Conference Agenda

Amir Zmora is CEO & Co-founder of flexiWAN, the world’s first Open Source SD-WAN & SASE. Before starting flexiWAN, Amir was CEO & Co-founder of SwitchRTC, a Real-time, interactive WebRTC based video CDN and B2B/B2C collaboration solution acquired by YouNow.  Among his previous positions, Amir was VP Products & Marketing for the Technology Business Unit of RADVISION, an Avaya company.

Sylvain Goze, Systems Engineer,

With 15 years experience in Networking and Cybersecurity, Sylvain Gozé is a System Engineer at Versa Networks. He spends his workdays helping customers and partners understand the ins and outs of SASE while supporting his team during proof-of-concept and demonstration of the Versa solutions.   Before joining Versa, Sylvain was a Professional Service Consultant at Juniper and Palo Alto Networks. In those positions, he took on the role of deploying SD-WAN and SASE products in large enterprise and telco environments shortly after their initial launch.   Sylvain has an addiction with automation, often simplifying complex tasks with just a few lines code. He absolutely loves tackling tricky technical challenges and currently hold 3 JNCIE certifications.

David Brillant,

David Brillant is managing the SASE Sales Engineering Specialist team for South EMEA, Emerging and LATAM at Palo Alto Networks. With 20+ years of experience in networking and cybersecurity, he has been focusing on the SASE market for the past 5 years across EMEA with a specific insight into how customers are adopting cloud security delivered platforms.   Prior to joining Palo Alto Networks, David served as Director of Sales Engineering South EMEA at Forcepoint.

Daniel Munteanu,

Daniel Munteanu is a passionate cybersecurity enthusiast with over 15 years of experience in the networking and cybersecurity space.   In his current role, Daniel leads a team of product managers building market leading network application and security test solutions. His current focus is on cutting edge new product introductions to address the testing and validation needs of new emerging technologies like SASE, Zero Trust, Cloud Migration and few others. Daniel also holds an CISSP certification and is engaged in various internal education and training initiatives.

Sashidhar Annaluru,

Sashi, Head of SASE Engineering at VMware, oversees VMware SASE products including SD-WAN, CWS, Secure Access, and ENI. Sashi was previously the VP of Engineering at Ivanti (known as Pulse Secure prior to acquisition), where he led the cloud transformation of Secure Access products and brought ZTNA/SASE cloud products to market. He also worked for Fortinet, Stoke, Tatara Systems, and Lucent Bells Labs, among others, building enterprise and service provider networking and security products.   Sashi has a master's degree in computer science and engineering from IIT Bombay and holds a certificate in executive business from Stanford University.

Charles Eckel,

Charles is a recognized champion of open source, standards, and interoperability. As a member of Cisco's Global Technology Standards team, Charles identifies and guides open source efforts related to key standards initiatives.  In IETF, he started IETF Hackathons, advancing the pace and relevance of Internet standards by combining the speed and collaborative spirit of open source communities with the rigor and precision of standards organizations. He also serves as IETF liaison manager to 3GPP, helping the organizations collaborate efficiently.   Within 3GPP, Charles is active in SA1 - Services and SA3 - Security. In MEF, Charles co-chair’s the Test and Certification Committee. Charles is also involved in open source projects in the Linux Foundation, a frequent speaker at conferences, and a manager of the Network devroom at FOSDEM.  His focus areas include application networking, network automation, and the intersection of networking and security, particularly where there is a need for new standards and closely associated open source projects.

Rafael Francis has over 24 years of experience in networking & telecommunications and is currently the Sr. Director of Solution PLM at Ciena where he leads a team defining next-generation solutions & strategy including 5G.   Prior to joining Ciena he was the VP of Product Management for Cyan Inc. where he was responsible for Cyan’s Z-Series packet-optical portfolio and Blue Planet SDN software including its initial launch. Prior to joining Cyan, he also held product management leadership positions at ECI Telecom, Laurel Networks, and FORE Systems. His knowledge and contributions in next-generation networking and its business applications have also been demonstrated through various conference speaking engagements and articles.   Rafael has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.

As Head of Virtualization Product Management, Marc is responsible for the OneAccess branded virtualization portfolio, including virtual network functions (VNF) product management and strategic partnerships. He also leads the development of the go-to-market model and the set-up of the Ekinops partners ecosystem. As a virtualization expert, Marc is the Ekinops spokesperson for the company’s software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) activities.   Marc has over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry. Prior to joining Ekinops, he was Head of SDN/NFV Solution Management for Kapsch CarrierCom and has also held several PLM positions within Nortel.   Marc holds a degree in Fundamental Physics from the Université Denis Diderot in Paris. He also completed a Masters at the Ecole de Management Lyon in France and a Masters in the Management of New Technologies.

As part of the Solution Engineering group is Rene Neumann working closely with customers and helps delivering the right solutions to ZPE customers.
  His IT & data center expertise spans over 20 years, covering a broad range of technologies from Data Center and Infrastructure Management implementations and solutions to Network Management and Automation technologies. Using ZPE’s powerful platform of consolidated devices and intuitive software, Rene continues to improve network architecture for companies across the globe.

Khalil SLAOUI spent several years working for large service providers and system integrators in France as a Pre-sales engineer then into a Sales Manager role before moving to Extreme Networks taking the responsibility of the channel development for SD-WAN in the Southern Europe.  He has been afterwards appointed as the Head of SaaS Sales and Market Strategy in France leading Extreme’s SaaS business in the region.

Nicolas has 30 years experience in the network (wired and wireless) and (Cyber)security technologies, lead the business development of our network and security convergence story (Secure SD-WAN and SASE) with our powerful consolidated platform « Security Fabric » (CSMA) across Southern Europe.

