SReXperts speakers

Matt Muras

Senior Telecom Architect

Lower Colorado River Authority of Texas (LCRA)

Matt Muras is a Senior Telecom Systems Architect at the Lower Colorado River Authority of Texas (LCRA), in Austin, Texas. Most recently he has worked with Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent products while working for LCRA. With over 18 years of IT career experience, he has planned, designed, implemented, and operated networks and systems with Cisco devices and VMware vSphere systems in the various stops in his career. With 10 years of GRE / IPSec tunnel experience, he looks for different ways to apply tunnels for WAN solutions. Matt is a DevOps advocate. He is focuses on improving deployment throughout by exposing and exploiting system constraints. Matt is also passionate about documenting and automating processes and training folks how to use DevOps.

Ilker Alici

Regional Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Ilker is Regional Product Line Manager focused on SROS Model-Driven Management & SR-Linux solutions and products within Nokia's Network Infrastructure Division based in Sunnyvale, CA.  ilker has 15 years of experience in the networking industry within the areas of network design, pre-sales, business development and product line management.  He has gained extensive international experiences with a deep understanding diverse cultural and business practices by participating projects and holding different roles within Nokia over 20 Countries, 5 Continents. Ilker has a Master of Business Administration, Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering degrees. 
 

Steve Aubrey

Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Stephen has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 29 years within the area of Network & Service Management and Mobile Data Analytics. 

Currently global Product Manager for the Network Services Platform (NSP) focused on configuration management across network and services. Stephen holds a honors bachelors degree in computer engineering from Cardiff University.

Mustapha Aissaoui

Product Line Manager, Service Router Product Group, IP/Optical Networks

NOKIA

Mustapha Aissaoui is a Product Manager in the Service Router Product Group of the IP/Optical Networks at Nokia. He holds an Electrical Engineering Diploma from Polytechnic School of Algiers and a MASc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ottawa. Mustapha Aissaoui has been in the Product Management role since 2004 and is responsible for the MPLS and Segment Routing features in the SR-OS based routers. He is also the lead PLM for the SR-OS based PCEP and other SDN features of the NSP. Mustapha Aissaoui is an active participant of the IETF MPLS, PCE, and SPRING working groups. He is a co-author and a major contributor to many drafts in these working groups.
 

Andres Belloni

Senior Director PLM Network Automation

NOKIA

Andres Belloni leads IP Management and Platform Product Management for Nokia NSP. In this role Andres is responsible for defining and managing the lifecycle of the NSP software foundation and applications that allow service providers to automate the operation of their IP & Optical networks. Mr. Belloni has an extensive career in telecommunications specializing in network and service management for TDM, ATM, IP and Optical networks. He has been responsible for product design, product strategy and product line management of Element, Network and Service Management Systems in Newbridge Networks, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia. Mr. Belloni holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University Of Buenos Aires, Argentina and an Executive MBA from Queens University in Canada.

Marco Belotti

Optical Certification Program - Trainer

NOKIA

Marco Belotti is a Training and Certification Professional and he deals with the “Optical Networks Certification” Program. Prior to joining the Learning Services, he played as Project Manager and TEC engineer, with focus on Optical products (1830 PSS, 1350 OMS, 1850 TSS, etc.). He handled introduction, management and configuration of optic/electric transmission systems in major customers’ networks, becoming a world traveler by joining more than 60 projects in about 25 countries worldwide during his 10-year experience in Nokia.

Hooman Bidgoli

Senior Product Line Manager – IP Routing  

Nokia

Hooman has 22 years of experience in IP/MPLS protocols and network solutions. He started with Newbridge Networks in LAN emulation solutions (VIVID products) and moved to 7670 MPLS solutions. He was one of the first software designers on 7705 SAR and was responsible for IP/MPLS and L2/L3 services on SAR. As PLM, he is responsibility ranges from Anyhaul including Fronthaul and 5G solutions to Multicast solutions and Security on SR-OS products.

