Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is an Enterprise Cloud Architect with AAJ Technologies and the founder of Blue Syntax. Herves experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Masters degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of PRO SQL Database and “PRO SQL Server 2012 Practices” from Apress and is the president of the Azure Florida Association.

Henry Castillo, Technical Director at ABP Technology, has more than 15 years of experience consulting, designing, and implementing IP based networking, communication, and IT solutions in general. During his tenure at ABP Technology, Henry, has run ABP Technology’s pre and post sales technical department and ABP labs. Henry has gathered a lot of hands on experience with telecommunication and IPPBX products and worked resolving interoperability issues since early days of VoIP Consumerization.

In addition to his MBA (concentration in IT) from Texas A&M University, Henry has completed advanced post degree courses, achieved numerous technical certifications and holds a B.S.E.E. degree. His extensive cross-functional skills allowed Henry to collaborate and align IT efforts with sales, marketing and business strategies. Henry has served as product manager working with multitude of manufacturers and developers evaluating and recommending improvements to better position the products in the American market.

Robert is the president and founder of ABP International, Inc. As an expert in market development and product distribution Mr. Messer saw the need for a Technology Distribution Company to help create momentum in emerging technology niches like VoIP by aggregating Best of breed products, and combining with professional technical support, training and focused marketing to help resellers and systems integrators embrace the new technology.

As Vice President of ADTRAN’s Bluesocket Business Group, Chris is responsible for the revenue success and market-facing functions of ADTRAN’s virtual Wireless LAN product line. He brings over twenty years of experience with leading technology and networking companies, and is an avid participant in many industry events, delivering charismatic sessions, panels and presentations. For the past ten years, Chris has held global leadership positions with a number of innovative technology companies including Avici Systems, Colubris Networks, and Redline Communications.

Jason Collins is Vice President of Emerging Technology Commercialization at Alcatel-Lucent. This responsibility includes driving innovation by developing ecosystems and executing via agile prototyping of technology, service concepts, and business models. Jason pioneered the development of several working innovation centers in conjunction with partners. Jason’s career began in communications research at Georgia Tech and includes over 15 years of experience in telecom service providers from large traditional telecoms to startups where he headed up product management for innovative services such as programmable QoS based VPLS and MPLS networks, VoIP and early cloud-based managed business application services. He holds a patent for video over DSL as well as several patents pending for unique service delivery models and service diagnostic processes.

Donn Roth has more than 25 years of experience creating, applying, and managing new technology. Donn leads the development team at AppFirst, designing application monitoring solutions for application infrastructure. He started his career in 1980 as the Lead Design Engineer for the NASA Development and Assessment Lab where he designed hardware and software for the Space Shuttle Launch Processing System.

Since then, Donn has bounced overseas and coast-to-coast as the Design Engineer for MCM Japan in Tokyo providing design and integration of Ready Systems real-time Operating System. He went on to become the Chief Architect for Ready Systems, directing and managing kernel development teams. Donn served as the CTO and VP of Engineering for OnCore Systems before launching Trigence (now AppZero).

Donn holds a Master of Science degree in Information Systems from Southeastern University and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Electronics from the University of Northern Iowa.

Donn may be a technology visionary, but enjoys spending time with family and friends in the outdoors kayaking and canoeing.

Since 2002, Bryan Mobley has been an integral part of Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group’s efforts with Service Providers, specializing in SMB cloud/commercial services; network/cloud based managed services. His efforts have been focused on SP business new revenue strategy and management consulting as well as business planning services. Additionally, he has been involved in thought leadership efforts concerning SMB cloud adoption, Enterprise cloud adoption, 3rd generation managed network services and SP cloud offerings. Over the last 10 years, Bryan has focused strategy and management consulting with Cisco’s largest SP customers. Prior to that he held roles in business development, service development and major account management exclusively in the telecommunications industry including 5 years with Ericsson, Inc. where he held roles in sales and technology consulting.

Bryan holds a BSEE from Clemson University and an MBA with honors from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

Russell Jones’ roles at Cisco have included leading all aspects of product management of Unified Communications offerings, competitive research and worldwide strategic business development. His focus has been on the Small and Medium segments of the Unified Communications market. Previously, Mr. Jones co-founded and led two cloud-based physical security firms, which utilized a number of recently available technologies to offer advanced services to unserved markets. He also was the founding CEO of Clearvox Communications that pioneered the market for wireless phone headsets, which he sold to Plantronics. Previously at Adaptec, Mr. Jones launched an IC business and then doubled a $50M channel products business to $100M, and was an Account Executive at AT&T selling their communication systems to the Hospitality Market.

