SPEAKER LIST

Gary Sevounts is the Chief Marketing Officer at Aryaka Networks, and is responsible for Aryaka’s global marketing efforts. Sevounts brings nearly 20 years of marketing executive expertise to Aryaka, as he has built multiple successful brands, award-winning products, and effective revenue generation models – from venture-backed startups to global corporations. He has extensive experience with software and SaaS products in the IT infrastructure and security space, as well as marketing and sales technology, having held marketing and product management leadership roles with a number of industry leaders.

John joins Cisco as Vice President, IoT Software Platforms. John manages the development of platforms that enable developers and solution providers to access Cisco’s IoT infrastructure capabilities. John brings over two decades of industry experience delivering complete lifecycle solution frameworks across the software industry, from product design to development and business operations. With expertise in engineering discipline and scale and extensive experience building robust developer communities for software platforms – John will help enable and invigorate the IoT developer community.

IoT Systems and Software is critical to Cisco delivering Infrastructure, network, and platform services for IoT applications and SaaS offerings to run at the extreme edge/fog. The IoT Software application platform offers open APIs and application development environments for customers, partners, and third parties to design, develop, and deploy their innovative solutions.

Before joining Cisco, John was the Chief Architect, General Manager, and Vice President of Engineering at Mashery, an Intel business that is a leader in application programming interface services and governance. John brought Mashery additional focus on balancing business and technology needs and was uniquely skilled to lead Mashery’s engineering operations towards an enterprise-grade state that lead to a successful acquisition with Intel.

John spent time at Intuit where he was responsible for the Intuit Partner Platform’s infrastructure, data programmability, data correlation analytics, and SaaS solutions for both developers and customers. John also spent twelve years at Microsoft focusing on developer-facing technologies including MSDN, SQL Server, and High Performance Computing. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from California State University, Chico.

Steven Woodward is CEO of Cloud Perspectives, located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is an international leader in maximizing the benefits from planned cloud computing, while managing associated risks. He helps co-lead the Cloud Audit and Cloud Carrier sub-groups at the National Institute of Standards for Technology (NIST), is a director with the Cloud Security Alliance Canadian Chapter, and a contributing member with ISO/ IEC SC7 (Software Systems) & SC38 (Cloud Computing), ITU-T, TM Forum, Cloud Standards Customer Council, IEEE and a few others. His consulting engagements have driven the cloud, service brokering and shared services models for governments in Canada, while providing value-focused insights, such that cloud computing benefits are realized and risks transparently managed. Cloud Perspectives’ regular participation in standards groups and international technology trade missions has developed partnerships and relationships with governments, such that value-focused, end-to-end cloud solutions can be effectively executed and operationalized, while respecting jurisdictional boundaries.

Mr. Percy is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Dialogic, responsible for the global marketing efforts to nurture the growing community of real-time communications and WebRTC applications developers with the rich media processing solutions from Dialogic. Included in his role, Mr. Percy is also responsible for developing and managing a number of strategic industry, consultant and analyst relationships. He is also a frequent industry speaker and contributes to a number of industry journals, podcasts, webcasts and blogs covering a range of communications and technology adoption topics.

Catharine Trebnick serves as Vice President, Senior Research Analyst within the Equity Capital Markets division at Dougherty & Company. Her coverage focuses on Data and IP Networking. Prior to joining Dougherty in January 2014, Ms. Trebnick was a Senior Technology Research Analyst specializing in the IP Networking/ Information Security sector. She began the Wall Street segment of her career as a Sr. Research Analyst at Avian Securities in 2008. Catharine’s expertise stems from her understanding of the communications industry, accumulated through 15 years of success as a senior-level business development and product management executive for industry icons Time Warner Telecom, ICG Communications, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T. Her channel development role with over 100 partners, including EMC, Cisco, Juniper and Ciena, adds a point of view on the telecom supply chain that is unique among her peers. In 2010, 2011 and 2012 Catharine was ranked in the top 10 of the 58 communication analysts for return to investors in StarMine.

Ms. Trebnick earned a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Maryland. She also earned a Master’s Degree from University of Chicago.

Raza founded Fiber Mountain™, and as CEO he leads day to day execution of the company’s vision of transforming network infrastructures everywhere. Previously Raza was VP/GM for ADC Telecommunications global enterprise business where he invented and executed the development of a cable intelligence technology; TE Connectivity acquired ADC. Prior to that he was Senior Director for 3Com’s IP Telephony division where he led the integration of telephony into IBM’s System-I environment; HP acquired 3Com. He was also VP/GM for Fujitsu BCS where he was responsible for IP Switches, Routers, ATM, SONET, and Telephony; and prior to that Director Product Management for General DataComm in the earliest ATM deployments for service provider in the US and globally. Raza has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and holds several patents in the networking space.

Ronald is the principal analyst and program leader in emerging telecoms at Frost & Sullivan, covering topics such as NGN, 4G/LTE migration, VoIP, Telco 2.0, video conferencing, SDN and value-added services. He has spoken at conferences such as Mobile World Congress, SUPERCOMM, VON, CTIA, Futurecom, and the VMA, among others. Ronald also is a columnist for TheStreet.com, has made TV appearances on BNN and CNBC, and is often quoted in the news media. He is an MIT graduate in Electrical Engineering, has over 19 years of experience in the telecom industry, and earned a U.S. patent while working at Nortel Networks.