Denis Bouffard

Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Denis Bouffard, Product Manager in Network Automation (IP & Optical BU), is lead in supporting the Enterprise market and also responsible for Analytics and the NSP appliance and NSP Server products. Prior to his role at Nokia, Denis spent 13 years in PLM roles at various startups (AcceLight, Inkra and Radisys), and 14 years at Nortel in its switching, optical transport and EMS/NMS/OSS divisions. During this time, Denis held various roles in R&D, product management, and project leadership where his primary focus was management applications in support of the broader Nortel product portfolio. Previous and subsequent to Nortel Denis held various roles covering diverse products including geographic information systems, optical core switching and virtualized security and load balancing. Denis holds a Bachelor degree of Mathematics/Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, and a Master of Business Administration Diploma from the University of Ottawa.

Shane Branton

Learning Services Subject Matter Expert

NOKIA

Shane is a Training and Certification Professional with over 22 years in the telecommunications industry. He works with leaders across Nokia to develop and deliver Network Services Platform (NSP) learning products to a global customer audience. Prior to joining Learning Services, Shane held roles as a support specialist in the IP Technical Expertise Center (TEC) and as a Network Management Services (NMS) design specialist in the Network Design Engineering team. Shane has travelled to customers in over 20 countries, performing networking tasks such as NMS installations and upgrades, regression and performance testing, troubleshooting, network operations audits and instructional design/delivery.

Flavio Caracas

Senior Director – IP and Optical Networking Division

NOKIA

Flavio Caracas leads a team responsible for IP/MPLS, Optics and SDN/NFV Consulting Engineering and Business Development support for Vertical markets in North America within the ION Division. Previously he was the head of Product Line Management of the 7705 SAR IP/MPLS Routing Portfolio and the Multiservice WAN Switches product families, with responsibilities for product strategy, roadmap definition, future development, and portfolio life cycle.  Prior to Nokia, Flavio joined Alcatel-Lucent in 2000 through the acquisition of Newbridge Networks, having held senior management positions in Business Management, Systems Engineering, Marketing and Sales.  Flavio has a very broad experience in Information and Communications technologies encompassing IP/MPLS networking, satellite communications, and radio transmission. Flavio Caracas holds a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering.

Steve Cotter

Prinicipal Consulting Engineer

NOKIA

Steve is Principal Consulting Engineer in the Deepfield business line within the IP Networks Division at Nokia. He has over 25 years of experience in the telecommunication industry.

James Cumming

Senior Product Line Manager, SROS Routing, Platform and Programmability

NOKIA

James Cumming is the Product Line Manager for the Nokia SR OS router software with a specific focus on Network Programmability (NETCONF/YANG/GRPC/MD-CLI) within Nokia’s IP and Optical Networks Division.  He has an extensive background in the Internet Service Provider industry beginning in 1997.  He has worked as the lead Network Architect in several global service providers leading the efforts in network integration, product and service development as well as end-to-end network architecture across all technologies.  He has a particular passion for the virtualization and programmability areas as his background combines networking, systems, programming and operations which all collide in this exciting period for the industry.  He holds a B.Sc. Hons. degree in Computer Science from the University of Kent.  James is based in London, England.

Alb Dibirdi

Director, Product Management – IP Routing

NOKIA

Alp leads software product management on 7250 Interconnect Router and 7705 Service Aggregation Router product families. Alp has over 21 years of experience in telecom industry and joined Alcatel in 1998. His previous roles include NW Architect and Product Line Product Manager on ATM Products. In addition currently focuses on 5G transport NWs and traffic management. He is recognized as Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (DMTS) in 2010 for his sustained outstanding technical contribution to Alcatel-Lucent by Bell Labs. He is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Roman Dodin

Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Roman is a Product Line Manager at Nokia, where he steers the development of various programmable interfaces featured on Nokia's data center switching gear. Before joining the product management team, Roman has been helping major service providers to embrace model-driven network automation in his consultant engineering role. During his seven years tenure at Nokia, he spanned multiple technology domains, gaining experience in networking, virtualization, network testing, and network automation. Roman heavily gravitates towards software engineering and open source communities. He is a maintainer of a few popular open source projects as well as an avid contributor to various community-renowned ones.

Tim Drake

Principle Consultant 

NOKIA

Tim Drake is a Principle Consultant within the IP and Optical Networking division with special focus on the Partner and Alliance segments. Prior to joining Nokia he has held multiple technical and business development positions.