Mr. Jones has been awarded 4 patents, holds a BSBA with highest honors double majoring in MIS and Marketing from Boston University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Brian Blatnik is senior manager of product marketing for Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Business Unit. In this position, he is responsible for the commercial and go-to-market strategy for the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS), which enables Cisco’s partners to deliver unified communications and collaboration applications as cloud services to their business customers ranging from SMBs to global enterprises. In various product management and marketing roles over 13+ years at Cisco, he has specialized in defining multiproduct architectural value propositions and leading diverse cross-functional teams to develop them into solutions that enable service providers to deliver managed and hosted unified communications, SIP trunking, IP video surveillance, and managed VPN services. Brian holds a bachelor’s degree from MIT and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he studied strategy, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

Roberto De La Mora marketing responsibilities include the solutions related to Unified Voice and Video Communications and Infrastructure, Unified Communications Endpoints, Cloud Collaboration and Collaboration-enabled Desktop Virtualization.

In this capacity Mr. De La Mora provides guidance and strategic direction for WW field marketing teams and business units, and supports the sales organization by defining the value proposition of the solutions under his charter, as well as the competitive and market positioning for them. His team develops the programs and initiatives required to successfully execute on the strategy, ensure the alignment of the channels, sales, technical operations and support teams, serves as a liaison between Cisco’s Business Units and customers and sales teams.

Frequently Mr. De La Mora participates in industry events and user forums as a speaker on business value of technologies such as Unified Communications, Collaboration, Conferencing, Desktop Virtualization, Video, Mobility and Cloud. He also interacts frequently with key customers as one of Cisco’s business technology experts.

Mr. De La Mora is an experienced international executive with a 22-year career distinguished by achievements in sales growth, channel management, business and market development, marketing and product management, with a track record of rapid promotion and delivery of measurable results. He worked for companies such as Siemens, Lucent Technologies, Avaya, and he joined Cisco at the end of 2003 as the responsible for Unified Communications for Latin America.

Mr. De La Mora holds an MBA from the Instituto Mexico-Aleman de Capacitacion Industrial y Comercial in Mexico City, Mexico, with post-graduate diplomas in Production & Materials Management, Sales Management and Industrial Finance and Accounting. He graduated with honors as a BS in Computer Systems Engineering from the UNIVA, in Guadalajara, Mexico

Peder Ulander is vice president of product marketing for the Cloud Platforms group at Citrix, overseeing the company’s marketing strategy for its cloud infrastructure and server virtualization products. Ulander joined Citrix in 2011 when the company acquired Cloud.com, where he was chief marketing officer. Ulander has more than 15 years of marketing and sales strategy experience and has been named “The Most Interesting Man in the Cloud” by Cloudcast.net.

Prior to Cloud.com, he was head of strategy for Pure Networks and helped drive its acquisition by Cisco, where he then went on to oversee the Seattle-based Consumer Networking Software group. Ulander served as senior vice president of marketing at Sun Microsystems, where he managed the Solaris OS team and was responsible for launching Java into the open source market by re-licensing, building a community and launching the open source Java platform. Ulander has also held a number of management positions at software companies such as MontaVista Software and Cobalt Networks. He studied economics at Santa Clara University.

Jon has served as a business leader with 20 years experience in Information Technology, primarily focusing on delivery of Professional Technical Services and Technical Training. He has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration in Management and Information Systems as well as a Master’s of Science in Management Information Systems. Jon is a graduate and educator at the Florida International University. He has extensive experience in Network Engineering, Software Implementation, and is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and is an expert in providing Consulting and Virtual CIO services. Jon has had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at several significant IT events and organizations.

Jon’s skills are heavily focused on TCP/IP based networking, telecommunication and server infrastructure. His Microsoft Certifications include MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCDBA, MCSD, MCITP, MCTS, MCA and a MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainer) for over ten years. His Cisco technical and sales certifications include CCNA, CCDA, CSA, COMPTIA (A+, Net+, I-Net+, Security+). He also maintains certification in Information Technology Service Management (ITILv3).

