SReXperts Speaker

Scott Brookshire

CTO

OpenColo

Scott Brookshire is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at OpenColo. He drives and develops the company’s technical strategy and provides technical direction and insight. He is hands-on in providing the OpenColo leadership with the necessary tools and insights to further the company’s mission and goals.  Scott has as Bachelor’s degree from Cogswell Polytechnical College and brings with him over 20 years of working inside and out of the datacenter space. He emphasizes developing long lasting relationships with customers, vendors and partners and is continually striving for win-win opportunities.

Andrew Chant

Director of Infrastructure

Exponental-e

Andrew has been at Exponential-e since 2005 and heads of the team responsible for the design and operation of the core network. The team, part of the Engineering department within Exponential-e is also responsible for the R&D and introduction of new technologies to the network and development of network based services.

Jerome Cousty

Network Engineer

Orange

Jerome has over 15 years of expertise in local and wide area networks on Cisco, Juniper and Nokia devices. He joined Orange 5 years ago as an IP TAC support engineer to work on the French domestic backbone (AS 3215). He’s in charge of several projects and particularly of the introduction of Segment Routing in the network. He loves playing with routing protocols, evolve in the MPLS world and developing software tools. In its previous life, Jerome worked for the French national electricity company and was responsible for network design, deployment and operation missions mainly on the power plants sites and overseas regions. Jerome holds an engineering degree in computer science from Polytech school in the Paris Sud university.

Steve Gonzales

Mobile Security Leader, 5G Global Consulting Engineering Team

Palo Alto Networks

Steve leads the Global Consulting Engineering Team at Palo Alto Networks. He is based in Phoenix, Arizona. Steve and his team work with Service Providers, Enterprises, GSIs, and Cloud Providers around the globe to define security solutions for 4G/5G mobile networks by leveraging the entire Palo Alto Networks product portfolio. Steve has more than 20+ years of experience comprised of leadership and individual contributor roles for mobility and broadband-based solutions. Before joining Palo Alto Networks in 2020, Steve spent 14 years at Juniper Networks, focused on joint solution creation for Service Provider technical partnerships and leading mobility-focused System Engineering teams focused on North American Service Providers.

Thomas King

CTO DE-CIX

Dr. Thomas King has been Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at DE-CIX since 2018, and a Member of the DE-CIX Group AG Board since 2022. Before this, King was Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) at DE-CIX, starting in 2016. He has been instrumental in his role at keeping DE-CIX at the forefront of technological development of Internet Exchanges, establishing DE-CIX as a neutral Cloud Exchange, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of high-bandwidth access technology and security solutions for IX platforms, and trailblazing the automation of IX services with the implementation of patch robots, the development of the DE-CIX API, and overseeing the DE-CIX self-service customer portal. Thomas King has also overseen the technical implementation of the international expansion in markets spanning from North America to Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and most recently Africa. He started his career as a member of the technical staff at DE-CIX in 2008. In 2010, Thomas King joined 1&1 Internet AG as a Product Manager responsible for mobile applications and mail. In 2011, he founded the startup company audriga, for automatically migrating email accounts from one hosting provider to another. Dr. King re-joined DE-CIX as Head of Research & Development in 2014. Thomas King received an M.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Business Administration from the University of Mannheim, Germany, in 2004, and a Ph.D. degree at the chair of Computer Networks from the University of Mannheim in 2008.

Janne Mikola

Product Manager of Telia SD-WAN

Telia

I am a subject matter expert on software-defined networking (SDN), network virtualization (NFV/VNFs) and especially the applied use case of SD-WAN. I am a frequent speaker in international conferences (e.g. SD-WAN Summit, MPLS+SDN+NFV World Congress, SReXperts) as well as academia (e.g. University of Turku) on these topics and hold multiple vendor and third party certificates on SDN/NFV topics, some with very early certification IDs (Nokia #20, MEF #69). I believe I was the first employee in whole Telia Company ever to setup an SDN-enabled physical network in any type of environment back in 2012. I also was the very first and originally the only employee at Telia to work on Telia SD-WAN technically, when setting up Alcatel-Lucent SD-VPN virtual infrastructure in Telia's Tampere Labs. Now I'm the Technical Product Manager (TPM) of Telia SD-WAN service, responsible for service features, capabilities, operational quality and development across whole Telia footprint of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia. I hold a Master of Science on Computer Sciences from Tampere University (earlier Tampere University of Technology). I'm a certified expert in Nokia Nuage and Cisco Meraki SD-WAN products, and well-versed in Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN and Cisco Viptela as well. My latest interest area is Machine Learning (ML) and later on even Artificial Intelligence (AI) in networks. I'm currently working with Elastic Stack and Elastic ML capabilities to bring ML into Telia SD-WAN.

