Workshops
Check back often for additional conference announcements.
| Monday, March 26 | |
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The RFP process for a selecting a new enterprise communica¬tions system has changed significantly during the past few years based on changing technologies, pricing models, system design and performance capabilities. New ‘Cloud-based’ offerings as well as those from Unified Communications vendors have dramatically changed the landscape. Speaker - Dave Stein, Principal, Stein Consulting Group
Mr. Stein, a principal with Stein Consulting Group, has more than 30 years of consulting, information systems and telecommunications experience, with a primary emphasis on IP communications and technology infrastructure projects. Mr. Stein has previously held key management positions with PlanNet Consulting. Inteliant Corporation, COMSUL Ltd./Enterprise Consulting Group and ICL. Panelist - Bob Close, Technical Marketing Engineer, Cisco
Bob Close Technical Marketing Engineer Cisco Systems, Inc. San Jose, CA USA
Bob Close has been with Cisco for approximately 12 years now. He started his career with Cisco as a Technical Marketing Engineer where he was responsible for interoperability between Cisco CallManager and PBX’s/Voicemail systems. Bob has continued this work by being a primary driver of a number of key initiatives, some of which include the Digital PBX Adapter (DPA), the VG248 (48-port analog voice gateway with voicemail integration), QSIG and Annex M1 where he also continues to work on PBX migration. Lately, Bob has been branching out into the field of CTI as well as driving scalability increases with Unified Communications Manager.
Prior to joining Cisco, Bob held a Product Management role at Octel Communications and Lucent Technologies, where he provided the strategy as well as ongoing tactical product needs for PBX integrations for the Aria, Serenade and Unified Messaging platforms.
Bob’s first position in the telecommunications field was with GEC in the UK working in a number of different roles with the UK variant of the Northern Telecom SL-1 PBX. From GEC Bob moved onto Mercury Communications where he supported the sales team on the company’s various product offerings. Next was GPT/Siemens where he continued to work on PBX’s including the Siemens Hicom 300.
Bob has the equivalent of a Bachelors Degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering.
Bob enjoys music, movies and photography. He currently resides in Sunnyvale, California with his wife and two children. Panelist - Jamie Stark, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Panelist - Pat Henkle, Director - Sphericall Product Line Management, NEC Corporation  As Director of Product Line Management, Pat is responsible for the UNIVERGE 3C product line, the latest generation of Unified Communications software from NEC. Prior to NEC, Pat led the product management team at Sphere Communications, which was acquired by NEC. Sphere Communications was the developer of Sphericall a fully software based IP PBX and Unified communications product. Sphere Communications was awarded a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office for the packet based PBX. Prior to Sphere Communications, Pat was responsible for managing a global portfolio of carrier class multi-media access gateways for Internet Access and VoIP at 3Com Corporation and US Robotics Corporation (acquired by 3Com). Before joining US Robotics, Pat held a variety of positions ranging from software development, technical sales engineering and product management at Ameritech Corporation where his expertise involved the blending of broadband networking technologies and networked software applications for automated workflow and decision support systems. Pat graduated from the University of Illinois – Chicago with a Bachelors of Science in Quantitative Methods and Information Decision Sciences. He lives in Chicago, Illinois with his wife Kim and their three children. Panelist - Peter Greco, Director: Strategic Solutions, Siemens Enterprise Communications Inc. 
Peter Greco is Director Strategic Solution Support with Siemens Communications. His responsibilities include: field support, product lifecycle management, customer pursuit support, Channel Support, programs, and Proof of Concept delivery. Over the past 30 years Peter has held roles in sales, operations, product and Program management in the various entities that have become Siemens Enterprise Communications (ROLM, IBM, Siemens).
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) has become the dominant protocol for IP communications. This workshop will take a unique look at SIP, how it works, and the major issues impacting deployments. Speaker - Graham Francis, CEO, The SIP School™ (a Vocale Ltd company)
Graham has been working in IT and telecoms for 25 years and holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering and Computing. After an early career at Lucas Aerospace and AT&T, Graham founded Vocale Ltd in 2000. He has since been the driving force behind the company ensuring that corporate clients receive the best possible technical training for their staff on a variety of topics ranging from Networking and Voice over IP through to SIP. | |
| Tuesday, March 27 | |
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This workshop starts with the simple question: If an enterprise wanted to eliminate all or most of its premises-based communications equipment and deploy a fully loaded unified communications solutions from a hosted and managed cloud services provider, could it do so today? If so, what would such an implementation look like? Who could deliver it? And what would it cost? And most importantly, how would these costs compare with an equivalent premises-based offering or an overlay UC option?