Serving as Vice President of Solutions Marketing and Strategy for GENBAND, Sanjay Bhatia oversees the company’s product marketing organization and alignmnent of GENBAND’s go-to-market strategy across different market segments including NFV, Cloud, Enterprise Unified Communications, MSO and Wireless. Bhatia is an accomplished telecommunications professional with over 28 years of wide-ranging global experience.Bhatia has held a variety of senior leadership roles in Product Marketing, Product Line Management, and Research & Development for leading technology companies. He possesses a strong track record of successfully introducing new technologies via innovative product and solutions launches. Bhatia is an accomplished speaker who has presented at several global events.Prior to joining GENBAND, Bhatia served in senior business unit and marketing roles at Tekelec and various leadership positions at Nortel Networks. Bhatia holds bachelors and masters degrees in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech University.

Dr. Natasha Tamaskar brings over 20 years of telecom industry experience with particular expertise in cloud, mobile, WebRTC and security solutions. In Dr. Tamaskar’s current role at GENBAND as Vice President and Head of Cloud and Mobile Strategy and Ecosystem, she is responsible for the strategic direction of GENBAND’s Cloud and Mobile solutions and ecosystem partnerships. Natasha is also responsible for evangelizing GENBAND’s solutions within the industry. Prior to her current position, Dr. Tamaskar was GENBAND’s VP of Strategic Solutions and Product Marketing. Prior to GENBAND, Dr. Tamaskar held various senior leadership positions in Product Management, Product Development, Solutions Marketing and Technology for NextPoint Networks, Reef Point and Nortel. Dr. Tamaskar holds a Ph.D. in Computational Physics from the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University.

Moe Abdula is one of the enthusiastic leaders of IBM’s Cloud portfolio. As Vice President of Cloud Foundation Services Product Management, Moe provides direction for worldwide product development and go to market initiatives across the Cloud portfolio – with special focus on Infrastructure and Hybrid solutions. Moe also leads the business management teams responsible for prioritization of strategic investments.

During the last 15 years, Moe has held numerous development and field roles in IBM Software – most recently as the Director of Tivoli Cloud and Mobility Strategy.

Prior to joining IBM, Moe held a number of research associate roles and lectured on Early Object Oriented computing concepts. Moe attended the University of Leeds in the UK, where he received an honors bachelors degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering.

Apart from contemplating clouds, Moe has passionate interests in football (soccer) and the unexpected experiences of life his two beautiful children drag him into!

Michael Minkevich is VP of Technology Services at Luxoft, a global software house. In his current role he is responsible for the company’s Product Engineering portfolio that covers multiple industry verticals and technology domains including Internet-of-Things, Energy&Utilities, Digital Media, Consumer Electronics and, indeed, Telecommunications. Michael is a computer engineer by background and has almost twenty years of industry experience under his belt. Since 2003 he has been instrumental in making Luxoft a recognized player. In the product development space. Before that Michael held multiple executive positions at international technology companies. Besides IoT his professional interests include machine learning, artificial intelligence and neuroscience.

High-energy technical sales professional, engaging customers and delivering solutions with innovative technologies through multiple stages of the sales process.

Relationship-management of various customer sizes including government, telecom, Fortune 500, and leading technology companies.

7+ years of Engineering experience addressing customer issues globally by collaborating among cross-functional stakeholders.

Highly experienced in IP/Ethernet for the advancing campus, data center, and telecom market segments.

Jim Smith came to Mohr Davidow in 1999 after a successful career developing computer systems. “A startup is like a puzzle,” Jim says. “It’s a beautiful thing to see when those pieces come together.” Jim invests in software and services startups that provide cloud infrastructure and solve big data problems.

Mohr Davidow has long had an interest in companies that make better use of the mountains of data collected and stored during the course of doing business. Mining for usable data in those vast repositories has been a Holy Grail of computing. The Internet has only amplified available data and made the potential opportunities more tantalizing.

“The first five years of the Internet was all about connecting people,” Jim says. “Now everyone is connected and is offering tons of information about what calls them to action.”

Mohr Davidow resists what venture capitalists call a “drive-by” strategy of making token investments in areas deemed “hot” according to conventional wisdom. The firm prefers to take a higher-risk, but greater reward approach to investing. It prefers investing in early-stage startups offering a unique technological solution to long-standing problems. Jim often enlists potential customers to help entrepreneurs better understand their needs. “We can get large customers to talk to our companies because we have credibility with them,” he says. “These customers have seen the benefit of working closely with our companies.”

Mohr Davidow also defines its investment areas as opposed to taking a more general approach. “A lot of firms claim to have focus, but few live up to it,” Jim says. “It can be hard to stay away from me-too investments. They seem like a safer bet. Of course, the greater rewards go to those who take the greatest risks.

