported by next generation SIP/SOA architectures. Shariff has over 20 years experience in enterprise software and telephony with repeated success building product lines in emerging markets supporting next-generation technologies, including product strategy and leadership positions at Quintus and Clarify, and marketing, engineering and operations positions at DSC Communications (Alcatel-Lucent) and Ameritech (SBC, AT&T). Shariff has a B.S. in engineering from the University of Illinois Champaign - Urbana and an M.B.A from Depaul University. SaaS: Role in Enterprise Communications? (Location: Room 130) Enterprise customers have heard a lot about carrier managed and hosted services, but a related trend is the emergence of Software as a Service (SaaS). How is SaaS related to more traditional concepts of network-hosted voice services, and how can SaaS be leveraged within a Unified Communications system? This session will examine the technology aspects of SaaS as they relate to voice, and will look at cost factors. KEY QUESTIONS: * How is the concept of SaaS similar to hosted VOIP services? How is it different? * What are the carriers’ offerings in SaaS, and what is the possibility for integrating this with premises or network-hosted voice systems? * Can enterprises save money with a SaaS strategy incorporated into their UC strategy? * What UC applications and capabilities are candidates for a SaaS offering? How can you best integrate such offerings into your premises-based UC system? Panelist - David Knight, Senior Director of Product Management, WebEx Technology Group - Cisco As Sr. Director of the Product Management for Cisco’s WebEx Technology Group, David Knight is responsible for setting the strategic product direction and requirements for the company’s industry leading collaboration products. Prior to joining WebEx, Mr. Knight held executive positions at Portera Systems, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor of professional service automation systems; and Sybase, where he was Director of Internet Middleware, among other roles. He began his management career at Oracle. David Knight holds a bachelor of science degree and master of business administration degree from Carnegie Mellon University. Recent Events: Web 2.0 Expo (April 2007). Enterprise 2.0 (June 2007) Conference Board Leadership Conference on Global Corporate Citizenship (February 2008) Panelist - Crick Waters, Co-Founder, Ribbit Crick Waters Co-founder, EVP Strategy and Business Development Ribbit Corporation Crick co-founded Ribbit on the simple premise that voice has value, and that value is in the application of voice. Where the convergence of computers and telephony has been ongoing for some years - the fusion of voice, computers, and applications is the new “value frontier” for telephony. Crick leads Ribbit’s strategy and business development bringing the new frontier of voice-enabled applications to developer, enterprise, and carrier markets. Prior to starting Ribbit, Crick lead development and delivery of consumer voice and data services including fiber-to-the-home, VoIP, DSL, Wi-Fi, and voice over DSL services for AT&T Consumer Services. Crick was Director of Value Added Services at NorthPoint Communications where he was responsible for creating services delivered over the company’s high speed data network. During his tenure, he launched one of the Nation’s first voice over DSL services. Prior to NorthPoint, Crick was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Applied Process Technology, a Silicon Valley company, where he brought this company’s innovation in water treatment technology to market. Crick has also held leadership positions at three separate divisions of International Paper in technology management, process and product development, and business management. Prior to his civilian life, Crick devoted seven years to developing nuclear reactor instrumentation and control technology for the U.S. Navy’s submarine, the U.S.S. Seawolf. Crick has served on the Boards of Directors of the DSL Forum and the International Packet Communications Consortium. He has B.S.E.E and M.B.A degrees from Duke University, and a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering. Moderator - Dan York, Director of Emerging Technologies, Voxeo Dan York is Director of Emerging Communication Technology in the Office of the CTO of “Voxeo Corporation”:http://www.voxeo.com/ focused on analyzing/evaluating emerging technology, participating in industry standards bodies, addressing VoIP security issues and leading Voxeo’s move into “social media” with the deployment of “blogs”:http://blogs.voxeo.com/ and podcasts. Since the mid-1980’s Dan has been working with online communication technologies and helping businesses and organizations understand how to use and participate in those new media. Along the way, Dan served on the Board of Directors of Linux International and was the President and co-founder of the “Linux Professional Institute”:http://www.lpi.org/ (LPI), today the leading global certification program for Linux professionals. He developed “single-source” publishing systems using DocBook XML, assisted in the development of XSLT stylesheets for the Linux Documentation Project and developed several small open source programs as well. Dan moved into the world of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) in 2001 and is today the Best Practices Chair for the “VOIP Security Alliance”:http://www.voipsa.org/ as well as the producer of “Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast”:http://www.blueboxpodcast.com/ where since October 2005 each week he and co-host Jonathan Zar discuss VOIP security news and interview people involved in the field. A dynamic speaker with over 25 years in information technology, Dan routinely presents at conferences, has authored multiple books on Linux and networking and