The panel will feature representatives from Thinking Phone Networks, Verizon, M5 Networks, Cypress Communications, BT, InterCall/West, Interactive Intelligence, Siemens, and Avaya. Speaker - Brent Kelly, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research  Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research, Inc., focusing on the intersecting technologies comprising unified communications, social business, cloud services, mobility, and video. Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key Constellation client types: Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, VCs, technology policy executives, sell side firms and technology buyers. Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for ten years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly has experience as the Vice President of Marketing for Sorenson Vision, an early innovator in the IP communications space, and he has served as the chief executive in a privately held manufacturing company. Prior to this, Dr. Kelly was part of the team at Schlumberger that built the devices Intel used to test their Pentium microprocessors. He also led teams developing real-time data acquisition and control systems, and adaptive intelligent design systems in several Schlumberger Oil Field services companies including 4 1/2 years working in France. He has worked as a research engineer for Conoco, implementing more efficient mathematical convergence methods for oil reservoir simulators, and as a process engineer for Monsanto. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his well respected half-day tutorials have covered topics such as hosted and managed unified communications services, Microsoft Office Communications Server technical deep dives, and IBM Lotus Sametime architectural reviews. Dr. Kelly has authored articles for Business Communications Review Magazine, NoJitter.com, and he has also taught seminars in North America, Europe, Australia, and South America. Dr. Kelly has a Ph.D. in engineering from Texas A&M University specializing in thermodynamics and a B.S. in engineering from Brigham Young University. He is an elected official serving on the city council in his community. Panelist - Holger Stotz, Sr. Dir, Global Portfolio Management, Siemens Enterprise Communication Group  Holger Stotz is responsible for the SEN voice platform portfolio in the Global Portfolio Management Team. In this role, he defines the long-term strategy and vision for industry-leading features and highly innovative generations of the OpenScape Voice and HiPath platforms as well as the core solution elements like gateways, media servers and branch solutions. Holger brings almost 20 years of experience within the communications industry to this position. Holger has a vast background of consulting both small and large enterprises on unified communications strategies and deployments across Europe and the United States. Holger holds a Master's degree in Information Technologies from University of Armed Forces, Germany.
SIP Trunking is one the hottest issues in enterprise communications because it promises cost savings and true end-to-end IP voice connections. But the number of enterprises actually using SIP Trunks to their full potential is still a small minority—partly because of the way in which carriers are offering these services, and partly because technical/interoperability challenges remain. Speaker - Sorell Slaymaker, Communications Architect, Unified IT Systems 
Sorell Slaymaker has 20 years of experience designing, building, and operating networks and the communication services that run across them. Particular areas of expertise include; unified communications, contact centers, CRM, and tele-medicine. An example of Sorell's experience, he was the chief architect for a 25,000 seat virtual contact center and moving it to IP/SIP. He has been a member of the Cisco and Avaya technical advisory boards. He graduated from Texas A&M with a B.S. in Telecom Engineering, and went through the M.E. Telecom program at the University of Colorado. | |
| Wednesday, March 28 | |
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As we enter the era of truly converged networks, the ground-rules for network design are changing. Pervasive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing drive new requirements for how the LAN and WAN are provisioned, configured, monitored and managed. This workshop will give you an overview of network design issues for a combined voice, video and data network and will delve into the details of Quality of Service (QoS), bandwidth management, network reliability and monitoring approaches. The tutorial will provide a detailed understanding of the design issues you will encounter, techniques for overcoming them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make real-time traffic and applications run efficiently and at acceptable quality across your local and wide-area enterprise network. Speaker - John Bartlett, Sr. Dir. Product Management, Polycom 
John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises design and configure networks to support video conferencing. John currently serves as a Sr. Director in Product Management for Networking Services at Polycom. In this role he is leading a professional services team to support Polycom customers in upgrading their networks to provide consistent high-quality video delivery.
