The Scientific Committee

Peter Konings is Enterprise Networks and Managed Services for EMEA, LATAM and Canada at Verizon and brings with him more than 20 years of product managing IT and Telecom solutions for enterprise customers. In his current role he is responsible for managing the regional requirements for the Verizon global managed network services, enabling products for resellers in region and optimizing access solutions.   Since joining the company in 1998, he has headed up the Global Managed MPLS & Ethernet product teams, the managed services product team for Europe and the European & APAC Advanced Data team for Verizon.   Before this, he has worked as a product manager for data and internet services. Prior to this, Konings worked at Digital Equipment Corporation for the Belgium and Luxembourg region as a Product Manager for UNIX servers, messaging software and Year 2000.   Peter holds a master's degree in applied linguistics from the VUB- University in Brussels. He is based in Brussels.

Nicolas Fischbach is Director Strategy, Architecture and Innovation. Nicolas has been with Colt for 15 years starting out as an IP engineer. Before moving into this role he was in charge of Security Engineering and Operations.   Nicolas holds an Engineer degree in Networking and Distributed Computing and is a recognised authority on Service Provider security as well as on next-generation architectures.

Claudio Scola is the Director of Product Management for European WAN and Cloud Enablement Services at Tata Communications and based in London.   Claudio has over 25 years’ experience in the international telecommunications industry, spending the last 16 years bringing new data network services to market and growing them into key revenue streams for the business.   One of Claudio’s key priorities, is to address enterprises' evolving network needs for agility, efficiency, growth and transformation. Claudio believes that Tata Communications’ next-generation hybrid services, that leverage the MPLS, Internet, SD-WAN and NFV, are essential for enabling this transformation.   Claudio is also an active and certified member of MEF and a great advocate of Lifecycle Service Orchestration which brings dynamic flexibility and agility to network services.   Prior to joining Tata Communications, Claudio served in various product related roles for Level 3, Easynet, Interoute and Cable & Wireless, bringing Internet and WAN services to the international Enterprise and Wholesale market.

Professional Experience:
System as network Specialist for 10 years in Pirelli (1 year in Spain and 8 in Italy - Milan)
System and Network Specialist from 2 years in Interroll
Network Manager in Interroll since 3 years.

Gregory is since 2016 an IT network specialist within the office of the Carrefour CTO. He is currently leading the IT network team responsible for the development of new architectures and IT network products. His current challenges are the adoption of the DevOps culture and the agile/scrum methodology in the "network layer" in order to build a network Infrastructure as Code.   Prior to joining the retail industry, Gregory has been in the TelCo industry for 15 years. Through his experiences in R&D, NOC, engineering offices and his role as a principal architect, he developed an expertise in the IP/MPLS domain along with a deep knowledge of the fixed and mobile networks for both the residential and the enterprise markets.  

Within OBS/Business Unit Connectivity, Franck Morales is in charge of developing the portfolio of product & services to meet Orange Business Services customer needs. Main objectives are to maintain OBS market share and to grow the value of our business. Franck was appointed VP Marketing France for Connectivity France in 2013, and then he has positioned an aggressive strategy around Hybrid Networks with Value Added Services, and by managing the evolution towards SDN/NFV technologies. This strategy has enabled OBS to stabilize its position as market leader on the French BtoB market and bring back business growth.  Franck has recently enlarge his responsibility to address as well OBS international customer needs.   With more than 30 years within the Orange Group (Formally France Telecom) Franck has an extensive experience in driving Business Unit.   Before joining OBS, Franck dedicated 12 years to the Mobile Business within Orange France, with several high level responsibilities, such as Wireless Broadband Director for the Business Market, and VP for MVNO & Branded Resellers.   In addition, he also has a solid and widespread, business development experiences with more than 15 years of commercial responsibilities within the BtoB. Franck has spent his all career facing Business customers or managing strategic Partnerships.