has written numerous articles in print and online. His writing can be found online at “Disruptive Telephony”:http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/ , “Disruptive Conversations”:http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/ and “Voxeo’s weblogs”:http://blogs.voxeo.com/ . More information about Dan can also be found on his home site of “www.danyork.com”:http://www.danyork.com Architectural Options for UC (Location: Room 123) The good old days of “one-size-fits-all” architectures for enterprise communications are over. You have the opportunity - and the challenge - of selecting among multiple options for deploying Unified Communications: PBX-based, desktop-based, even managed/hosted-based. This session will examine the trade-offs associated with each option and give you insight into the best way to operationalize the old adage: Form follows function. KEY QUESTIONS * What are the key criteria that determine which option best fits your enterprise requirements? * Which architectural options fit with a “user-productivity” focus for UC? Which for a “business process” focus? * What are the variables affecting TOC for each of the options? * Which vendors provide which architectural options? * How are IT organizations changing based on the emerging architectures? Speaker - Marty Parker, Principal, UniComm Consulting Marty Parker provides Unified Communications consulting support to both private sector and public sector enterprises. As a Principal of UniComm Consulting and as co-founder of UCStrategies.com, Marty is part of a network of talent and ideas to assure clients of the best and latest information about Unified Communications (UC). Marty’s focus is on the applications for UC and how those applications optimize business processes to deliver hard-dollar ROI. This focus is the basis for his BCR Training course, “Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications”; for his articles in BCR Magazine and on NoJitter.com (see “Top UC Applications Now Apparent”, June 2007); and for his on-line UC Resources Center available at UCStrategies.com. Marty is a regular moderator and presenter at InterOp, VoiceCon and in other UC industry venues. His applications and industry-oriented perspectives on UC are based on his roles in sales, marketing, product management and executive positions with IBM and ATT/Lucent/Avaya as well as with a major Telecom VAR, and as founder and CEO of venture-funded startups in the early phases of the voice messaging industry. Panelist - David Leach, Senior Marketing Manager, Siemens Enterprise Communications David has been one of the chief creative forces behind Siemens emergence as a leader in the presence-based, unified communications landscape over the past six years. Holding various positions within Siemens over the past 20 years, David has spent the last six plus years building the marketing vision and driving the success of OpenScape. Now he is focused on building broad market awareness of the benefits presence offers for business communications in the next decade. Panelist - Sonu Aggarwal, CEO, UnifySquare, Inc. Sonu Aggarwal is the CEO of UnifySquare, Inc., a leader in addressing enterprise roadmap, architecture, and deployment needs for Office Communications Server. Sonu was previously the Director of Program Management/Group Program Manager for the Office Communications Server team at Microsoft, where he drove the roadmap, technical feature set, and execution for the OCS Server product line including Live Communications Server 2005, Office Communications Server 2007, and the roadmap for the next two releases of Office Communications Server. He led the OCS Program Management team responsible for the feature set, feature design and technical specifications for all Server aspects of OCS. He drove extensive customer feedback from dozens of global enterprises into the technical design of OCS. Most recently, Sonu was the Director of Technical Strategy and Partnerships for OCS, where he led technical roadmap and delivery for the Open Interoperability Program and Microsoft’s partnerships with Nortel, Cisco, and other IP-PBX vendors. Sonu has a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, he invented the first time-optimal self-stabilizing spanning tree algorithms for asynchronous computer networks. Sonu co-invented Enterprise Instant Messaging at his company Flash Communications, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1998 to seed its enterprise Real-Time Collaboration efforts starting with Exchange 2000. Sonu has 4 patents in Real-Time Collaboration, including the first-ever patent for enterprise Instant Messaging. He is the co-author of Internet RFC 2779. Panelist - Ross Daniels, Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications, Cisco Ross Daniels is a Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications. In this capacity, Mr. Daniels is responsible for product positioning, solution messaging, and go-to-market activities for various aspects of Cisco’s Unified Communications portfolio, with primary emphasis on Cisco Unified Contact Center, Messaging, Web and Audio Conferencing, and Presence solutions. Mr. Daniels joined Cisco as part of its November 1999 acquisition of WebLine Communications. While at WebLine, he held a variety of technical sales and marketing roles. Previous positions at Cisco include CTI Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, and Manager of Product Management for Cisco’s enterprise and hosted contact center solutions. Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Daniels spent several years in the business-to-business advertising industry. A regular speaker at industry events, Cisco events, and customer briefings, Mr. Daniels has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Harvard University and a Masters in Business Administration from Babson College.