Before Polycom, John worked as an independent consultant for 15 years, assessing customer networks for support of video applications and other application performance issues. John engaged with many enterprises and vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 34 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. Panelist - Manfred Arndt, Distinguished Technologist, Advanced Technology Group, HP 
Distinguished Technologist, Advanced Technology Group (HPN CTO Group) Panelist - Matt Stevens, CTO, AppNeta  As AppNeta CTO, Matt is responsible for guiding technology and product vision and managing the advanced research, development, QA, customer support and information technology teams. Prior to joining AppNeta, Matt was the CTO of the Information and Event Management business unit of RSA, The Security Division of EMC. He joined EMC after the acquisition of Network Intelligence Corp. where Matt was a founder. In that role, he was also part of EMC's Office of the CTO, where he and his peer group had responsibility for EMC's overall strategic technology direction. Prior to NIC and RSA, Matt held senior technology and sales management positions with NetApp, Solbourne Computer and Harris Corporation. Panelist - Paul Liesenberg, Senior Manager, Emerging Technologies Group, Cisco  Paul Liesenberg is a Sr Manager in Cisco’s Collaboration Architecture Team. Paul develops methodologies that optimally align next-generation network infrastructures and overarching business processes. Prior to Cisco, he was VP of Strategic Marketing for ZettaCom and Bivio Networks. Earlier, he was with StrataCom and Cisco post-acquisition, Nortel’s Data Networks Division, and Siemens’ Public Networks’ R&D division. He holds two patents in the area of VoIP, and an M.Sc. from TUM (Technische Universitaet Muenchen). Panelist - 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, is co-inventor on two patents, 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. http://www.netcraftsmen.net/voicecon-orlando-2010.html Panelist - Stephen Campbell, IT Consultant, Stephen K Campbell Inc 
Stephen Campbell performs IT consulting services in the telepresence, video conferencing and network & telecommunications infrastructure areas. He has over 21 years of IT experience with Beckman Coulter Inc. As Director of Network Services for a 10,000 employee global enterprise, he was responsible for managing the global LAN/WAN, telephony, video, email, SharePoint and document management services. He has implemented global call centers, telepresence in Europe/US/Asia, participated in the creation of a state-of-the-art colocation data center, and implemented a global MPLS wide area network.
Prior to working in IT, Stephen held various positions within the engineering department of Coulter Electronics Inc., and became a co-inventor on two US patents for blood analyzer electronic circuits. He previously worked as a Field Applications Engineering Manager for semiconductor-maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); worked as a manufacturer's sales representative for Conley & Associates in Central Florida; and was an Electronics Design Engineer with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Atlanta, Ga. He holds Bachelor Electrical Engineering and Masters of Science Electrical Engineering degrees from Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Panelist - Dr. Mike Hollier, VP Voice Platform, Dolby Dr Mike Hollier, Vice President Voice Platform, Dolby Labs
Through the 1990’s Mike was at BT Labs (Europe’s largest telecoms R&D centre) where he directed BT’s research on audio, video and multi-media performance assessment. He also worked with MIT-Media-Lab and Lake-DSP on ground-breaking spatial-audio for virtual meeting spaces. His PhD was gained from the University of Essex in 1995 for his work on using models of human hearing to predict speech quality - leading to the ITU-T PESQ standard.
In 2000 Mike left BT to found Psytechnics Ltd. He managed the company's formation and early growth with VC financing. As Psytechnics’ CTO Mike was a market evangelist as well as overseeing the R&D of a new generation of “service-provider-grade” voice and video products. Technology licensing deals included performance measurement software for Microsoft’s Office Communicator solution as well as performance management products for large enterprise and communications service providers such as KPN, BT, and AT&T.
In July 2010 Mike joined Dolby Labs as Vice President, Voice Platform to onward develop Dolby’s world leading audio technology and know-how for the rapidly emerging Unified Communications and Collaboration market.
Mike is a winner of the Alan Rudge Medal for Innovation, and the British Computer Society Medal. He has 25 patents and more than 40 publications in the fields of voice and video performance management and spatial audio.