Jon is president of Conquest Technology Services a successful, award winning, multi-million dollar company. Conquest’s focus is on Managed Information Technology Services for small-to-medium sized businesses and specialized Unified Communications/ Voice projects for the Mid-Market and Enterprise client sizes. Jon has also certified with a number of other vendors including, Cisco, ITIL, Citrix, CompTIA among others. With these certifications Jon and Conquest partners have been able to create substantive relationships with respective vendors and are thought leaders brand delivery like Microsoft and the excellent solutions they bring to market.

Jon serves as president of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) South Florida Chapters, member of Business Network International (BNI) and the Coral Gables Bar Association and special advisor to the President.

Carl has been highlighting the key initiatives around the advances of the Commercial Internet since the inception of the worldwide web. Carl’s diverse experience in technology spans the areas of costing, operations, marketing, regulatory, and product development and management. Carl has become known throughout the Communications community for his ability to connect people and businesses; be it in formal conference settings or through the well-planned serendipitous encounter. Carl’s technology experience along with his expertise in building relationships as well relevant, thought provoking conference content, make him an invaluable asset to IoT Evolution.

Joseph Barnas has over 30+ years of proven success in sales and sales management. Throughout his career, Joseph has obtained a comprehensive knowledge of the communications and IT industry, including protocols, DWDM, TCP/IP, Voice over Data, as well as leasing and financing techniques such as facility structures. Currently, he is the director of channels at dinCloud. In his last role, Joseph was Director of Strategic Initiatives at Allied Digital where he signed on vendors including Westcon, and Xeta Technologies, Inc. (Windstream). Prior roles include President of Broad Horizons Capital, Inc.; Joseph started and operated the small, privately held business, focusing on the IT and communications consulting area, as well as the financing of those projects. There, he provided successful communications and infrasture solutions, and financial facilities in some cases to medium sized businesses and Fortune 1000 customers.Prior to starting his company, Joseph worked for Nortel Networks initially as a senior account manager, working his way up to Director of Global Signature Accounts, and later the Director of ESP Optical Networks and Access. Joseph also has experience in interfacing, presenting and raising venture funding.

Joseph is the Director of Business Development at e-Core. e-Core, founded in 1999, is a Brazilian nearshore application outsourcing company with wide experience building high performance teams and exchanging knowledge about methodologies, tools and best-of-breed practices in software development with customers. Since joining the company last year Joseph has taken great strides to improve e-Cores customer acquisition life cycle. Using his sales and marketing experience to help engage new customers.

Larry brings 15 years of sales, marketing and business development leadership experience in emerging communication technologies. Through a variety of engagements, Larry has gained a deep understanding of distribution strategy and implemented channel models that have succeeded in markets ranging from small business through to large enterprise. Based in San Francisco, Larry has filled business-critical roles and provided direction to technology companies ranging from telecom to web-based B2B services. Larry is a native of Montreal, Canada and has been based in the Bay Area for the last 10 years.

Lisa Pierce is the Managing Vice President in Gartner Research, where she leads the Unified Communications, Network Systems and Services team. Ms. Pierce’s team addresses all the major network-related infrastructure, applications and operations issues that confront enterprises across the world.

Prior to joining Gartner, Lisa was the President of Strategic Networks Group, a company dedicated to improving the quality of emerging telecommunications and IT services, and the service experience, that enterprise customers receive from key network suppliers.

She is an expert on emerging enterprise-class telecom/network services, including telecom cloud (IaaS, PaaS and select SaaS applications), next generation network and performance management, SIP Trunking and Unified Communications services (particularly hosted UC, collaboration/conferencing and FMC services), broadband access, 3G and 4G services, managed network services, switched Ethernet (VPLS) and MPLS services. In addition to strategic architectural considerations, her work has extended to sourcing, performance assurance, and customer satisfaction.

Previously, Lisa was the Vice President of Telecommunications Services Research at Forrester Research/Giga Information Group for over ten years, and served in several leadership capacities, including as a Technology Practice Director and as the first elected Chair of the Giga Research Fellows. During her tenure, she was twice named as one of the Top 10 most influential IT analysts. Prior experience includes four years’ consulting on network signaling protocols for a boutique network engineering firm.