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Thursday, November 13
7:00 am–8:00 am	Continental Breakfast Continental Breakfast sponsored by BCR Training (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.bcrtraining.com
8:00 am–8:45 am	Early Bird Session Improving Cellular Coverage with Indoor Antenna Systems (Location: Room 130) Traditional cellular service remains the dominant mobility option, but cell phones don’t always work indoors, particularly in a building core or basement. To boost cellular reception, a growing number of enterprises are building indoor or distributed antenna systems that distribute the cellular signal within a facility. This session will examine the options for improving indoor cellular coverage and compare their capabilities and limitations. It will also cover the business aspects of this decision, in particular, who will pay for the antenna system — you or your cellular carrier. KEY QUESTIONS: * Why is indoor cellular coverage so problematic? * What are the options for improving the situation? * Is there more than one kind of distributed antenna system, and what are the differences? * What are microcells, picocells, and femtocells? * Will one of these solutions improve my wireless data as well as my wireless voice coverage? Speaker - Michael Finneran, Principal, dBrn Associates, Inc Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled “Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide” (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. IP Telephony in Crisis Situations (Location: Room 131) In this session, we’ll focus on two different but equally important challenges that confront network managers and planners when facing emergency preparation: Disaster recovery/business continuity and E911. This session will help you understand the latest approaches to providing E911 coverage for an IP Telephony-enabled enterprise, and it will describe approaches to designing resilient networks and building disaster recovery procedures into your network and operations plans. KEY QUESTIONS: * How have enterprises tackled the challenges of providing location-specific E911? * What product features are available to provide resilient connections in case of disaster? * What levels of redundancy are appropriate for disaster planning, and how do you handle the inevitable cost tradeoffs? * What are the elements of a comprehensive business continuity plan, and who within the enterprise needs to be involved in its creation, maintenance and execution? Speaker - Nicholas Maier, SVP, RedSky Technologies Nicholas(Nick)Maier is a Senior Vice President of RedSky Technologies, the leading provider of enterprise E911 and emergency notification systems. In his current role, Mr. Maier is responsible for the product roadmap for RedSky’s enterprise software products and its strategic channel relationships with OEM VoIP platform providers. For the past 6 years, Mr. Maier has been involved in the design and implementation of enterprise-wide E911 and notification systems for large enterprises. Mr. Maier has served as the co-chairman of the Avaya DevConnect Advisory Council that represents over 175 ISVs and is active in the Developer programs of Nortel and Cisco. From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Maier was Vice President of OEM Sales for Plantronics, the leading provider of hands-free communications devices. Speaker - Dale Tonogai, Vice President of Engineering, ShoreTel Protecting Your Investment: Top VOIP Security Threats (Location: Room 124) The migration to IP Telephony and VOIP certainly creates the opportunity for more potential infrastructure attacks, but what’s the reality: Have hackers actually exploited these potential vulnerabilities yet? In this session, you’ll learn about what’s likeliest to bring down your voice traffic today, what you can do about it, and what steps you need to take to prepare for the future. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the most serious voice-oriented attacks that are being carried out? What potential attacks are likely to occur before long? * How much of your security budget should focus on purely VOIP network elements as opposed to other infrastructure components - e.g., switches and routers? * What types of equipment and technologies must you implement to stop voice-oriented attacks? * How much security is “enough”? Panelist - Jason Ostrom, Director, Sipera VIPER Lab Jason Ostrom joined Sipera Systems in 2008 with over 11 years of experience in security, design, and implementation of infrastructure for enterprise and service providers. As Director of VIPER (Voice Over IP Exploit Research) Lab, Jason is responsible for VIPER lab’s vulnerability research and consulting services. Prior to Sipera, Jason was the Senior Security Consultant at Vigilar, where he was responsible for general security consulting, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing and implementing security solutions. Jason is author of the VoIP Hopper assessment tool and speaks regularly at security conferences such as ToorCon and ShmooCon. Jason is a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE #15239) in Security, a GIAC Systems and Network Auditor (GSNA), and holds many other networking and security certifications. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Masters Degree in Computer Science with a focus on Information Security from James Madison University. Panelist - Bogdan Materna, Founder & CTO, VoIPshield As CTO at VoIPshield Systems Bogdan is responsible for overall Company’s product and technology directions. Bogdan is widely recognized as a one of VoIP security leaders and his work has been published in outlets including ISS Journal, ISSA Journal and Internet Telephony and has spoken at shows including RSA and VON. Bogdan has over 20 years of strategic and technology management experience in high tech technologies companies. Before founding VoIPshield Bogdan was a founder and CTO at Linmor Technologies, performance & network management product vendor. Bogdan also held various engineering and research positions at Nortel Networks, Microtel Pacific Research and University of Ottawa, & holds a # of patents. Moderator - Mark Collier, CTO, SecureLogix Mark Collier is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Vice President of Engineering for SecureLogix Corporation. Mr. Collier is responsible for SecureLogix’s technology direction and research/development. Mark manages the development of SecureLogix’s Enterprise Telephony Management (ETM) System product line. Mark also manages the development of SecureLogix’s various security service offerings. Mr. Collier is actively performing research in the area of Voice Over IP (VoIP) security. This includes development of custom security assessment tools. Mark leads SecureLogix’s VoIP security assessments and is an expert on issues facing enterprises during their VoIP deployments. Mr. Collier has recently authored the Hacking Exposed: VoIP book, which describes actual attacks, use of existing and new tools, and practical countermeasures. See www.hackingvoip.com for more information about this book. All of the custom tools developed for the book are also available on this website. Mr. Collier has been working in the industry for over 20 years, with the past 10 in security, telecommunications, and networking. Mark is a frequent author and presenter on the topic of voice and VoIP security. Mark is a founding member of the Voice Over IP Security Alliance (VoIPSA). Mark has been named one of the most influential people in VoIP and maintains a widely read blog at www.voipsecurityblog.com. Mr. Collier was formerly with Southwest Research Institute, where he directed research in the areas of security and Information Warfare/Operations. Mr. Collier holds a BS degree from St. Mary’s University. Contact Center Integration: Ask the Experts (Location: Room 123) Integrating contact center software with communications hardware and software is never easy, and with new tools for “customer intelligence” becoming available, the job is more difficult than ever. So, bring your questions to this session. A panel of experts will be ready to discuss the best tools, technologies and techniques to tie together the various technologies to create advanced communications and customer intelligence metrics in the contact center. KEY QUESTIONS: * What elements comprise the growing field of “customer intelligence”? * Where are the key leverage points for deployment of customer intelligence systems? * What does it take to integrate the subsystems with the rest of contact center communications infrastructure and services? * What are the organizational and training implications of the new integrated systems? Panelist - Brad Herrington, Solutions Marketing Manager, Interactive Intelligence As a Senior Manager-Solutions Marketing, Brad is responsible for the product direction and marketing strategy of the contact center products at Interactive Intelligence. His experience includes more than 20 years in the contact center industry, including the past 12 years with Interactive Intelligence focused on both the traditional and IP telephony markets. Panelist - Brian Davidow, Manager, Sales Support, CosmoCom Panelist - Mike Regan, Vice President of Unified IP™ Development, Aspect Software Michael Regan is Vice President Engineering for Unified IP products at Aspect Software. In his role, he is responsible for development of Aspect’s award winning Unified IP product line. Regan joined Aspect Software through its acquisition of BlueNote Networks, a company he co-founded. Most recently, Regan has held senior management positions at communications companies such as Ciena, Wavesmith Networks, Octave Communications, Unisphere Networks and Castle Networks. In these positions, he has led teams that have delivered voice and data communications products for both large enterprises and public service providers. Regan received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Panelist - Daniel Burgin, Director Product Management Reporting and Analytics, Avaya A member of InfoWorld’s Advisory Council and Top 100 CTO Network, Daniel Burgin, Director of Product Management leads the Contact Center Reporting and Analytics Business for Avaya. Prior to joining Avaya, Mr. Burgin was co-founder and CTO for Finali Corporation - a Contact Center Analytics and Automation software and services provider. Finali was acquired by Convergys Corporation in 2004, where Mr. Burgin worked after the acquisition of Finali. Prior to Finali/Convergys Mr. Burgin led the development of many web-based products and businesses including leading product development for Infonautics Corporation (now Tucows), where he designed implementation