Steve Dyck

Principal Consulting Engineer

NOKIA

Steve Dyck is a Principal Consulting Engineer specializing in WAN and Data Center networking including IP/MPLS, WDM and automation. Steve’s focus is on providing innovative networking solutions for enterprise markets including research and education, state and local government, community broadband, health care, financial services and wireline/wireless service providers serving these market segments. Steve has over 25 years experience in telecom and IT networking with roles ranging from R&D, Systems Engineering, Product Management, Business Development, Solutions Architect and Consulting Engineer. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (Computer Engineering) degree with a minor in Business Management from the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Pierre El-Haddad

Product Manager

NOKIA

Pierre El-Haddad is a senior product line manager for IP routing hardware. He currently manages several product portfolios aimed at mobile anyhaul, datacenters, wholesale transport, TEPS, and more. Pierre has 23 years of experience in product development, network architecture and product management for IP/Ethernet and legacy technologies. He holds a bachelors degree in electrical engineering and a masters in business administration. He is based in Ottawa, Canada.

Footer

Product Line Manager/Consulting Engineer

NOKIA

Footer has many more years experience in networking than he cares to divulge. To provide some context, he considered 4Mbps Token Ring connected SNA controller to Front End Processors some darn impressive technology. That was of course until he discovered the dipswitch that allowed for 16Mbps Token Ring, on the same card. What speed! What a technology! Everyone could move on, networking was now complete. What else was left. As time progressed and networking evolved, ventures into Ethernet switching, IP Routing protocols, and MPLS and the consumption of large steaks became the focus. The years flew by and about TEN years ago, yes TEN, IP & Ethernet OAM fault and performance management became the cool kid on the block. Footer lept at the opportunity to get involved in something so cool. Looking back to the Token Ring days, it was apparent he had always had an attraction to OAM. It was always fun to see how fast one could find a beaconing Token Ring NIC connected to a non-intelligent MAU using a stethoscope. OAM certainly has progress beyond the stethoscope days. It remains the wickedly cool, complicated and multifaceted technology that everyone wants to be involved with. Footer is currently a Senior PING Product Manager with responsibility for IP & Ethernet OAM strategy and architecture. He regularly attends the IETF quarterly meetings and participates in the IPPM working group, where excitement shines through on so many faces.   His efforts in the working group include, “Why you need PING and why PING doesn’t need you.”  As well as the most recent consideration, “PING PING PING PING, for the love of PING.”  He joined Riverstone Networks in 1999, and through acquisition, merger, and acquisition, has 19 years as part of Nokia. Footer is based in Toronto, Canada and we believe he still has a Token Ring network in his house.

Giancarlo Garcia

NOKIA

Principal Consulting Engineer

Principal Consulting Engineer with over 14 years of experience in IP Networks holding different positions from Network Integration to Business Development helping Communication Service Providers across the Americas region. Currently supporting Cable, Wireline and WISP Service Providers in the US within Nokia IP Networks business unit and also acting as the regional Product Line Manager for the 7250 IXR covering the North American market.

Holds a Telecommunications Engineering degree and has been with Nokia since 2009. Currently based in South Florida.

Wim Henderickx

Head of Technology & Architecture

NOKIA

Wim Henderickx is Head of Technology & Architecture in the Network Infrastructure Group, based in Belgium. Wim provides senior level consulting on advanced IP solutions such as Cloud Networking (SDN/NFV), Triple Play, network routing, mobile and the enterprise to service providers throughout EMEA. He is also actively engaged in assessing and defining future technologies that will help shape communications networks and services of tomorrow. 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 IETF, BBF and Openstack.  Wim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Data Communications and a Masters degree in Economy and is a Bellabs Fellow.

Danny Hernandez

Principal Consulting Engineer

NOKIA

Principal Consulting Engineer with over 16 years of experience in IP MPLS Networks. Holding different positions across his career, from operations in the field to consulting for service providers in different technologies. Holds a Telecommunications Engineering degree and has been with Nokia since 2015. Currently based in South Florida.

Rudy Hoebeke

Vice President, Product Management – Service Routers

NOKIA

Rudy Hoebeke is Vice President of Product Management for Nokia’s IP Service Routing  portfolio. He has over 15 years of experience in the communications and networking industry, in the areas of engineering, network design, technology & product strategy and product management. Formerly, Rudy was Vice President of Product Management for IP Service Routing and Mobile Packet Core in Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Division. He holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Brussels (VUB) and a Masters in Business Administration from the Vlerick Leuven-Gent Business School.