Lisa’s career in network communications began at AT&T, where her work focused on developing and introducing entirely new classes of business services – in product development, product management, new services market research, statistical modeling and forecasting. Across the globe, these services still generate billions of dollars of revenue today. The development teams she led were awarded 6 patents.

A member of the IEEE, Ms. Pierce is a frequent industry speaker and media commentator. She has also served a Contributor to Saugatuck Technology, UC Strategies, GigaOM Pro, No Jitter/Enterprise Connect, and DM Radio. Lisa holds an MBA in marketing and statistical modeling from Willamette University, and a B.A. with Honors from Gordon College.

Charlie Vogt is President and CEO of GENBAND. Since joining the Company in 2004, Vogt has been instrumental in GENBANDs growth from $5 million to an estimated $750 million in 2010.

Vogt directs one of the most exciting and dynamic telecom equipment suppliers in the communications market. Vogt successfully steered GENBAND through one of the most difficult market environments ever encountered in the telecom industry, while achieving 130% percent compound annual growth and growing from a single product company into a global market-share leader. GENBANDs growth and strategic acquisitions, including Tekelecs IP switching division, NextPoint Networks and Nortels IP switching division, have transformed the company’s product and service portfolio, customer profile, global footprint and financial performance.

Under Vogt’s leadership, GENBAND has successfully secured business with two-thirds of the world’s largest service providers in the broad markets of fixed, mobile and cable. Today, GENBAND arguably possesses the most enviable IP switching and networking portfolio and employs 2,200 employees spanning 50 countries.

Vogt has received numerous awards for his leadership and corporate growth, including: Global Telecoms Business Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful People, Dallas Metroplex Technology Business Councils Corporate CEO of the Year and “Fast 50”, Collin County 60 “#1 Fastest-Growing Company”, INC 500 America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies”, Deloitte’s “Technology Fast 500”, Saint Louis Universitys Entrepreneurial Alumni Hall of Fame and Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year. In addition, Vogt has been recognized for his philanthropic efforts in both the corporate and educational sectors.

Vogt serves on the Board of Directors of Kentrox (Chairman), Procera Networks (PKT) and Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). He is also an active member of Young Presidents Organization.

Prior to joining GENBAND, Vogt was instrumental in the operational and financial growth of five standard-setting technology companies that either became public companies or were acquired. Vogt was President and CEO of Taqua, which was acquired by Tekelec in March 2004. Before joining Taqua, Vogt held executive leadership positions at Santera Systems which was acquired by Tekelec in 2005; Accelerated Networks which executed an IPO in 2000 and Ascend Communications which was acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1999. Earlier in Vogt’s career, he held sales leadership positions at ADTRAN, Motorola and IBM.

Vogt holds a Bachelors degree in Economics from Saint Louis University, where he also played Division I baseball. He is married and has three children.

Kiran is Director of Product Marketing at HP Cloud Services. He has had over 15 years experience covering cloud, enterprise software and mobile platforms. Prior to this, Kiran was Sr Director for Yahoo’s instant messaging and mobile products. He was also Director for Oracle’s enterprise CRM products and led marketing at a couple of small companies in cloud, mobile and security. He has an Engg degree and an MBA from Wharton School of Business. He spends his free time with his wife and 2 daughters in kids sports leagues, and enjoys travel.

In his current position, Mike has responsibility for the portfolio of cloud services and for development of IBMs strategic cloud delivery platform. He joined IBM in 1986 as a software engineer for IBM network management software. He has held a variety of positions with IBM, including: Manager of Channels for IBM Networking Software in Asia Pacific, market strategist for IBM Retail Store Solutions, Director of Market Management for IBM TotalStorage Open Software, and Director of Strategy for IBM Tivoli Software. He also worked for Medic Computer Systems, a healthcare software company, where he was responsible for marketing strategy and analyst relations. Mike has a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in business administration from Duke University.

Steven Johnson has 20 years of senior management experience, working with companies including Sanders Associates, Telco Systems, and Lockheed Martin as well as Ingate Systems. Prior to Ingate, he served as CEO of Abrena, Inc, a business development consulting firm focused on assisting European and North American firms to expand in the United States. Previous to that, he was President and CEO of Transcept Inc., a telecommunications infrastructure company. Steve holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Master’s in Business Administration from Boston University.