plans for international expansion, and led the conception, design, and development of several of Infonautics’ Internet products. Prior to Infonautics, Mr. Burgin was Director of Technology at KnowledgeFlow. There, Burgin led interactive-media project development for such Fortune 1000 companies as Apple Computer, American Express and CoreStates Bank. Moderator - Don Van Doren, Principal, UniComm Consulting, LLC Don Van Doren has worked for most of his professional career as a systems developer and consultant applying innovative technologies, systems, and processes to meet business goals. He is now Principal of UniComm Consulting, President of Vanguard Communications, and a co-founder of UCStrategies.com. UniComm Consulting and Vanguard Communications are each independent consulting firms focused, respectively, on unified communications (UC) and contact centers. UCStrategies.com is the industry web portal site for information on UC issues and developments. Vanguard’s two decades of consulting work in contact centers help people, processes, and data processing and communications systems technology come together to solve an important business objective - providing an efficient and effective means to interact with a company’s customers. For the last several years, Don’s research, client work, and writing has been increasingly focused on the emerging field of unified communications. Several years ago, he and Marty Parker, a colleague from early voice messaging days, began working together on these issues. In 2007 they created UniComm Consulting, an independent consulting firm to concentrate on helping enterprises to understand the potential for UC in their business, develop strategies appropriate to their goals and opportunities, identify specific applications and associated ROI, help identify supplier partners, and assist with implementation, including project management, change leadership, and metrics. In addition to his client projects through Vanguard and UniComm Consulting, Don writes articles and columns and speaks frequently at industry conferences on these subjects. Don has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and an MBA from the University of Michigan. Contact Don at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com. Cost Control of Wired and Wireless Networks: Best Practices (Location: Room 132) Wireless and mobile communications account for 30% or more of the total annual expenses for enterprise communications. Meanwhile, many carriers/service providers have more than a 30% error rate on the monthly bills sent to customers. So, even under the best of economic circumstances, there’s a tremendous squeeze on enterprise communications budgets, and the situation is likely to get worse as you migrate to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, and as the carriers expand into hosted and managed services, security, and other areas. If you can use some help getting a handle on your budget, this session is for you. KEY QUESTIONS * Where are the most productive areas to examine when reviewing bills from carriers and service providers? * What are the best practices for controlling and reducing costs? * What techniques are available to better manage wireless communications? How do those techniques differ from what works with traditional wireline communications? * What telecom trends are most likely to have a significant impact on your enterprise communications budget over the next 3-4 years? * Which of the cost/benefit metrics/analytical tools used with conventional communications networks will migrate into the era of IP Telephony and Unified Communications? Which need to change? Speaker - Stephen Leaden, President, Leaden Associates Stephen Leaden is founder and President of Leaden Associates, Inc., an independent Telecommunications IT consulting firm providing specialized support in Telecommunications technologies and ROI strategies. Mr. Leaden has been in the Telecommunications field over 25 years, with 17 of those with his own firm. Clients include recognized enterprise clients in healthcare/education, manufacturing, financial services, publishing, and government vertical market segments. Mr. Leaden’s firm focuses as an extension of IT staff to facilitate the design, procurement, project implementation, and outsourcing for converged voice and data solutions. During their engagement, Leaden Associates proactively adds value via ROI strategies integrated into the projects they serve on. Mr. Leaden’s practice has focused on Voice over IP and Unified Communications and key market trends in these areas - he has spoken at national and International conferences on VoIP, has written four papers on VoIP strategies, troubleshooting and security, and has been quoted in national industry publications including BCR Magazine, Computer World, Information Week, and the Washington Post among others. Mr. Leaden is on the faculty of BCR Training and teaches two day training courses entitled “Optimizing Enterprise Networks” and “Cost Control of Wired and Wireless Networks: Best Practices”. Mr. Leaden is Past President and member of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, a national Telecommunications association that requires objectivity and professionalism as a prerequisite for membership. Mr. Leaden’s degree is from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York.