Jeff Jakab

Director, Product Management, IP Routing

NOKIA

A 22 year employee of Nokia, Jeff is the Hardware PLM director within the IP business unit. Jeff has extensive experience across a number of roles within Nokia ranging from engineering, support, marketing and PLM. Jeff has a focus on strategic responsibilities in the product portfolio as well as ownership of hardware technical marketing. He holds a B.Sc in electrical engineering from the University of Calgary, Canada and an MBA from the University of Ottawa, Canada.

Sabyasachi Kar

NPI & Trails IP Engineer

NOKIA

Sabyasachi Kar is NPI & Trail IP Engineer focused on SRL and SROS Products within Nokia's Network Infrastructure Division based in Ottawa, CA. Sabyasachi has 13+ years of experience in the network industry within the area of Network Design, Pre-Sales, and Network Support. Prior he is a Speaker for Cisco Live (Next Generation Multicast) and has gained extensive international experience in various forums. Sabyasachi has Masters in Networks & Management, Cisco Regional Academy. Holding expert certificates: Nokia SRA, 3xCCIE (SP| DC | ENT), JNCIE SP.

Vach Kompella

Vice President and General Manager, IP Networks Division

NOKIA

Vach is VP and GM of the IP Networks Division (IPN) in the Network  Infrastructure Business Group at Nokia. IPN consists of 6 business units:  Service Router, Network Automation, Data Center, Nuage Networks, Packet Core and Deepfield. He started with Timetra Networks in 2001, leading the development of MPLS and related technologies, and arrived at Nokia through a series of M&A activity. In 2008, he started the Mobile Gateways program in the IP Division, and was Vice President of Engineering for the Mobile Packet Core. Vach has been a speaker at many conferences, and a regular contributor to standards in the IETF. He was co-chair of the l2vpn Working Group at the IETF for five years.

Vach was awarded a Bell Labs Fellowship in 2009 for his contributions to MPLS and VPLS. Prior to Nokia, Vach held positions at IBM, working in network security and IP protocols. Vach holds a PhD in CS from the University of California, San Diego, and obtained his BTech in CS from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Ken Kutzler

Vice President and General Manager of Hardware Routing, IP/Optical Networks Business Group

NOKIA

Ken joined Alcatel-Lucent in 2003 through the acquisition of privately held TiMetra Networks, where he was co-founder. TiMetra was a venture-backed Silicon Valley start-up focused on service routers for IP/MPLS networks. Since the acquisition, Ken and his team have steadily grown Nokia’s IP strategy and hardware portfolio. The business has gained market share consistently for a decade, attaining the #2 position in service provider IP/MPLS routing and selling into 700+ customers including the world’s top 60 service providers. Ken is a recognized industry leader who enjoys being at the forefront of IP network evolution and portfolio development. He holds a Master’s Degree of Science in Telecommunications from the University of Colorado.

Craig Labovitz

Deepfield CTO

NOKIA

Craig Labovitz is Nokia CTO for the Deepfield business line.  Previously, Labovitz was Co-Founder and CEO of Deepfield. Labovitz has developed the core technology, key patents, architecture and commercial strategy behind more than $1 billion in sales of large enterprise and telecom security products. His technology is deployed in more than 700 Internet Service Providers, cable operators, content providers, and mission-critical networks around the globe.  Dr. Labovitz is an expert on Internet infrastructure and cloud evolution. In the 1990s, his seminal Internet research developed the foundation for Arbor Networks technology and served as a catalyst for significant changes in commercial Internet routing software implementations throughout the world. His work was recently recognized with the prestigious ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award in 2008.  In addition to his extensive commercial product and research background, Dr. Labovitz has over a decade of operational network engineering experience, including NSFNet backbone engineering, Sprint's first Internet email infrastructure, design of the Department of Defense research network, and the first commercial aviation Internet service. Dr. Labovitz is an active participant in the global network engineering community, including service on the program committee and as the Chair of North American Network Operators Group (NANOG).  Labovitz is the author of more than a dozen peer-reviewed networking research papers, journal articles and patents. His is a frequent guest on national television and radio news programs and his research is widely cited in national media articles and academic publications. Dr. Labovitz received his PhD and MSE from the University of Michigan.