Dr. Wu Chou is an IEEE Fellow and Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Gateway & Enterprise Network, Huawei Network Product Line. He is a member of IEEE Signal Processing Society, Computer Society, and Communication Society - a leading expert in the field of data networking, Cloud computing, SDN/NFV, Internet-of-Things (IoT), Big Data, AI, machine learning, signal processing, speech and natural language processing, Internet and Web services.   He graduated from Stanford University with Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering, worked at AT&T/Lucent Bell Labs and Avaya where he was a R&D director and Avaya Labs Fellow. He joined Huawei in 2011 as the head of Huawei Shannon (IT) Lab. In 2015, he became CTO of the Enterprise Network product line of Huawei.   He published 200+ journal and conference papers, holds 50+ US and international patents with many additional patent applications pending.   He is a well known figure in standard bodies and professional societies, served as an editor for multiple standards at W3C, ISO, ECMA, ETSI, etc. He was an editor of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC), IEEE TSC Special Issue on Cloud Computing, IEEE Transactions Special Issue on Human-machine Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Audio and Language Processing, and Journal of Web Services Research.   He served as a member of advisory board for multiple professional societies, including a member of the advisory board of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) Big Data Program and a member of the advisory board of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

Hector Avalos has over 25 years of experience in the computing, networking and telecommunications industries. He currently holds the position of VP EMEA Sales and Business Development at Versa Networks.  His current activities are focused on “virtual CPE”, “Software-Defined WAN” and “Software-Defined Security” solutions for Service Providers and Enterprises.   Prior to Versa, Hector worked 4 years at Ericsson as “Head of technology, architectures, solutions and strategy”, and 9 years at Juniper Networks as “Technical Director”.   Hector possesses a BSc. in Computing Science from ‘UDLA’ Mexico.

Ariful Huq is a Principal Product Manager at Viptela and has 10+ years of experience across Product Management, Sales Engineering, Customer Support and Network Engineering roles.  At Viptela Arif manages their software and virtualized solutions. Prior to Viptela Arif was a senior product manager at Juniper where he managed the industry leading MX product line.  

Mr.Wim Henderickx is Director Network Consulting Engineering & PLM – Technology in the ION Division at Nokia, based in Belgium. Mr. Henderickx provides senior level consulting on advanced IP solutions for Service provider and Enterprise customers around: Cloud Networking (SDN/NFV), Triple Play, Mobile, IOT, etc.  He has over 20 years’ experience in the communications and networking industry, and is a regular speaker at technical conferences all over the world. He is active in a number of SDO’s like IETF, BBF, openStack, etc.   Mr. Henderickx holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Data Communications and a Masters degree in Economy and is a Bellabs Fellow.

Amir Zmora is CEO & Co-founder of SwitchRTC, a Real-time, interactive WebRTC based video CDN and B2B/B2C collaboration solution. Amir has been working for more than 15 years in the telecommunications industry with strong focus on VoIP and WebRTC.   For the last several years Amir is consulting companies in the fields of WebRTC and SD-WAN. Among his previous positions, Amir was VP Products & Marketing for the Technology Business Unit of RADVISION, an Avaya company, where he led the BU turnaround from low level SDKs to client solutions and complimentary products.   Amir is the author of TheNewDialTone and co-founder of WebRTCStandards.info and WebRTCIndex.

As Research Director for the Business Network and IT Services module at Current Analysis, Joel manages a global team of highly regarded industry analysts that provide competitive insights.   Joel has been with Current Analysis for fifteen years and has 20 years of experience in the high-tech industry.   Joel and team his cover global and European providers of enterprise voice and data network services, as well as the international wholesale carrier-to-carrier services market. Additionally, Joel covers global WAN solutions, including SD-WAN and virtual network functions, and wholesale carrier IP Exchange. Joel is a well known and highly regarded speaker at major conferences, and is read and regularly quoted by telecom industry media.   Prior to Current Analysis, Joel was an independent marketing and technical writer for several companies and prior to that worked for the Japanese Board of Education in Japan. Joel received his B.Sc. in Design & Technology from Loughborough University of Technology in England in 1992.   Coverage Areas Business: Network and IT Services. Wholesale Services

Dean Bubley is the Founder of Disruptive Analysis, an independent technology industry analyst and consulting firm. An analyst with over 20 years’ experience, he primarily specialises in wireless, mobile, and telecoms fields, with further expertise in certain aspects of the broader technology industry.  His present focus is on wireless technology, especially the evolution of mobile broadband, service provider business models, mobile device architecture & software, applications ecosystems and enterprise mobility. He provides clients with advice and analytical opinion on topics such as business models validation, technology innovation and go-to-market strategies, "addressable market sizing", planning and due diligence.