“We love to dig in early on technology-heavy problems,” he continues. “This is a firm that really loves technology and has always looked toward solving big data problems.”

Ashan Willy leads Polycom’s team of systems engineers and product managers, who are focused on building and innovating to help customers achieve their business goals. He joined Polycom in 2012 as the Vice President of Worldwide Systems Engineering. In 2013 he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Product Management and Worldwide Systems Engineering.

Ashan is the executive sponsor of the company’s Office of Strategy and Technology (OST), a cross-functional team responsible for Polycom’s strategic direction. He also manages Polycom’s user experience teams.

Ashan’s vision is to create innovative solutions that propel Polycom and our customers into the workplace of the future and unleash the power of human collaboration. He is excited by the future and the power collaboration technologies have to address major business challenges. The possibilities are endless.

Ashan has more than 20 years of leadership experience in engineering, worldwide strategy, planning and sales management in the enterprise, service provider, public sector and SMB markets at companies like Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems.

Ashan holds a Master’s of Business Administration from Pepperdine University in California and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Mark Roberts joined ShoreTel in December 2013 as chief marketing officer, bringing 20 years of technology sales, marketing and product management experience. Roberts has spent most of his career at technology companies, holding senior positions at Mitel, NexTraq, Polycom, 3Com and Intel. While the CMO at NexTraq he implemented changes in marketing functions that resulted in a substantial increase in new business coming from marketing activities, and his revamping of product positioning and sales tools contributed to overall business growth.

As ShoreTel’s CMO, Roberts leads marketing strategy, product marketing, demand generation, branding and external communications. He holds an MBA in marketing from Leicester University in the United Kingdom.

Malathi Malla leads Cloud, Data Center and Virtualization segment for Spirent. Responsible for the Product Marketing, Technical Marketing, and Product Management, she drives go-to-market strategy across Cloud and IP solutions. She has over 14 years of hi-tech experience at both Silicon Valley start-ups and large companies including Citrix, IBM, Sterling Commerce (software division of AT&T), Comergent Technologies and NetOptics. Malathi also represents Spirent as Marketing prime through various open source communities like Open Networking Foundation and OpenDayLight.

Mohamad (Mo) Nasser is the Sr. Director of IoT Product and Marketing for the Emerging Solutions group at Sprint. His team is accountable for the overall IoT Strategy, Products Management, Partner Management, Product Commercialization, Platforms and Marketing. He has over 25 years of wireless telecommunications management experience in product management, business development, strategic alliances and strategy. Prior to Joining Sprint, Mohamad served as the Sr. Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Virgin Mobile, he also headed the CDMA Product Management at Ericsson China.  Throughout his career Mohamad held various leadership positions at companies like Siemens, MCI, GTE and Qualcomm. Mohamad holds patents in EVDO technology. He and his family reside in the greater Los Angeles area in Southern California.

Kevin joined Talari in July 2013 as Chief Marketing Officer. He brings morethan 30 years of high-growth communications expertise to Talari, includinghelping companies achieve market-leading status in new market categories bydelivering breakthrough products and services directly to businesses andconsumers. Prior to joining Talari, Kevins executive experience includesChief Marketing Officer at ShoreTel (NASDAQ: SHOR), leading provider ofunified communications platforms including business phone systems. Prior toShoreTel, he was Chief Marketing Officer at GoBeam Communications, aVoIP-based hosted PBX service provider purchased by Covad Communications in2004. He was also Chief Marketing Officer at InternetConnect, Senior VicePresident of Marketing at Softnet Systems, Regional VP at Teligent,Corporate VP of Marketing and Product Development at Nextel Communicationsand Regional VP of Marketing at McCaw Cellular. Kevin is a graduate of theWharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and attendedthe Executive Education Program at Stanford University.

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.

Lloyd Noronha heads up marketing for Viptela, a provider of Software-Defined WAN technology. He plays a critical customer-facing role in addressing the network infrastructure problems of large enterprises.Lloyd has two decades of experience in the networking industry. Previously, he led the technology marketing organization for the Service-Provider vertical at Juniper Networks that generated multi-billion dollars in revenue.

Marc Hurlbut is an industry leading sales leader with Windstream Communications. He has over 18 years of telecommunications experience focused on helping businesses grow revenue, improve productivity, manage change and minimize risk. He has done this at companies like Alltel, US LEC, PAETEC and now Windstream. Marc is an experienced public speaker/trainer that holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Appalachian State University and currently lives in the Charlotte, NC area. He travels around the country working with Enterprise organizations to help them achieve their business goals.

Kevin Kopco is a Contact Center Solutions Practice Leader & NW Solutions Architect Manager for Windstream Communications. He has over 21 years of experience in telecommunications from both the customer and vendor prospective in networking, unified communications, contact centers, and management. His prior background includes various leadership and technical positions at Avaya, Nordstrom, America Online, IBM, CSC, NEW, AdvanTel, Inc., and Dataline. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Salisbury State University and industry certifications from Avaya, ShoreTel, Mitel, Aruba Wireless, Polycom, Palo Alto Networks, AVST, and Brocade.