Reda Laichi

Consulting Engineer and Regional Product Manager

NOKIA

Reda Laichi is a key member of the IP Routing and Transport Consulting Engineering team who is focusing on Nokia’s Network and Service Management product line.  Reda also has a role as a regional Product Line Manager responsible for incorporating customer requirements into feature development of the Network and Service Management portfolio.  Reda has over18 years experience in Alcatel-Lucent and has contributed to development of Alcatel-Lucent’s Network and Service Management products as well as numerous IP/MPLS network deployments and integrations for service providers and large enterprises customers worldwide.

Peter Landon

Senior Product Line Manager  

Nokia

Peter Landon is a Director of Product Line Management for the Nokia Network Services Platform, with a focus on multi-layer SDN solutions. Peter has over 25 years of experience in ASIC/system design and Product Management including senior roles at Juniper Networks, COMDEV/NASA, Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs, and while at BTI leading the architecture and design of the BTI/Juniper 7800 Series Intelligent Cloud Connect platform. Peter earned his BSc in Engineering from Queen’s University with post graduate work at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.

Karyn Lennon

Senior Director, IP/Optical Networks Learning Services

NOKIA

Karyn Lennon leads the Learning Services function for Nokia’s IP/Optical Networks Business Group.  In her role, Karyn is responsible for setting the strategic direction and development of Nokia’s Optical educational services which includes the Nokia Optical Networks Certification Program.  In addition to the Optical program, Karyn directs both Nokia’s flagship IP/MPLS certification program, the Service Routing Certification (SRC) Program which has over 14,000 individuals participating globally and the Nuage Networks Virtuoso Certification Program (NN-VCP). Prior to her role in Learning Services, Karyn held various PLM and Marketing positions at Newbridge Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. Karyn received her Bachelor of Commerce from  McGill University and holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Ottawa.

Bo Li

Product Line Manager

Nokia

A senior IP/LTE NPI engineer with more than 10 years working in Nokia IP product division. Nokia SRA certification since 2008.

Dimitri Litvine

Principal Consultant

NOKIA

Dmitri Litvine is a Principal Consultant for the IPRT, providing consulting support for solutions and architectures based on classic 7750/7705/7210 products as well as SDN solutions such as Nuage VSP and VNS. Dmitri has almost 18 years of experience in various facets of data networking including network design engineering, network transformations, solutions and architecture consulting in different technology areas such as IP/MPLS, Carrier Ethernet, Carrier Broadband, EPC/MPC, SP WiFi, SDN/NFV etc. The last 5 years Dmitri is focusing on architecture consulting helping customers to leverage and benefit innovative solutions. Dmitri holds active CCIE, NRS-I and VCP5-DCV certifications, he is based in Calgary, Canada.

Mike Mangino

Sales Enablement NAM RBC Leader

NOKIA

Mike Mangino is the Sales Enablement Leader for the NAM RBC. Mike has over 25 years of experience in networking. He started at Nokia as a consulting engineer with Alcatel-Lucent in 2008 supporting a wide range of customers in adopting technology to solve their business problems. Today his focus is on technology education for both our customers and Nokia internal towards the goal of enabling sales.

Jerod Munson

Senior Solution Architect  

Nokia  

Jerod Munson is a Senior Solution Architect and a member of an advanced hardware architecture team for the IP/Optical North American Regional Business Center, a role he has held since 2019 when he joined NOKIA. In this role he is responsible for working with customers to better define ways to integrate IP/Optical technologies to improve business outcomes. His team provides detailed network modeling expertise to demonstrate how tighter integration, both hardware and software, can simplify networks from both a CAPEX and OPEX perspective. Before joining NOKIA Jerod spent 16 years at Coriant (formerly Tellabs) and 3 years at Cisco in various technical sales roles supporting North American customers.

Sasa Nijemcevic

Vice President and General Manager, Network Automation Business Unit

NOKIA

Sasa Nijemcevic is Vice President and General Manager of the Network Automation Business Unit at Nokia. He leads the company’s Carrier SDN portfolio and Network and Service Automation efforts for the ION BG.  Sasa’s passion is building great software products. He started early writing computer games as a kid and continued into adulthood building network management and control applications. Whether it’s AI/ML or network automation, Sasa cares about the application of new technologies in solving real problems in the industry.