Yann Guernion is a Solution Specialist for NetOps at Broadcom. He brings 25 years of experience in designing and implementing solutions that help companies optimize and automate IT operations performance.

Owen O’Donnell is a seasoned professional in mobile communications responsible for marketing, strategy and new product introductions in the VIAVI Wireless Business Unit.   VIAVI is a test and measurement company specializing in lab test of telecom and NGFW vendor equipment as well as CSP solutions ranging from 5G, O-RAN, cybersecurity and SASE.  Prior to joining VIAVI Owen worked in Ericsson, Spidercloud and Huawei.

Ahmed Bouaziz, Technical Director and Infrastructure Consultant, brings over 15 years of experience in the field of information technology. Since 2019, he has been making significant contributions at Numeryx, where he excels in project management and the design of complex architectures.   His international expertise, combined with an in-depth understanding of production environments, positions him as a key technical leader. Ahmed is distinguished by his ability to effectively solve technical challenges, making him a valuable asset for any large-scale IT infrastructure project.

Amir Zmora is CEO & Co-founder of flexiWAN, the world’s first Open Source SD-WAN & SASE. Before starting flexiWAN, Amir was CEO & Co-founder of SwitchRTC, a Real-time, interactive WebRTC based video CDN and B2B/B2C collaboration solution acquired by YouNow.  Among his previous positions, Amir was VP Products & Marketing for the Technology Business Unit of RADVISION, an Avaya company.

Ralph is a multidisciplinary technology subject matter expert, thought leader, and trusted advisor who helps clients achieve their business objectives through innovative solutions. At Ciena, Ralph is currently defining and architecting multicloud networking to simplify and facilitate the secure interconnection between enterprise workloads running in public clouds and private data centers.   Ralph's expertise spans the assessment, definition, architecture, design, integration, operations, marketing, and sales of multi-vendor solutions and managed services using SD-WAN, SASE, SSE, Zero Trust, and Multicloud Networking technologies. In 2017, Ralph launched SD-WANaaS, one of the first co-managed SD-WAN service offerings available via a 100% OpEx consumption model. Ralph is also a founding member of MEF Forum where he developed the industry’s first SD-WAN service standard and Zero Trust Framework for Service Providers to continuously protect users, devices, and applications and mitigate threats from them.  In 2014, Ralph was awarded the Distinguished Fellow title at MEF Forum for his outstanding, sustained leadership and contributions to shape the telecom industry. In 2016, he was awarded the MEF Excellence Award for Best Consulting Practice for SDN and NFV solutions. In 2018, Ralph was named one of the top 25 movers & shakers in the telecom industry by Fierce Telecom Magazine and in 2022, he was awarded the MEF Outstanding Contributor Award for his leadership and contributions to Zero Trust, Edge IaaS, SASE, and IP security services standards. Ralph also co-authored 4 books, published dozens of white papers, and regularly lectures on leading-edge technology topics at industry events.

Nicolas Marcoux has 15+ years of experience in networking and cybersecurity. Today at Palo Alto Networks, he is a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) Architect aiming at developing managed services with key partners.   He is today focusing on Cloud-Delivered Security Platforms (Prisma SASE, Prisma Cloud and Cortex XDR).

Antonio leads Cavell’s engineering team and has years of experience designing and migrating large enterprises to new technology. In the past 7 years this has focused on large SD-WAN transformation projects.  Prior to his recent SD-WAN experience, Antonio had a proven track record in the Financial Services vertical, selling and delivering global network transformation for very large organisations: Royal Bank of Scotland, ABN AMRO and ING bank, and 4 years in the Oil&Gas industry, advising on IT strategy, adoption and implementation of enterprise architecture practices, developing cloud services strategies, architectures and business cases.

Shu Yee Hoo joined CBC Tech in 2020 and serves as Vice President for Products and Solutions, overseeing the development and commercialization of new services in the area of software-defined networking, cloud and security.   With more than 25+ years of experience in the ICT/Telco sector, Shu Yee has been involved in multiple leadership roles in diverse areas including, product development, management and marketing. During her stint at Singtel, Shu Yee led the product management function and drove the growth of its market-leading global connectivity solutions, including International leased lines, MPLS and SDWAN solutions for enterprises.  An intuitive strategist, Shu Yee enjoys developing new service concepts and commercializing new technologies and innovative ICT services. She is passionate about creative go-to-market campaigns that spur commercial agility ―making pricing, product design, sales, and cost management decisions with speed and flexibility.   Shu Yee holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore (1st class honors) and a Master in Business Administration from Manchester Business School (Distinction). She enjoys nature, good food and travel.

Graham is part of Cradlepoint's global Center of Excellence team where he is responsible for educating and training around security solutions and capabilities within the Ericsson/Cradlepoint portfolio.  He also consults with customers on the implementation of solutions such as Private Cellular Networks, ZTNA, CASB and Cellular-based networking solutions.

Ritesh Mukherjee is an accomplished leader focusing on global communications and technology. Ritesh leads enterprise networking as Senior Vice President and General Manager at Inseego.   He is responsible for transforming networks and services with 5G, SDN/NFV, SASE, SD-WAN, cloud, and IoT technologies.   Before joining Inseego, Ritesh was Vice President at Reliance Jio, managing a global portfolio of market-leading innovative enterprise solutions. He was Vice President, Product Management at 128 Technology (acquired by Juniper Networks), leading SD-WAN and cloud development, and Manager, Product Management at Cisco leading the software operating systems group. Ritesh has engineered some of the largest deployments of enterprise networks for leading businesses globally. He is a sought-after speaker and thought leader.  Ritesh holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Concordia University, Montreal.