Bart Peirens

Business Development Manager

Proximus

Bart has over +20 years of experience in Telecom networking, having worked in various roles from architect to Network Architect Strategy, partnerships and innovation.

Dr. Alberto Sendin

Head of Telecommunications

Iberdrola

Head of Telecommunications in Iberdrola, Spain. He is a telecommunications engineer that started his professional career with Airtel Móvil (now Vodafone) to eventually join Iberdrola in different positions in telecommunication and smart grid areas, at both national and international levels. He is also a Professor with the Comillas Pontifical University, and formerly with the University of Deusto (Spain), teaching telecommunications, project management, and other technology domains within smart grids and Industry 4.0. He is the author and co-author of 10+ telecommunication books and tens of peer-reviewed academic papers.

Tamir Shachar

Senior Security and Networking Architect

Clalit

Working at Clalit Healthcare as senior security and networking architect.

Mukesh Sharma

Platform Operations Manager

BICS

I am currently working as Platform Ops Manager in the Transport department at BICS based in Brussels, Belgium. In this role, I am leading a team of network engineers responsible for the overall lifecycle management  including Designing, Implementation & Operation of the global BICS IP network. I have 18 years of experience working on Enterprise &  Service Provider networks at different  network design & operational roles.

Tasho Shukerski

Manager IP Transport Networks

Vivacom

Tasho Shukerski is a manager IP transport networks at Vivacom Bulgaria and a network engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the IP networks.­ His current responsibilities include IP/MPLS and BNG network planning and design, problem troubleshooting and implementation of new services.­ He has an extensive background in IP routing, L2 access and security, Multicast delivery and QoS. During the years he achieved an expertise in various vendors like Cisco, Juniper, Huawei and Nokia. He believes in the effectiveness of hardware routers and is interested in their internal architecture. Tasho holds a diploma in Electronics and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria.

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.

Aleksandar Angelkoski

Professional Service PLM

Nokia

I work as Product Line Manager for Professional Services in Nokia’s IP and Optical Division. In my role, I am responsible for the global PS portfolio related to Data Center Fabric products and solutions, as well as leading the DC Fabric and Telco Cloud Fabric Blueprint programs. I joined Nokia in 2000 first as Network Planning and Optimisation Engineer, and then on to Technical Consultant and Solution Architect role, working with variety of customers, products and technologies focusing on Mobile, and subsequently, Cloud Packet Core design and optimisations. I hold a BSc in Computer Science from King’s College London, and MSc in Data Communications from Kingston University.

Steve Aubrey

Global 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.

Sherif Awad

Chief Solutions Architect, Nuage Networks

Nokia

Sherif Awad is currently the Chief Solution/Product Architect for the Nokia Nuage Networks service edge solution. He has over 20 years of experience in SDN, SD-WAN, cloud, security, automation/orchestration, and IP/MPLS architecture, design, development, deployment, training, and consultancy.  Sherif has played a key role in leading successful customer POCs, trials and production deployments/service launches in both the service provider and enterprise segments globally and is a regular speaker at industry events.  He holds a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science Honors CO-OP) degree from the University of Ottawa and has received certifications in Service Routing Architect and Virtuoso [SDN/SD-WAN Architect] at the Nokia highest-level certification.

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.

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.

Bashar Bou-Diab

IP Consulting  Engineering Manager

Nokia

Bashar leads the IP-Networks Consulting Engineering team in the Middle-East. He has more than 20 years of experience in ICT within research, product development, and technical consulting roles.  Bashar has authored numerous papers and more than fifteen innovative patents in the field of telecommunications.  Bashar holds Master’s degree in Telecommunication Innovation Management from Canada.

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.