Alfred Nothaft

Senior Director, SR Product Management 

NOKIA

Alfred is the Senior Director of Product Management for the Service Router product group, focusing on IP routing, MPLS and Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN services.  Alfred has been involved the with 7x50 product lines since 2000, when he originally joined TiMetra Networks.  Prior to that, Alfred was the Director of Network Architecture at BroadbandNow! and before that he held various management and engineering positions at Bay Networks and NASA.

Dennis Porteous

Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Dennis is a Senior Hardware Product Line Manager for the 7750 SR & Packet Core platforms, with over 24 years of experience in networking and data communications.   Dennis has been involved with the 7x50 product lines since 2003, joined the hardware PLM team in 2008.  Based in Ottawa Canada.

Jorge Rabadan

Senior Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Jorge Rabadan is a product line manager responsible for the development of EVPN and Data Center Gateway technologies in Nokia’s SROS. Jorge has more than 20 years in the telecom industry (working for different networking vendors), being part of Nokia’s IP Division for more than 12 years and is an active member in the IETF community, contributing and authoring more than 30 drafts and RFCs. When he is not working he enjoys traveling, reading a good book or working out.

Karim Radhouani

Technology and Architecture Consulting Engineer

Nokia

Karim Radhouani is a Technology and Architecture Consulting Engineer at Nokia, based in California. Karim focuses on assessing future technologies that will help shape the networking platforms of tomorrow. He has 14+ years of technical experience with Nokia spanning multiple regions, covering Support, NPI, Consulting and Product management in various networking domains. He has a passion for network emulation, automation and open interfaces. He is also the maintainer of a few open source projects.

Mau Rojas

Principal Consulting Engineer for Network Automation

Nokia

Mau is being working in the IT Industry for more than two decades, most of this time, leading the introduction of new technologies for Data Centers and Cloud in new markets. Originally from Santiago of Chile, he's currently working as Principal Consulting Engineer for Network Automation and rPLM in Nokia, supporting US and Canada. He's continuously testing the limits of use cases for Kubernetes and network automation tools in the Data Center and the Edge. Mau's also passionate with art (Instagram: p1nrojas), using what is left of his creativity at work into the canvas or digital illustrations. Fluent in Portuguese and native in Spanish.

Harmeet Sahni

Head of Product Management

NOKIA

Harmeet Sahni leads the Product Management team at Nuage Networks from Nokia. His team defines the product roadmap and strategy for the Nuage products for the SD-WAN and Public Cloud markets. ­ Harmeet brings over 20 years of experience leading product management, product strategy and development of SDN, Application Delivery and Security software products for Enterprise and Service Provider customers. Prior to Nuage Networks, he was Director of Product Management at Riverbed Technology in the Application Delivery Business Unit focused on Application Delivery and Security for cloud applications. Before joining Riverbed, he was a senior product manager at Juniper Networks, where he led SDN and NFV initiatives, working with Tier 1 service providers. Prior to that he held roles in engineering management and software development, developing high-performance networking infrastructure. Harmeet has an MBA from University of California, Los Angeles and a Masters in Computer Engineering from Clemson University.

Saurabh Sandhir

Vice President, Product Management, Nuage Networks

NOKIA

Saurabh Sandhir leads the Product Management team at Nuage Networks. Saurabh brings over 16 years of experience leading cross-functional engineering, product management and marketing teams focused on networking software products. Most recently, Saurabh was Head of Technology Strategy, CTO office at Ericsson. Prior to his role at Ericsson, Saurabh held a variety of leadership roles during his 13 year tenure at Juniper Networks. He was the head of the NFV platform product line for both engineering and product management functions. Saurabh also headed the Network Programmability (Junos SDK) product line at Juniper and the development of the industry’s first network API toolkit for developers. This group was also instrumental in defining the marketing blueprint for the introduction of software products in a thus so far hardware centric industry. Saurabh played key roles in building Juniper’s SDN partner and channel programs and defining the SDN architecture/strategy leading to the acquisition of Contrail Systems. Saurabh has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, a Masters in Computer Science from Purdue University and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley.

Adam Simpson

Senior Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Adam is a senior product line manager with Nokia. He is responsible for the IP routing & service features in the SR OS operating system software. He is the lead PLM for BGP routing and the route policy infrastructure. He owns the strategy for these areas and works closely with software and test engineers on architecture and design. He has been in this PLM role since 2009. Before that he held PLM and network engineering roles at Nortel. Adam is based in Ottawa, Canada but the scope of his work with engineering teams and customers is global. He has been a routine speaker at SReXperts events since 2010.