Don Senerath is the Founder and President of International Computing, Inc.International Computing (IC) was founded in New York and is now based in Miami Beach, Florida with offshore Operations. IC is an Amazon Web Services Consulting Partner providing cloud migration services for Enterprises. IC also develops cloud-native, white-label Software as a Service (SaaS) products for various verticals. Prior to founding International Computing, Don was the vice President of Technology and Operations at Digital Pulp, Inc and the Co-Founder, Chairman and CTO of YouNetwork Corporation. Mr. Senerath is a career entrepreneur with a wide range of expertise in internet technology and business operations and holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and dual MBAs from Georgetown University McDonough School of Business and ESADE Business School in Spain.

Skip Chilcott is responsible for US midmarket sales and marketing for Lync and Unified Communications at Microsoft. A 20 year veteran of the communications and collaboration technology, spending the last 10 years at Microsoft involved with the Unified Communications, Cloud Services, Real-time Collaboration, Productivity, and more for products including Lync, Office 365, Office, Office Live, OCS, Live Meeting, Exchange, and BPOS to name a few. He has a passion for helping businesses both large and small to maximize success, productivity effectiveness, and growth through the use of innovative technology.

Widely regarded as a technical pioneer in the VoIP industry, Anthony Orlando has spent the last decade deploying VoIP networks for Tier 1 providers worldwide from the Netherlands to the United States, including spending six years at Siemens Network Convergence, where he was awarded the Siemens Circle of Excellence award.

In his current role at Momentum, Anthony is responsible for research and development, Tier 2 and Tier 3 support, service quality, quality analytics, the Network Operations Center (NOC) and Momentum’s core telecommunications network.

Prior to joining Momentum, Anthony held the senior IMS engineer/IPCentrex specialist position at KPN Telecom, a multimedia company which provides consumers with fixed mobile telephone, Internet and television services. During his tenure, he provided expert analysis of interoperability complexities in a multi-vendor environment, driving multiple issues to resolution.

As Senior Vice President of Marketing at ContinuityX, cloud computing, data center, networking a disaster recovery company, Darryl is responsible for, marketing, product management and corporate communications . Darryl has more than 20 years of communications, hosting, cloud and IT experience. Prior to joining the management team at ContinuityX, he served as CMO at Appcore with responsibilities covering sales and marketing where he restructured the offerings and raised corporate visibility with investors, customers and the media. Previously Darryl was General Manager of Cloud and Digital Media at Telx, a leading colocation and interconnection provider, prior to that he was Director of Vertical Marketing for Equinix, one of the largest data center companies in the world.

Darryl also held leadership positions at Global Crossing, now part of Level 3, a global communications company, where he ran Enterprise Marketing, Product Management and Advanced Solutions, helping to generate over $500 million in revenues annually by providing thought leadership and strategic direction across all areas of the business. An exceptional technical marketeer and speaker, Darryl has given many presentations on Enterprise Class Internet, MPLS, VoIP, Hosting and Cloud solutions to enthusiastic audiences worldwide.

Originally from England, Darryl currently resides in New Jersey, with his wife Alicia and their children, Gilbert, Leila and Penelope. When not chasing after his children, he is being chased by the family puppies, two 100+ pound dogs.

Alon is an entrepreneur, inventor and is widely recognized as one of the creators of the Voice over IP industry. He joins Phone.com after founding and managing a successful series of recent business ventures, including BitWine and RemoteAbility. Alon was the co-founder of VocalTec Communications (NASDAQ:VOCL), the first company to provide Internet voice technology worldwide, which in 1996 was one of the earliest successful Internet IPOs.

Joel Maloff is Vice President - Channel Development for Phone.com (www.phone.com)and adjunct professor at Colorado Technical University. Joel has been a frequent speaker at industry conferences on topics such as SIP trunking, Unified Communications, Enhancing Quality of Experience via Network Planning, and IP Peer-to–Peer Networking.Joel has previously served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at BandTel, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategies at GlobalTouch Telecom, and CTO at Fusion Telecom. Prior to joining Fusion, He was Principal Consultant for Maloff Group International and consulted for corporations in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia.

Michael Lauricella is one of the telecom industrys foremost authorities on go-to-market strategies for cloud communication solutions. Michael brings to Plivo business development and vast partnering opportunities given his long-standing platform, vendor and analyst relations experience. Prior to joining Plivo, Michael was responsible for the creation of BroadSofts Web 2.0 initiative, Xtended, and led the companys first BroadCloud initiative, PacketSmart. Working directly with BroadSoft customers, he was able to accelerate market launch, marketing, and sales for Hosted PBX and Mobile PBX applications.