Eric Brestenbach

Learning Services Subject Matter Expert

Nokia

Eric is a Senior Network Engineer, with over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry covering software development, network design, customer support and presales activities. Eric is currently in the IP Networks Learning Services group developing and teaching SR Linux-based courses such as Data Center Fabric fundamentals, programming SR Linux and EVPN with SR linux. Eric holds a software engineering diploma from Polytech Nice-Sophia in France. He is based in Ottawa, Canada.

Peter Busschbach

Senior Director, NSP Product Management

Nokia

Peter Busschbach is Senior Director in Nokia’s IP/Optical Networks BU, where he is leads Product Management of Nokia’s Carrier SDN Controller, NSP.  Before assuming this role, Peter held several senior positions in the corporate CTO office and in product units where he was responsible for strategy, standardization and solution development in a wide range of technologies, including IP/MPLS, LTE, Ethernet, Optical Networking, Policy Management and Network Management. His standardization work included active participation in IETF, MPLS Forum, ITU-T and TM Forum.  Mr Busschbach began his career in telecommunications as a software developer in AT&T. He holds a Master of Science degree in Mathematics of the Eindhoven Technical University, the Netherlands.

Yannick Chauvel

Regional PLM, NSP, EMEA

Nokia

Yannick Chauvel joined Alcatel in 1997, since then he has been working around Network Management System from system tests, network deployment and pre-sales. Ten years ago, he has joined the IP consulting engineering team for the EMEA region with a focus on the 5620 SAM and 5780 DSC (PCRF & DRA). During this time, he has covered most of the network technology domains managed by the 5620 SAM IP/MPLS, Mobile Packet Core, Optics, SDN (Nuage) and now NFV. He’s now following the evolution of the NMS and SDN WAN controller with the NSP.

Jeroen Claessens

Director of Product Management    

Nokia

Jeroen is the Director of Product Management for the Nuage SD-WAN solution. He has over 10 years of experience in the industry covering SD-WAN, DC SDN, backhaul and IP/MPLS routing. He got excited by carrier grade networking as a New Product Introduction engineer and later as a Consulting Engineer for Nokia’s IP division in EMEA. Jeroen has been in SD-WAN product management since 2015, based at the NI headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. Jeroen holds a MSc in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Ghent, Belgium.

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.

Rafael de Fermin

Senior Vice President Network Infrastructure, Europe

Nokia

In 2022, Rafael de Fermín was appointed to lead Nokia’s Network Infrastructure business in Europe, in charge of all IP, Optical and Fixed Networks in the region. Over his career in the industry, Rafael has been involved in multiple responsibilities, mostly linked to Telecom Networking, while living in the UK, the US, Belgium and Spain. Prior to his current position, he led the IP/Optics Networks team for Nokia in Europe and EMEA, as well as the EMEA Global Customer Delivery and Presales teams for Alcatel-Lucent. Before that, he spent five years working for the Access Business Division in Alcatel, in charge of the Regional Support Centers for different geographies (including Europe, Middle East, Africa, India and Latin America). He held pre- and post-sales responsibilities for the Division in those geographies. His earlier jobs with Alcatel include General Management of the Fixed Networks Division for Iberia, and several positions in R&D and PLM.

Walter De Smedt

IP Consulting Engineer

Nokia

Walter is a consulting engineer for Nokia’s datacenter network portfolio in the EMEA region. He has more than 20 years of experience in telco networking both in pre-sales at Nokia and at various CSP’s as a network and systems architect. He is based in Antwerp, Belgium.

Bruno De Troch

Head of PLM IP Routing and Automation EMEA

Nokia

Bruno has over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry and joined the Alcatel-Lucent (now Nokia) Product Line Management team in EMEA in April 2014. His focus is on Service Provider core, edge and aggregation networks and solutions. Prior to his current role he was a Technical Lead at Juniper Networks for 14 years, providing guidance to carriers and large enterprises on how to deploy and optimize their IP/MPLS and Carrier Ethernet networks. He holds an MSc in Telecommunications from the Military Academy in Brussels and made it to Captain in charge of the Belgian Armed Forces country-wide data network before leaving and joining BT Belgium as a Design Engineer. He is based in Antwerp, Belgium.