Nick Slabakov

Sr. Director, Regional Product Line Management  

Nokia

Nick leads the Regional PLM organization in North America, whose focus is to understand customer’s requirements, identify common trends, and ensure they are prioritized for development and delivery. He brings over 25 years of experience in the networking industry, supporting customers from various verticals – Service Providers. Web-Scale, Enterprise. When he joined Nokia 4 years ago, he brought along the experience of having worked both on the operator and the vendors side, as well as the perspective of wide industry involvement, with contributions to standards development in the IETF, and regular participation in various industry forums and conferences. Nick’s technical interests are diverse, but his last few years have been focused on Segment Routing. Segment Routing, along with its adjacent technologies, has been re-imagining most areas of networking – transport, control and data-plane separation, programmability, traffic engineering, tunneling, source -routing (to name just a few) - and that is just fascinating! Nick’s passions outside of work revolve around flying (and teaching people how to fly) aerobatics. He has been thinking of ways to apply Segment Routing to that. Still work in progress.

Moataz Soliman

Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Product Line Manager on the Network Service Platform (NSP) at Nokia in Ottawa. In my current role, I’m responsible for NSP APIs and integration interfaces. I’m also managing NSP Connected Partner Program for certification and interoperability between NSP and the various partner OSS applications.

Before joining the PLM team, I led product development of NSP Analytics, which is a big data and reporting solution, from initial concept to release.  I hold a Bachelor degree in Software Engineering from Carleton University and a Masters of Engineering Management degree from University of Ottawa.

Piotr Stpiczynski

Senior Product Line Manager, Professional Services

NOKIA

Piotr Stpiczynski is a Senior Product Line Manager responsible for IP Transformation in ION business group. In his 15 plus years of experience in network transformation and software development he helped many companies to achieve their business objectives when executed transformation programs. Extensively experienced in product, programs and delivery teams management as well in business development and consulting.
 

Yves Thibeault

Senior Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Yves Thibeault is a Senior Product Line Manager on the Network Services Platform (NSP) of Nokia in Ottawa and is specifically responsible for Network and Service Assurance applications. Before joining Nokia & Alcatel-Lucent, Yves was a senior R&D manager at Nakina Systems for 8 years responsible for a multi-vendor network management system and various OSS applications. Yves has over 28 years of multi-disciplinary telecommunication experience in Software Research and Development and Product Management in various network domains including voice switching, ATM, Frame Relay, Optical/SONET/SDH transport and carrier Ethernet at Nortel Networks, AcceLight Networks, JDS Uniphase, Nakina Systems and now Alcatel-Lucent.

Mike Thompson

Global Network Automation Practice Leader

NOKIA

Mike Thompson leads Nokia’s global network automation practice focusing on Nokia’s Network Services Platform (NSP) and SDN to help service providers and large enterprise customers improve operational efficiency, productivity, lower MTTR, reduce churn, and accelerate revenue streams. Prior to Nokia, Mike was a leader at Charter Communications in Operations and Engineering. He has held leadership positions at Nokia, Charter, Cisco, BearingPoint, and Verizon. Mike has extensive experience in large scale software, network automation, routing, and optical. Mike has held leadership roles in Engineering, Software Development, Operations, Architecture, Sales, Consulting, and Product Management teams and as a Business Unit General Manager. He has a Master of Science in Information Management and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology.
 

James Tindall

SVP Network Infrastructure IP and Optical Americas

Nokia

Jim holds the position of Senior Vice President in the Network Infrastructure Division and is responsible for the IP and Optical business for the Americas. In this capacity he leads a diverse team, including consulting engineering and technical presales support, delivery and logistics, program management, and customer and resident engineering functions. Jim’s interest in technology and communications began at an early age with an interest in Amateur Radio, and he became a licensed operator at 11 years of age. After studying physics at SUNY Oswego for several years, he enlisted in the US Navy as an Electronics Warfare specialist and was on active duty for 6 years from 1982 to 1988. His first job out of the military was at Proteon, an early pioneer in Internet Routing, starting as a bench technician in manufacturing and leaving as the global director of systems engineering. From there he worked in a series of successful startups, including IPOs with Cascade Communications and Redback Networks, in a variety of customer facing technical roles, leaving Redback as Vice President of Product Management. He joined Alcatel in 2005 in the newly formed IP division from the acquisition of Timetra and found a home away from the startup world. Jim still maintains his passion for technology and building world class networks, and the shared sense of accomplishment that comes for successful deployments.