Lauricellas other roles included Vice President of Telecommunications Research at AMI Partners, a leading research and consultancy firm focused on the global small and medium business (SMB) market - VoIPs fastest growing segment. Before that, he spearheaded the Yankee Groups research on the SMB market. In addition to his work as a consultant, Lauricella did a stint at 2nd Century Communications, a competitive local exchange carrier, where he focused on both competitive intelligence and business development. Michael holds an MBA in International Economics and Finance from Brandeis University.

Jerry Morgan is the founder, CEO and Chief Software Architect of ProjecTools, a Texas based SaaS company serving primarily the oil and gas engineering and construction industry. ProjecTools provides an integrated project management solution to manage large oil and gas engineering and construction projects. ProjecTools application supports Document Management, Engineering & Commissioning, Procurement and Cost Control for international users in over 50 countries.

ProjecTools is a 100% SaaS company that has grown from Jerry’s vision in 2001 of how global projects could be managed, to a profitable and rapidly growing company in 2012. In the past 12 years, ProjecTools has been used to manage over 18 billion dollars worth of oil and gas projects.

ProjecTools has a strong track record of incorporating user ideas and feedback to shape the application. Jerry and the ProjecTools Product Engineering team anticipate more direction and participation from end-users in the coming year by providing on-screen tools for both administering user customizations and workflows as well as initiating more complex enhancements by providing specifications through a drag and drop builder tool. The drag and drop suggestion tool evolved from a proprietary application builder developed to incorporate less code-savvy employees into Product Engineering. The drag and drop suggestion tool will provide a channel for end-users to determine new features, user process improvements, and be further involved with application development.

ProjecTools offices are located on their 11 acre campus with 17,000 sq. ft. of office space in Bellville, TX which is about 1 hour outside of Houston and 1.5 hours from Austin.

Jerry brought over 20 years of oil and gas industry experience to ProjecTools in 2001. He began his career as an engineer and project manager with Texaco in 1979. In 1994 he founded an engineering and consulting company providing traditional engineering services to the oil and gas industry. This firm transitioned in 2001 to what is today ProjecTools.

Jose Pastor is the director of product management at RingCentral, a leading cloud business phone system provider, where he drives the overall customer experience. Prior to RingCentral, Pastor worked at Corrigo, a cloud-based facilities maintenance and work dispatch solutions provider, where he served for eight years as the VP of product management and marketing. Pastor started his career as a specialist engineer for Boeing where he worked for three years on system dynamic analysis, math modeling, and flight-testing for new airplane design.

Pastor holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.

Richard L. Hathaway: Mr. Hathaway in an independent consultant with over 35 years of information technology and telecommunications industry experience. Ricks career also includes 21 years in the USAF including 14 years as the operations director for the White House Communications Agency transmission systems division. He has served many roles as a consultant, end user and provider of telecommunications services. This includes duties as consulting practice director for two technology consulting firms, Manager of MCI’s 800 Network Service Center and as the telecommunications manager for a national finance company. He is a frequent speaker at professional seminars/conferences. Rick has also been a member of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants (STC) since 2001 and an STC Past President (2008-2010).

Dave is VP of Business Development for Sansay and brings more than 15 years experience working with next-generation service providers with roles in marketing and business development. At Sansay, Dave is responsible for new initiatives, strategic partnerships, and channel development activities. Prior to Sansay, Dave served in a variety of roles over 10 years at BroadSoft including the strategic partnerships, the launch of BroadCloud, and product marketing. Dave worked for service providers in roles at NextWave Wireless and with Evincio, leading go-to-market for VoIP over wireless broadband and managed IT applications. Dave has also worked as a management consultant with the consulting firm of PRTM (now part of PwC) with a focus on innovation management and operational excellence. Dave has an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and BA/BS degrees in Economics/Chemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park.

David Tipping is the vice president and general manager of the SBC Business at Sonus Networks, Inc. Prior to this role, Tipping served as Sonus’ vice president of product marketing and product management. Tipping has served in several executive and management roles during his tenure with Sonus, including vice president of Sonus Worldwide Systems Engineering, vice president of Sonus’ Service Providers for the Americas division and as technical director of Sonus’ Eastern region. Previously, Tipping spent four years at Enterasys/Cabletron Systems – a Siemens enterprise communications company – as a senior systems engineer supporting customers in the Midwest and New England. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New Hampshire.