9:00 am–10:00 am	General Session VoiceCon Summit: UC and Software-Based Architectures (Location: Room 134) The VoiceCon Summit examines the fundamental transition that shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace. As the industry evolves from traditional hardware to software-based architectures and unified communications, both buyers and sellers face significant challenges - and opportunities. This session will examine how far this transition has come, identify the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime and identify the obstacles facing enterprises as they try to mesh the new framework with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations. Panelist - Paul McMillan, Director, Unified Communications Strategy, Siemens Communications, Inc. Paul McMillan has over 20 years of experience in the design, implementation, and management of large scale voice, video, and IP networks. He has extensive knowledge of military, government, and commercial markets. Paul joined Siemens Enterprise Communications in 1996 to assist in establishing the IP networking business in the U.S. market. He has held subsequent positions in network engineering, engineering management, and new technology introduction. In his current role, Paul is tasked with developing the long term Unified Communications (UC) technical vision and strategy for Siemens’ Global customer base. Paul has participated in past VoiceCon panels including one in the spring of 2008 on SIP standards. He is passionate about evolving current UC applications through technical strategy and is now focused on the evolution of Siemens’ SOA framework. Paul is also working on enabling the latest technologies such as virtualization, IPV6, and forging into new areas of collaboration around social networking tools. Panelist - Pat Galvin, Senior UC Architect, Unified Communications & Collaboration Software, IBM Pat Galvin joined IBM in 1998 as part of the original Sametime team. He is now the lead architect for Sametime, and has contributed to every release along the way. He is also a leading evangelist for the use of SIP within IBM, and he lead the team that extended the WebSphere Application Server to support the development of SIP-based applications. Most recently he is heading up the team that’s building Sametime Unified Telephony, an add-on that will seamlessly integrate Sametime with the enterprise telephone system. Panelist - Mark Spencer, CTO, Digium Mark Spencer - Founder, Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer; Mark Spencer founded Digium, Inc., in 1999 as Linux Support Services while still a computer engineering student at Auburn University. Spencer used his Linux PC and knowledge of C code to develop his own PBX, thus beginning the worldwide open source phenomenon known as Asterisk. As Asterisk gained in popularity, Spencer shifted his business focus from Linux support to supporting Asterisk and opening up the telecom market. He renamed the company Digium and transformed the fledgling upstart into the leading open source telecommunication provider in the world today. As the Chairman and CTO of Digium, Spencer continues to drive the strategic vision and technology direction of the company as well as focus on the development and growth of the Asterisk Community at large. He is widely regarded as the pioneer of open source telephony and gives frequent keynote addresses to large technology audiences. Spencer has also led the creation of several Linux-based open source applications, most notably Asterisk, the Open Source PBX, and Pigden, formally Giam, Instant Messenger. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Auburn University. Panelist - Christian Szpilfogel, Office of the CTO, Mitel Appointed to the Office of the CTO in 2005, Christian Szpilfogel brings a breadth of experience in product management, research and development, and a strong business sense to his role as VP of Strategic Business. In this role, Christian is responsible for identifying new business opportunities for Mitel, managing key customer account relationships and developing the company’s overall strategic technology plan. Panelist - Eric Swift, Senior Director, Microsoft As senior director of product management in the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft, Eric Swift is responsible for managing customer and industry requirements, product positioning, and marketing strategies for the next generation of Microsoft Unified Communications products and services, including Microsoft Office Communicator, Microsoft Office Communications Server, and Microsoft RoundTable. Swift has been with Microsoft for six years. Previous to his current position with the Unified Communications Group, he was director of product management in Microsoft’s Application Platform group. Prior to joining Microsoft, Swift held vice president positions at enterprise application integration and CRM software vendors where responsibilities included product management, CRM and Data Warehouse implementations, and technical support operations. Swift has an MBA from Columbia University in New York, NY. Panelist - Jonathan Rosenberg PhD, Cisco Fellow, Voice Technology, Cisco Mr. Rosenberg is responsible for guiding the technology directions for Unified Communications Manager. Jonathan is active in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). He is the lead author of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the inventor of SIP for presence and IM, known as SIMPLE, in addition to other Internet technologies, such as STUN and ICE. Jonathan has authored over 50 patents in the area of unified communications. Jonathan received his PhD from Columbia University. His Bachelors and Masters degrees are from MIT. Jonathan has been awarded the Voice on the Net Pioneer Award by pulver.com, and was named one of the one hundred most innovative young technologists in the world by Technology Review Magazine. Panelist - Lawrence Byrd, Director - UC Architecture, Avaya Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications. Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations. In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization’s migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master’s Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University. Moderator - Jim Burton, CXO, CT Link/UCStrategies.com Jim Burton is Founder and CEO of CT Link, LLC. Burton founded the consulting firm in 1989 to help clients in the converging voice, data and networking industries with strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and distribution issues. In the early 1990s, Burton recognized the challenges vendors and the channel faced as they developed and installed integrated voice/data products. He became the leading authority in the voice/data integration industry and is credited with “coining” the term computer-telephone integration (CTI). Burton helped companies including Microsoft and Intel enter the voice market and helped AT&T (now Avaya), Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Siemens and Toshiba with their CTI strategies. In the late 1990s, venture capitalists turned to Burton for help in evaluating potential investments in IP PBX start-ups. He went on to help these and other companies with strategic planning and partnering, including NBX (acquired by 3Com, Selsius (acquired by Cisco), ShoreTel (IPO 2007) and Sphere Communications (acquired by NEC). In 1998 Burton recognized the telecommunications industry was on the verge of a major shift, from circuit switch to packet switch (IP) technology and cofounded Circa Communications to develop IP phones to address the emerging market. Polycom acquired Circa in 2000. The Circa acquisition has been a major contributor to Polycom’s growth during the past several years. In the early 2000s, Burton began focusing on wireless services and technologies. In 2005 Burton started helping vendors with their Unified Communications strategy and in 2006, along with several colleagues, created a web site, UCStrategies.com, to provide information for enterprise customers and vendors.