Rohit Tumkur Pranesha

Product Manager, NSP Platform

NOKIA

Rohit Tumkur Pranesha is a technology enthusiast with 10 years+ of experience working on Network Assurance, IP/MPLS/EPC & Cloud Technologies in various capacities. Rohit is currently exploring the possibility of applying machine learning to Network Assurance & Management. He holds a MS in Software Systems.

Bharath Udayshankar

Hardware Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Bharath Udayshankar is a hardware product line manager for Nokia’s IXR 7220 portfolio. Bharath has 14+ years of experience in network automation and design, solutions engineering and product development for IP/Ethernet and wireless technologies. He has previously held engineering and management roles in several companies focusing on product and service offerings for the enterprise, hospitality and education verticals. He holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University at Buffalo, NY and Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Anna University, India. He is based in Sunnyvale, CA.

Gunter Van De Velde

Networking Technologist

NOKIA

Gunter Van De Velde is a networking technologist with more than 20 years of experience with the implementation, architecture and operation of technologies involving routing, IPv6 and SDN driven network services.  He has been founding Chairman of the Belgian IPv6 Task-Force since 2010, Secretary of the IETF Operational Directorate since 2013, and Chair at the IETF for the OPSEC (Operational Security) working group since 2011. Most recently, in he became Chair for the LSVR (Link State Vector Routing) working group to focus around Hyperscale Datacenter routing.   Gunter holds a Master’s degree from the University of Antwerp, is a Cisco Certified Internet Expert, and has written seven RFCs and holds several patents. He is a Product Line Manager for Nokia’s IP & SDN technologies, responsible for IGPs (OSPF & ISIS) and for routing extensions introducing traffic steering, Segment Routing and routing analytics.

Hans Vanderstraeten

Virtual Networks Orchestration team lead

NOKIA

Hans Vanderstraeten is the founder and leader of the Virtual Networks Orchestration team within the IP division of Nokia, working on automation of the design, validation, and deployment of end-to-end connectivity across Clouds.  Prior to this assignment, Hans has been with the Sales Organization for 10 years, leading Technical Sales teams across the EMEA region.  The last 3 years years of his sales chapter, Hans has created and led the Global Cloud Practice in Customer Operations.

Sanjay Wadhwa

Senior Director, Product Management

NOKIA

Sanjay has over 20 years of experience in data communications and IP networking industry. He currently heads product management for Broadband Edge in Nokia’s IP division, driving products and roadmap for fixed and fixed-wireless (4G/5G) broadband gateway, network functions and fixed-mobile convergence. Sanjay came to Nokia via Alcatel-Lucent acquisition. Prior to Nokia, Sanjay held executive roles in Engineering and Product Management at Fore Systems, Unisphere Networks, Juniper Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. Sanjay holds several patents in IP networking and is an active contributor in IETF and BBF. He has a Masters in Computer Science & Electrical Engineering from University of Kentucky, and has completed an executive program in management from MIT, Sloan school of management. He is based in Sunnyvale, California.

Bruce Wallis

Senior Director Produce Line Manager

NOKIA

Bruce Wallis leads SR Linux and Fabric Services System product management within Network Infrastructure division. Originally from New Zealand, now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he cut his networking teeth on supporting Internet Service Providers in New Zealand and in the wider APAC region. Before taking the leap into product management, his role within the NI Consulting and Solutions Engineering team supporting PoC and demos on yet-unreleased NI products allowed him to build an extensive skill set in virtualization, all things Linux, and general system and solution design. Starting in the industry in 2008 at the age of 17, he now has 14 years’ experience across a wide array of roles.

Rob Wright

Senior Consultant

NOKIA 

Rob Wright is a Senior Consultant within the IP Routing division at Nokia with a special focus on providing innovative networking solutions for vertical and enterprise markets including utilities, oil &gas, state and local governments, public safety, and transportation. He has over 25 years of data network design experience on telecom networks. His roles have included initial design consulting, identifying feature requirements, configuration development, and implementation of final solutions. When not working, he enjoys kayaking and biking.