Craig brings 15 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur in the communications space to Firespotter Labs, a start-up focused on making complex telephony products easy to use. Products in the Firespotter family include TechCrunch award-winning ÜberConference, Nosh, NoshList and Jotly. Firespotter is funded by Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures. In past lives, Craig was CEO of Dialpad Communications, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005 (now Yahoo! Voice), co-founder and CEO of GrandCentral Communications, acquired by Google in July 2007 (now Google Voice), and Entrepreneur in Residence at Google Ventures. He was also a technology venture investor at Sterling Payot Capital and TeleSoft Partners and a corporate attorney at top-tier law firms in Silicon Valley, where he represented companies ranging from early stage start-ups to Cisco Systems. Craig is a graduate of UC Berkeley (BA), Georgetown University (MBA) and Boalt Hall School of Law (JD).

Rich Tehrani is the CEO and group Editor-In-Chief of TMC, as well as the Founder and Conference Chairman of ITEXPO, a leading technology trade show held twice each year. Rich oversees a diverse portfolio of successful technology magazines, web sites and trade events at TMC, which recently celebrated its 44th anniversary. Rich has guided TMC’s ascension and evolution from a print publishing and trade show company focused exclusively on voice/data convergence and computer telephony integration (CTI) markets, into a media powerhouse covering all of today’s most important technologies – Wireless/Mobile, Cloud Computing, IP Communications, IoT, and more. Rich is TMC’s driving force in the creation and implementation of pioneering publications and events. Since launching TMCnet in 1995, Rich has pioneered the development of more than 300 online communities of interest, revolutionizing the online world and changing the way companies leverage their brands online. Rich is a media icon, maintaining an active role as an Editor-In-Chief and a very prominent technology blogger/social media participant. TMC’s event and online platforms serve as an incubator for new concepts from the leading minds in the technology space. Rich launched and oversees the ITEXPO Franchise (which is in its 34th installment) – and is constantly adding collocated events by using his creativity and ability to launch synergistic conferences. Various collocated events include: CVx (ChannelVision Expo), IoT Evolution Conference & Expo, IDEA Showcase, and MSP Expo. Aside from his contributions to the online media world, Rich is an active and engaged philanthropist. He a member of the local JCC, a Board Member of the UCONN Engineering Department, and the engineer behind the future TMC Technology Center at a local Boys & Girls Club. This is all in addition to being an active and involved father and member of the community in Fairfield County, Connecticut where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

David Vaughan is a director, a brand manager and a pirate with TSG Global, a business solutions company for communications using SMS and voice as tools to help companies engage and interact smarter, and demonstrate how to connect better with everyone. His favorite quote Its better to be a pirate than to join the Navy -Steve Jobs fuels his mission to constantly teach why its OK to be brave to not do the same thing as everyone else. He is an active blogger and contributor to various online publications...and he is also a professional impersonator, Jack Sparrow being his favorite.

An ardent disciple of the Net Promoter Score service principles, Jim joined Xtium from Hosting.com, where he was responsible for service delivery and engineering operations, including a successful transition of thousands of customers into virtual private cloud technologies. He is responsible for Xtium’s business operations and service experience.Jim has deep expertise in operations research, security and cryptography, applicable within banking, finance, healthcare, telecommunication and public sectors. Jim earned a Computer Science degree from the University of Delaware and is an Adjunct Professor at Wilmington University.

Hugh Goldstein is president of AU24, a management consultancy focused on IP communications technologies. AU24 supports clients implementing new solutions for improving voice, video, and messaging and advises software companies and services providers on their strategy, product marketing, and business development. Hugh’s background includes twenty years of experience with telecommunications and Internet companies and an M.S. in Management and Business Administration from Boston University and Ben Gurion University.

Larry brings 15 years of sales, marketing and business development leadership experience in emerging communication technologies. Through a variety of engagements, Larry has gained a deep understanding of distribution strategy and implemented channel models that have succeeded in markets ranging from small business through to large enterprise. Based in San Francisco, Larry has filled business-critical roles and provided direction to technology companies ranging from telecom to web-based B2B services. Larry is a native of Montreal, Canada and has been based in the Bay Area for the last 10 years.