10:00 am–10:30 am	Refreshment Break sponsored by VoiceCon Webinars (Location: Hall E Lobby) www.voicecon.com/webinar
10:30 am–11:30 am	General Session VoiceCon Summit: The UC-Enabled Mobile Enterprise (Location: Room 134) The promise of the “mobile enterprise” has been a long time in coming, and for many if not most enterprises, remains more of a vision than a reality. Now, along comes Unified Communications (UC), which promises to take the mobile enterprise concept even further - more capabilities, more applications and more ways to work from anywhere, at any time. But how quickly will see UC-enabled mobile applications that are more advanced, and when will mobile workers have access to the same set of features and capabilities as when they’re working from their desks? This panel will examine the opportunities that are presented by UC-enabled mobility, and also analyze the challenges. Panelist - Don Hausman, Jr., Senior Manager Product Marketing, Motorola, Inc. Don Hausman has been a key contributor to the development of the Unified Communications, Collaboration, FMC, and IP Telephony/VOIP industries over the past 12 years; having served in a variety of product management, marketing, and business development roles. He is senior manager of product marketing for Motorola’s Converged Enterprise Communications division, responsible for go-to-market planning and introduction of the enterprise class of multi-function voice, data, and rich media communications solutions. Prior to joining Motorola in 2007, Don served as Sr. Director of Product Management and Marketing at Whaleback Systems a start-up broadband-based managed voice service provider. He was with, 3Com Corporation from 1997 to 2006, with roles in product management and strategic planning. He joined 3Com via the NBX Corporation acquisition in 1999. He was the 9th employee and product manager for NBX Corporation, the start-up that delivered the first commercially viable IP-PBX. Don holds a BA in Economics from the University of Rhode Island. He is an accomplished blogger, speaker, and panelist for the industry at VoiceCon, VON, Interop and numerous other industry forums. Panelist - Brandon Weilbacher, Senior Director of Product Line Management, Aastra Brandon Weilbacher is Senior Director of Product Management and Research & Development for Aastra, a global leader in IP based communications systems. He leads Aastra’s US Product Development Center of Excellence focused on delivering solutions to the large enterprise market. Prior to Aastra, Brandon was Director of Product Management at Epygi Technologies, a start-up IP PBX manufacturer, and has held various leadership positions at Nortel Networks. With 15 years experience in communications, his primary areas of focus are VoIP, Unified Communications, contact centers, and video communications. Brandon has authored many white papers, articles, and market studies. He received a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from the SMU Cox School of Business. Panelist - Eric Ritter, Director, Voice Solutions Software Product Management Group, Research In Motion Eric Ritter is the Director, Voice Solutions in the Software Product Management Group for Research In Motion. In the 8 years that Eric has been at RIM, he has held a variety of positions including being a founding member of the BlackBerry Solutions Group, technical lead on RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server for IBM Lotus Domino, and managing the technical team for one of RIM’s largest carrier partners. In his current position he leads a dynamic group of individuals focused on the technical product marketing and evangelism of RIM’s Voice Solutions including MVS. Prior to joining RIM, Eric had extensive experience managing Microsoft focused infrastructures including large Exchange environments, as well as a background in the Telecom world. Eric is a native of Toronto, Ontario and now resides in Waterloo, Ontario. Panelist - Aaron Williams, Senior Technical Product Marketing - Software & Services, Nokia As the Americas Senior Technical Product Manager, Aaron Williams is responsible for managing the Marketing activites for Nokia Mobilible Unifed Communications for the Americas. In this role, Aaron oversees the creation and execution of the organization’s go-to-market strategy, Cisco & Alcatel-Lucent collaboration and product development activities for Call Connect. Aaron is based in San Diego and reports to the Director of Mobile UC, Olli Makinen in Espoo, Finland. Aaron began with Nokia in March of 2004. Prior to joining Nokia, Aaron served as Senior Sales Engineer for ICG Communications. In this position, he served on the S.W.A.T team and executed the sale of over 5000 VoicePipe seats, a managed business service offering of VoIP and data services. Aaron has an impressive track record of success leading sales and marketing teams in the Americas and APAC. Aaron has successfully served as Senior Sales Engineer for Crossbeam Systems, Vividon, InfoLibria and 5 years as a Network Engineer for 3Com Commworks Carrier division. Aaron holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from the University of San Diego, CA. Panelist - Sundeep Gupta, Product Line Manager, Mobile UC, Cisco Sundeep Gupta is responsible for Product Management of the mobile offering for Cisco’s Unified Communication product suite. He brings over 15 