Philippe Dellaert

Datacenter Fabric Product Manager    

Nokia

Philippe Dellaert is a Product Manager for the Nokia Datacenter Fabric solutions and has been involved in data center network management in different roles for over 15 years. Originally starting his debut in Product Management in Belgium where he was responsible for the integration of the Nuage Networks cloud automation into different cloud management systems, he quickly joined the Product Management team in the San Francisco Bay Area and continued to chase his data center automation interest by joining the Nokia Datacenter Fabric team where he took on a similar responsibility.

Alp 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.

Chris Dixon

IP Consulting Engineer

Nokia

Chris Dixon Is an IP Consulting Engineer covering the Nokia Router portfolio. Based in the UK, Chris provides consulting support to major CSP customers across the EMEA region to help them deliver network solutions and architectures. Chris has been in the Telecoms IP networking industry for over 30 years and holds both CCIE and JNCIE certifications.

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.

Pierre El-Haddad

Senior Product Line 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.

Gilles Geerts

Networking Engineer

Nokia

Gilles Geerts is Consulting Engineer in the Network Solutions and Consulting team at Nokia, EMEA region. In this role, he provides design guidelines based upon best practices and customer requirements with a special focus on Carrier Wi-Fi, IP/MPLS architectures and next-gen Business Services. For this, he interworks with Nokia technical sales as well as technical experts in leading EMEA service providers.  Currently based in Antwerp, Belgium, Gilles has more than 17 years of experience working on Enterprise and Provider IP/MPLS networks throughout the world. He has been part of the Alcatel-Lucent¹s IP Division for the last 13 years in a consulting and new product introduction role. Prior to that, he held positions as QA/integration engineer for an Alcatel IP Core router project.  He holds Alcatel-Lucent SRA (#28) certificate and has a master degree in electro-mechanics.

Douglas Henderson

Regional PLM, IP/Optical Networks

Nokia

Douglas Henderson is a regional PLM within the IP/Optical Division of Nokia primarily covering Nuage VCS for service provider DC environments as well as Hybrid Access solutions. Douglas has nearly 20 years worth of experience within the networking industry and has worked in various post sales support and pre-sales consulting positions. He has previously held positions with Alcatel-Lucent, Ascend Communications and Bay Networks. He holds a BEng (hons) in micro-electronics from Glasgow Caledonian University.

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

Vice President, Hardware Product Management – Service Routers

Nokia

A 25 year employee of Nokia, Jeff is the Vice President of Hardware Product Management in 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. He presently works in the heart of Silicon Valley out of the Nokia office in Sunnyvale, California.

Erwan James

Network Architect    

Nokia

Erwan is a Senior Network and Cloud Architect, a member of Nokia’s professional services Global Network Engineering(GNE) team.  He has a full time focus on Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies, specifically working with the Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform and 7750 Service Router product lines.  Erwan is responsible for leading and delivering professional services engagements involving network design and architecture, operational and deployment consultancy as well as training.

Johann Kellerman

IP Product Line Manager, EMEA

Nokia

Johann is a Product Line Manager in the Europe and MEA team, with a focus on routing protocols and SDN across the Nokia IP/MPLS portfolio, Nokia SROS, and on the Network Services Platform (NSP).  Johann joined Alcatel-Lucent as Consulting Engineer in 2014 after several years in South Africa’s incumbent service provider and at a startup fibre infrastructure company, where they enabled international service providers to own national fibre and deploy their own equipment in record breaking time. Johann holds a Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Johannesburg, where his research focussed on optical sensing at the Centre of Optical Communications & Sensors.

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.

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.
 

Nardus le Roux

IP Consulting System Engineer

Nokia

At Nokia, Nardus is an IP & SDN Consulting System Engineer focused on the African market, with more than 25 years of experience in the Data communications market. Nardus focus on solving real world problems for fixed and mobile Service Providers as well as Enterprise customers including utility providers by matching network design and strategy of Nokia IP & SDN portfolio to address customer needs.

Thierry Lebugle

Product Line Manager, Professional Services

Nokia

Thierry Lebugle is a Senior Product Line Manager with a focus on Automation and Software as a Service. Thierry has over 25 years of experience within telecom industry, and more than 15 years in Product management and Professional services. He is currently focusing Network Test Automation (NTA) and Cloud Network Verification (CNV). Thierry is based in Paris, France.