Many enterprises see the need for Unified Communications (UC) but don’t have the budget, the staff, the time or, necessarily, the need to roll out a new IP-PBX in order to get the new UC functions and benefits. This all-new session will ask leading UC vendors to bid a UC solution that can work with an existing PBX system. The RFP will use the same requirements as the “RFP: UC With a New IP PBX” session, so attendees can clearly see the difference between the two approaches. This session is key for Telecom and IT Directors, Managers, architects, planners, and operational teams. Speaker - Marty Parker, Principal Consultant, UniComm Consulting 
Marty Parker is committed to advancement of Unified Communications (UC) to produce new benefits and efficiencies in enterprise communications and to stimulate and justify innovation in the business communications industry. Marty sees Unified Communications as transforming the highly manual, unmeasured, and relatively unpredictable world of telephony-based and e-mail-based communications into a software-assisted, coordinated, simplified, predictable process that will deliver high-value benefits to customers, to employees, and to the relevant enterprises. With even moderate attention to implementation and change management, UC can deliver the cost-saving and process-accelerating changes that deliver real, compelling, hard-dollar ROI.
Panelist - Hakim Mehmood, Sr. Product manager, Cisco Systems Inc Hakim Mehmood Sr. Product Manager Cisco Systems, Inc. San Jose, CA USA
Hakim has been with Cisco for approximately 11 years now. He started his career as a Software Engineer where he was responsible for call control and interoperability between Cisco Unified Communications Manager and legacy systems. Hakim has continued this work by being a primary architect for a number of key initiatives, some of which include the Intercompany Media Engine (IME), QSIG, Annex M1, CUCM and Session Management Edition. Lately, Hakim has been branching out into the field of product management and working on long term call control strategy, licensing and product roadmaps.
Prior to joining Cisco, Hakim, worked for a series of small companies (Carrier Access Corporation, Transtream Inc., General Data Comm.) focusing on voice over packet type of technologies and interoperability.
Hakim has the equivalent of a Bachelors Degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering and an MBA from Denver University.
Hakim enjoys football and cricket, movies and photography. He currently resides in Houston, Texas with his wife and their daughter. Panelist - Pat Henkle, Director - Sphericall Product Line Management, NEC Corporation As Director of Product Line Management, Pat is responsible for the UNIVERGE 3C product line, the latest generation of Unified Communications software from NEC. Prior to NEC, Pat led the product management team at Sphere Communications, which was acquired by NEC. Sphere Communications was the developer of Sphericall a fully software based IP PBX and Unified communications product. Sphere Communications was awarded a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office for the packet based PBX. Prior to Sphere Communications, Pat was responsible for managing a global portfolio of carrier class multi-media access gateways for Internet Access and VoIP at 3Com Corporation and US Robotics Corporation (acquired by 3Com). Before joining US Robotics, Pat held a variety of positions ranging from software development, technical sales engineering and product management at Ameritech Corporation where his expertise involved the blending of broadband networking technologies and networked software applications for automated workflow and decision support systems. Pat graduated from the University of Illinois – Chicago with a Bachelors of Science in Quantitative Methods and Information Decision Sciences. He lives in Chicago, Illinois with his wife Kim and their three children. Panelist - Frank Fender, Unified Communications Product Manager and Architect, Siemens Enterprise Communications Frank Fender is a Unified Communications Product Manager and Architect at Siemens Enterprise Communications, in their Global OpenScape Unified Communications Server practice. Frank has been specifically focused on UC deliverables since 2003. In those days the technology was known as Real-Time Collaboration (RTC). He was instrumental in assisting Siemens with their award-winning OpenScape UC system. Frank has an MBA, a BS in Computer Science, and 20 years of voice, data, and development experience as a Unified Communications Architect, Integrated Communications Consultant, Client/Server Software Developer, and Technical Project Leader. He has performed a variety of technical roles including Consultant, Lead Architect, Sales Engineer, Developer, and Systems Integrator. Frank has also worked in various capacities as Manager, Director, Board Member, CFO, and Chairman of a number of companies that he has founded, co-founded, managed or developed. Panelist - Allan Mendelsohn, Director, UC Marketing, Avaya Allan is the Director of Marketing 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 midsized 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 - Ian Fogg, Channel Sales Manager, Business Solutions Sales Group, RIM Panelist - Shelly Marston, Sr. Product Manager, UC Marketing, Microsoft Corporation Panelist - Julie Reed, Sr. Product Manager, IBM Sametime, IBM
Julie joined the IBM UCC team in 2011 and is responsible for Sametime Unified Telephony and all voice and video in Sametime Standard / Advanced. Previously she held leadership positions in the development organizations of Lotus Foundations and Net Integration Technologies. Panelist - Davide Petramala, EVP Business Development and Sales, ESNA | |