Mark Ricca is a founding Partner of IntelliCom Analytics, a boutique Market Research and Professional Services firm established in August 2005. IntelliCom Analytics is focused on assisting suppliers in the Information Technology (IT) industry, and end users seeking cost-effective IT solutions. The Firm provides a range of consulting services to end user clients in the enterprise and mid-market segments, IT equipment manufacturers / software application developers, wireline / wireless network service providers, and distribution channels.

Phil Edholm is the President and Principal of PKE Consulting. PKE consults to end users and vendors in the communications and networking markets. PKE works with our clients to deliver the value of the integration of information and interaction. Whether with Unified Communications or integration of communications and business processes, PKE has the experience and knowledge to transform your organization. Phil is also the organizer of WebRTC World Expo and Conference, the global eco-system event for WebRTC, the next major transformation in technology. Phil Edholm has over 30 years experience in creating innovation and transformation in networking and ommunications. Prior to founding PKE , he was Vice President of Technology Strategy and Innovation for Avaya. In this role, he was responsible for defining vision and strategic technology and the integration of the Nortel product portfolio into Avaya. He was responsible for portfolio architecture, standards activities, and User Experience. Prior to Avaya, he was CTO/CSO for the Nortel Enterprise business for 9 years. At Nortel, he led the development of VoIP solutions and multimedia communications as well as IP transport technology. His background includes extensive LAN and data communications experience, including 13 years with Silicon Valley start-ups.Phil is recognized as an industry leader and visionary. In 2007, he was recognized by Frost and Sullivan with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Growth, Innovation and Leadership in Telecommunications. Phil is a widely sought speaker and has been in the VoiceCon/Enterprise Connect Great Debate three times. He has been recognized by the IEEE as the originator of “Edholm’s Law of Bandwidth” as published in July 2004 IEEE Spectrum magazine and as one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications by Internet Telephony magazine. Phil was a member of the IEEE 802.3 standards committee, developed the first multi-protocol network interfaces, and was a founder of the Frame Relay Forum. Phil has 16 patents and holds a BSME/EE from Kettering University.

Erik Linask is Group Editorial Director of TMC. During his tenure at TMC, he has supported the production and development of TMCs print publications and, most recently, managed the day-to-day operations of the industry’s leading Web site, TMCnet, which currently serves more than 1 million unique monthly visitors. Currently, he oversees TMC’s four print publications as well as TMCnet, and covers a wide range of topics in the IP Communications and Information Technology arenas, including his blog, Convergence Corner, on TMCnet. Erik also develops to conference programming for ITEXPO, and TMCs other communications and technology events, including Software Telco Congress. Prior to joining TMC, Erik was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication, where he also managed the magazine’s survey research. Erik began his professional career at management consulting firm Leadership Research Institute.

Peter Bernstein is a seasoned writer and professional with deep experience in the communications and IT industries. As a top-level industry analyst, Peter has keynoted major technology events and has been cited numerous times by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Business Week, Fortune Magazine, ComputerWorld, NetworkWorld, Communications Week, among other publications. Bernstein has authored or co-authored market research studies, CEO speeches, white papers, articles, and other content for major companies in the technology markets. His experience includes work with Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Equant, France Telecom, HP, Siemens, Verizon, Nortel, Wave Systems, and many more. He held the position of director of global marketing and communications at Telcordia. Having been on Advisory Boards for 15 technology start-up firms, Bernstein most recently worked as a consultant to C-level executives on all aspects of marketing communications strategy and tactics – from concept to cash, crisis management, brand stewardship, and helping establish metrics, manage processes and leadership practices.

Erik Linask is Group Editorial Director of TMC. During his tenure at TMC, he has supported the production and development of TMCs print publications and, most recently, managed the day-to-day operations of the industry’s leading Web site, TMCnet, which currently serves more than 1 million unique monthly visitors. Currently, he oversees TMC’s four print publications as well as TMCnet, and covers a wide range of topics in the IP Communications and Information Technology arenas, including his blog, Convergence Corner, on TMCnet. Erik also develops to conference programming for ITEXPO, and TMCs other communications and technology events, including Software Telco Congress. Prior to joining TMC, Erik was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication, where he also managed the magazine’s survey research. Erik began his professional career at management consulting firm Leadership Research Institute.