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.

Beniot Leridon

IPR Business Development Manager

Nokia

Benoit Leridon is a regional IPR Business Development Manager at Nokia, responsible for Transport, Energy and public sector in EMEA. In his role he is deeply involved in customer projects in the pre-sales phase, to understand customer applications and requirements in order to define the proper solution for the evolution of their network infrastructures. Benoit has 25 years of telecom pre-sales background covering enterprise and carrier markets for data, and voice solutions, and has joined Alcatel-Lucent in 2010 after holding different pre-sales management positions in companies such as Wellfleet, Bay Networks and Nortel.

Suresh Leroy

Regional Product Line Manager, BNG/residential services, EMEA    

Nokia

Suresh Leroy is the EMEA Regional Product Line Manager for BNG and the residential services within Nokia’s IP and Optical Networks Division.  He joined Alcatel in 1998 as mobile research engineer and has now almost 20 years of experience in telecommunications. He joined Nokia IP division in 2017.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and Master degree in software engineering at Brussels university.
Suresh is based in Antwerp, Belgium.

Benjamin Martens

Vice President Europe IP Business Center

Nokia

Ben Martens leads the Nokia IP Business in Europe. He has been with the company for over 25 years in different roles in technical sales, business development and sales. He is based in Belgium but through his career has also lived in the United States, Austria, and Italy. He holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leuven (KUL) and a Masters in Management from the Corporate University of ENI. Ben has been part of the Nokia journey in IP from its start more than 20 years ago, and with his team is passionate to live many more new chapters in it.

Nacho Martin

Deepfield Consulting System Engineer

Nokia

Jose Ignacio (Nacho for short) has been working in the networking industry for the last 18 years. From Integrators to ISPs and lately vendors, his focus has been the Service Provider domain, helping to design and implement cutting-edge networking solutions that have improved efficiency, reliability, and security. With a personal interest in analytics and data science, he decided to take the train of Nokia 3 years ago, where he has been working closely with customers to deliver DDoS protection, Internet and subscriber analytics leveraging the Bigdata driven approach of Nokia Deepfield.

Jérôme Meyer

Business Development Lead, Deepfield

Nokia

In his current role, Jérôme drives the business development activities for the Nokia Deepfield portfolio in Asia-Pacific — working with communications service providers, cloud builders and large digital enterprises to help them gain insights into their networks and improve their performance and security.  Currently based out of Tokyo, he joined the company’s Mobile Networks organization in 2005 in Malaysia; and he since covered a variety of sales & pre-sales responsibilities in the Asia-Pacific region, with both fixed and mobile communications service providers. Jérôme graduated with a Master’s degree from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Lyon, France.

Paul Meyers

Senior Product Manager, EMEA

Nokia

Paul Meyers is Senior Product Manager within Nokia's (and previously Alcatel and Alcatel-Lucent's) IP Division since 2005. Before joining this team, he was active within Alcatel for several years (starting from 1994) as Supply Chain project engineer looking into advanced planning systems and reverse logistics and from 2000 on as Marketing Manager and Business Consultant for data products (ATM & IP).  Paul holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Louvain (KUL) and a Masters degree in Economics.

Ahsanuddin Mohammed

Network Infrastructure Transformation Services

Nokia

Ahsanuddin Mohammed is a strategic and collaborative transformations leader responsble for creating the capability build frameworks to excute large scale complex multi vendor global transformation programs. He has been directly involved in migrations of over 50+ customers using on prem & native cloud-based infrastructures. He promotes Customer first attitude across all organizations, translates the voice of clients to drive technology innovation & cultural transformations in alignment with industry trends and best practices. Ahsanuddin is a trusted technology advisor for global clients to provide innovative solutions and possess a business development and consultative mindset.

Fariborz Mosafer

Europe IP Business Development, Enterprise

Nokia

Fariborz Mosafer joined Nokia in 2007, He tried some other positions in the vendors, then came back to his home Nokia in 2016. He is part of the Enterprise IP business development team for Nokia’s IP Routing Division in Europe. In this position, he is supporting customers to evolve their critical telecom infrastructure to IP-based multiservice, reliable, flexible, and future-proof networks relying on Nokia IP/MPLS and Data Center Fabric technologies. He has more than 17 years of experience in the telecommunications networking industry, holding network engineering, solution engineering, and technical sales positions at Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia.