years of experience in building market leading high-technology products with specialization in new products and market development. Prior to Cisco Sundeep was at Orative Corporation, an enterprise mobile telephony startup that was acquired by Cisco. Sundeep’s previous work experience includes Nuance communications and IBM. Panelist - Luc Roy, Vice President, Enterprise Mobility, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Inc. Luc Roy, Vice President, Enterprise Mobility, has more than 20 years of data networking and wireless experience in product planning, product management, product marketing, network design and go to market strategies. Prior to working for Siemens Communications, Inc., Luc held positions at Extreme Networks, Greenfield Networks, Alidian Networks, Nortel Networks, Bay Networks and Wellfleet Communications. Roy earned a degree in Computer Science from the Department of Science at Ottawa University. He has served on the ITU’s SC-6 (sub-committee for OSI’s CLNP routing protocol) and currently participates in the IETF, IEEE 802.11 and the WiFi Alliance. Moderator - Eric Krapf, Co-chair, VoiceCon, Editor/Lead Blogger, No Jitter Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, CMP Media’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine’s editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America’s Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas. Moderator - Michael Finneran, Principal, dBrn Associates, Inc Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled “Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide” (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
11:30 am–12:00 pm	General Session Locknote (Location: Room 134) At the conclusion of each VoiceCon conference, we ask leading analysts to join VoiceCon co-chairs Fred Knight and Eric Krapf to summarize what they learned during the Conference. The Locknote will analyze progress in the migration to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, vendor positioning and market strategies, and examine whether the payoffs from new technologies are being realized. The panelists draw on their experience and what they’ve seen and heard during the conference. Panelist - Don Van Doren, Principal, UniComm Consulting, LLC Don Van Doren has worked for most of his professional career as a systems developer and consultant applying innovative technologies, systems, and processes to meet business goals. He is now Principal of UniComm Consulting, President of Vanguard Communications, and a co-founder of UCStrategies.com. UniComm Consulting and Vanguard Communications are each independent consulting firms focused, respectively, on unified communications (UC) and contact centers. UCStrategies.com is the industry web portal site for information on UC issues and developments. Vanguard’s two decades of consulting work in contact centers help people, processes, and data processing and communications systems technology come together to solve an important business objective - providing an efficient and effective means to interact with a company’s customers. For the last several years, Don’s research, client work, and writing has been increasingly focused on the emerging field of unified communications. Several years ago, he and Marty Parker, a colleague from early voice messaging days, began working together on these issues. In 2007 they created UniComm Consulting, an independent consulting firm to concentrate on helping enterprises to understand the potential for UC in their business, develop strategies appropriate to their goals and opportunities, identify specific applications and associated ROI, help identify supplier partners, and assist with implementation, including project management, change leadership, and metrics. In addition to his client projects through Vanguard and UniComm Consulting, Don writes articles and columns and speaks frequently at industry conferences on these subjects. Don has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and an MBA from the University of Michigan. Contact Don at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com. Panelist - Gary Audin, President, Delphi, Inc. Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies. Panelist - Michael Finneran, Principal, dBrn Associates, Inc Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled “Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide” (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Panelist - John Bartlett, Principal, NetForecast John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video, telepresence, and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. Panelist - Eric Krapf, Co-chair, VoiceCon, Editor/Lead Blogger, No Jitter Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, CMP Media’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine’s editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America’s Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas. Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter

At the UC Summit 2008 I sat down with Eric Swift to discuss Microsoft’s Unified Communications Story. He talks about what is UC, trends, drives in adoption, and Microsoft’s secret sauce on UC.

On another post I had his answer to my question on “How will Microsoft Compete with Google in the Enterprise?” - click here to see that interview

Here is my conversation with Eric Swift.