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. <br />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.

David Novosel

Product Line Manager

Nokia

David Novosel is a Product Line Manager focused on the SR Linux platform. Based out of Ottawa, Canada, he has spent over a decade working at Nokia across a range of Network Infrastructure products and solutions including Service Router, Nuage Networks, and SR Linux. Previous roles in support, technical sales, and solution architecture have enabled David to build a strong skillset across the networking and virtualization fields with experience in Data Center, SD-WAN, and IP/MPLS routing deployments.

Jelena Pesic

Head Consulting Engineer, Optical Networks, EU/MEA Regional Business Center

Nokia

Jelena PESIC received a Ph.D. in Optical Networks from the University of South Brittany in collaboration with France Telecom–Orange Labs, France, in 2012. She received a best paper award at the IEEE ONDM conference in 2011. After her PhD Jelena joint Telecom Bretagne as Post-doctoral Research Engineer and later INRIA, where she worked on the European project SASER. After moving to Alcatel–Lucent (now Nokia) Bell Labs in 2014, she focused on dynamic elastic networks dimensioning and techno-economic studies. Her main areas of research interest include intelligent optical networks, including core and metro networks. Jelena was selected OSA Ambassador in 2018. She is currently working at Nokia as Systems Integration Specialist, with ION IP Optical Networks WDM technical expertise on the basis of the Nokia Optical Networks product portfolio.

Erica Poppe

IP-MPLS Network Engineer

Nokia

Erica Poppe is a Senior IPMPLS Network Engineer, in Nokia’s professional services Global Network Engineering(GNE) team with 25 years of experience in network design, development, deployment, training, and consultancy. She started with Newbridge Networks working on NMS and ATM network solutions and was a founding member of the SRC certification program responsible for the MPLS and QoS courses. She has worked with customers in all four corners of the globe, from telecom service providers to utilities agencies to enterprise customers. Erica currently leads the 5G Anyhaul transport blueprint solution.

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.

Denis Proulx

IP/Optical/Nuage Professional Services Product Manager

Nokia

Denis Proulx is a Senior Product Manager for professional services with more than 32 years in the telecommunication industry. He has been providing Product Research and Development in the areas of Network Management System for our Global customers. With over 17 Patents filed, now his focus is on simplifying network operations through automation, reducing cost and time to market for the deployments of new greenfield or on existing networks. He is now involved in helping customers transform legacy networks to new technologies (SDN) using Nokia IP/Optical/Nuage products.

Jorege 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.

Pierre Rahme

Software Services Product Manager

Nokia

Pierre brings more than 20 years of experience in the informatics, telecommunication and and Cyber Security industries. He joined Nokia and the Global Professional Services team in 2021 where he put forth a strategy and a plan for creating and delivering security services to our customers for the wide Network Infrastructure portfolio across IP, Optical, and FN networks. Before joining Nokia, he built a career in cybersecurity consultancy leading and directing multiple turn key cyber security projects to high profile clients in areas such as big data security, machine learning, network security, and threat detection.

Wouter Reynders

IP Consulting Engineer

Nokia

Wouter Reynders is IP consulting engineer for the Nokia IP Router portfolio, covering EMEA. In this role, Wouter interacts with customers and jointly creates IP solutions and architectures. He interworks with technical sales and provides design guidelines for optimal usage of the IP service architectures and associated platforms in customer networks. Recently his focus is on modern WAN SDN technologies such as Network Telemetry, BGP-LS, PCEP, Segment Routing and others. Wouter has over 10 years of IP/MPLS networking experience, in the past also in the role of New Product Introduction (NPI) Engineer.  He holds Alcatel-Lucent SRA (#9) certificate and has a master in Engineering in computer science.

Dave Sargent

IP Pre-Sales Engineer Vertical Market

Nokia

Dave Sargent is a regional Business Development Manager at Nokia, responsible for Global Enterprise and Public Sector.  In this role he provides technical support and product / technology knowledge to the internal sales as well as working closely with customers to define solutions and to understand their specific requirements to meet their current and future needs. Dave has over 15 years of product and technology experience covering the former TDM and  ATM portfolios from Newbridge networks as well as detailed knowledge on the 7705 SAR. Dave also provides technical support for the synchronization solution across the IP portfolio.

Dom Schaeffer

Director IP Consulting Engineering EMEA

Nokia

Dominique has over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry and joined the IP Consulting Engineering team in 2008. He’s responsible for the introduction, design and engineering of advanced IP solutions for major EMEA operators and enterprise on the full Nokia IP portfolio. Recently he took the role of Director of the Consulting Engineering team. Before joining the team, he had different roles including support, professional services and CTO office. Dominique holds a Master in Computer Science and a Master of Business Administration from La Sorbonne in Paris.

Marc Schoolaert

Senior Consulting Engineer, Deepfield Business Line, EMEA

Nokia

Marc has over 25 years of experience within the networking and communications industry, in engineering, auditing, supporting and selling IP/data networks and DPI/Application Assurance solutions for Network Operators and businesses around the world. He joined Nokia in 2008 working in different roles as Consulting engineer and Regional PLM for the 7750 Service Routers and Application Assurance Solution and as IT- Architect involved with planning and designing the integration of the Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia WAN after the merger of both companies before joining the Deepfield Business Line as SE/Consulting engineer 3 years ago, to help customers across Europe to get the maximum value out of the Deepfield Solution.

Hans Thienpondt

Technology and Architecture Consulting Engineer

Nokia

Hans is a Technology and Architecture Consulting Engineer at Nokia based in Antwerp, Belgium. He is focusing on the automation aspects of networking and assessing future technologies. Hans has close to 20 years of experience in the industry and prior to Nokia, worked in several network or systems engineering positions at companies operating at Web- or Service Provider scale.

Roland Thienpont

Director IP Product Marketing EMEA Regional Business Center

Nokia

Roland has over 25 years of experience within the networking and data communications industry, in the areas of engineering, technology and product strategy and product management.

From early 2000 until 2016 he had the role of IP product manager for Nokia’s IP/MPLS Service Router and Ethernet Services Switch products for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Recently he took the role of Director Product Marketing for IP.

Roland holds a MSc. in Electronic Engineering with a specialization in Telecommunications from the University of Antwerp and an Alcatel International Master in Management.

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.

Stefan Thompson

Learning Services Subject Matter Expert

Nokia

Stefan is an IP/MPLS Subject Matter Expert in the Learning Services - Nokia IP/Optical Network Business Group. In this role, he provides training to customers, and develops courseware for the Network Services Platform (NSP). Prior to his current role, Stefan also worked in Nokia's University as an instructor, and as a TAC engineer supporting AT&T's Triple Play Solution.

Nicolas Tikhomiroff

Europe IP Division Business Development, Enterprises

Nokia

Nicolas Tikhomiroff is part of the Transport, Energy and Public Sector business development team for Nokia’s IP Division in Europe. In this position he is helping customers to evolve their critical telecom infrastructure to IP based multiservice, reliable, flexible and future proof networks relying on IP/MPLS and LTE packet core technologies. He has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications networking industry, holding network engineering, product management and presales positions at Global One, Nortel Networks, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia.

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.

Markus Vahlenkamp

Technology & Architecture Consulting Engineer

Nokia

Markus is a Technology and Architecture Consulting Engineer at Nokia. His focus is on assessing future technologies with a great enthusiasm for automation. He has about 20 years of experience in the IT industry, spanning the range from IT-administration, software-engineering, consulting to research. Markus holds an MSc. in Computer Science from the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany.

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.

Sven Wisotzky

Senior Network Management and Automation Consultant

Nokia

Sven Wisotzky is a senior network management and automation consultant working for more than 20 years in the communications and networking industry. He joined Alcatel’s IP Division in 2004, working in the areas of product support, training, integration, technical sales, network and solution design and consultancy. Since 2017 he is part of the NSP platform product management team, driving model-driven, multi-vendor nodal mediation using NETCONF/YANG and gRPC, automation frameworks and telemetry. He is based in the metropolitan area of Frankfurt/Main, Germany.