Keynote Speakers

Tuesday, March 23, 9:15-10:00 AM

Kevin Kennedy is the president and chief executive officer of Avaya. Avaya is a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

Prior to joining the company in January 2009, Kennedy served as president and CEO of JDS Uniphase Corporation, a position he held since September 2003. He had also served as a member of the JDSU board of directors since November 2001.

Before joining JDSU, Kennedy served as chief operating officer of Openwave Systems, Inc., a position he held from August 2001 to September 2003. Prior to joining Openwave Systems, Kennedy spent close to eight years at Cisco Systems, Inc., most recently as senior vice president of the Service Provider Line of Business and Software Technologies Division.

Earlier in his career, Kennedy spent 17 years with AT&T Bell Laboratories, serving in a number of assignments in the Lincroft, Holmdel, and Middletown, New Jersey locations. During his Bell Labs tenure, he also lived and worked in Columbus, Ohio as part of the Conversant voice information system team, in the AUDIX Voice Messaging organization.

In 1987, Kennedy was a congressional fellow to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He was a member of the board of directors of Polycom, Inc. until January 2009. He currently serves on the board of directors of KLA-Tencor Corporation and is a member of the board of regents of Loyola Marymount University.

Kennedy holds a B.S. in engineering from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Rutgers University. He was an adjunct professor at Rutgers from 1982-1984 and has published more than 30 papers on computational methods, data networking and issues of technology management.

In 2006, Kennedy was honored by the School of Engineering at Rutgers as their Alumnus of the Year and awarded an Alumni Medal of Excellence. He is a co-author of "Going the Distance: Why Some Companies Dominate and Others Fail," published in 2003.

Tuesday, March 23, 10:00-10:45 AM

Mark Straton is senior vice president of voice and applications solutions at Siemens Enterprise Communications, Inc.

Straton has worldwide responsibility the company's voice and applications solutions portfolio including strategy and planning, market and competitive intelligence, strategic positioning and messaging, and analyst relations. Since joining Siemens in 1984, he has held a wide range of management positions and is among the principal architects of Siemens HiPath VoIP brand, LifeWorks and the OpenScape unified communications solution and brand.

Mr. Straton previously served as senior vice president, global marketing, and had also served as senior vice president of marketing and strategy at Siemens Communications in the United States with responsibility for fixed and mobile carrier networks, mobile phones and enterprise networks.

A featured speaker at numerous international industry events, Straton holds a B.A. degree in economics from the University of Michigan as well as advanced management certificates from Stanford and Duke.

Tuesday, March 23, 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Tony Bates is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Group (ECSB), responsible for its overall strategy and development direction. The group comprises more than 12,500 employees and generates more than $20 billion of annual revenue. ECSB includes the Collaboration Software Group, Voice Technology Group, Data Center, Switching & Services Group, Wireless, Security & Routing Technology Group, Enterprise Systems & Operations, and the Small Business Technology Group.

A member of Chairman and CEO John Chambers. senior staff, Bates sits on the Cisco Development Council, the Video Council, and the Enterprise Business Council.

Before his current role, Bates was Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Service Provider business unit. He was responsible for the overall strategy and development direction of the business resulting in over $10 billion of annual revenue. Prior to that he was the Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's high-end router business. During his tenure, he was responsible for the strategy and development of Cisco's flagship CRS-1 router, GSR, and Multi-Service WAN (MGX) product lines. He has also served as a Member of the Board of YouTube, Inc.

Preceding Cisco, Bates spearheaded the backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI (MCI.s national IP backbone). Bates has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and Internet industries. He has published 12 IETF RFCs in the areas of Internet Routing and Operations, and holds nine patents in the area of Layer 2 and Layer 3 innovations.

Wednesday, March 24, 9:15 AM–10:00 AM Keynote

Alistair Rennie is General Manager, Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, IBM Software Group. Mr. Rennie was appointed to this position in January, 2010. As general manager, Mr. Rennie has oversight for an extensive portfolio of collaboration tools designed to empower people to be more effective, responsive and innovative within the context of the work they do. This portfolio includes Lotus Software, software that enables businesses to communicate, collaborate and increase productivity, and WebSphere Portal, software that enables organizations to design their Web experience with personalized applications. He is a member of the IBM Integration and Values team, a select group of executives who provide leadership across IBM on various business and strategic issues. Mr. Rennie is also IBM Senior State Executive for Massachusetts, providing leadership for IBM in the community statewide.

Mr. Rennie was previously Vice President, Development and Support, Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, responsible for the strategy and development of IBM's Collaboration portfolio. He also led the worldwide technical support team dedicated to software client satisfaction. Prior to this role, Alistair led IBM Software Services for Lotus - a global organization consisting of highly skilled technical consultants working in more than 35 countries with clients to optimize value from the IBM collaboration portfolio.

Mr. Rennie joined IBM at the Toronto Software Laboratory in 1989 and has held a number of executive roles within IBM Software Group with a primary focus on the introduction of new technologies. Prior assignments include Vice President, Marketing and Channels, Lotus, and Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Pervasive Computing.

Mr. Rennie holds degrees in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario.

Wednesday, March 24, 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Gurdeep Singh Pall is the corporate vice president in the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft Corp. He is responsible for vision, product strategy and R&D for Microsoft's Unified Communications including voice over Internet protocol (VoIP).

Pall joined Microsoft in January 1990 as a software design engineer, and he has worked on many breakthrough products in his tenure. He started with LAN Manager Remote Access Service, and was part of the Windows NT© development team working all the way through Windows© XP in 2001 as general manager of Windows Networking. During his work on Windows, he led design and implementation of award-winning technologies such as PPP, TCP/IP, VPNs, routing and Wi-Fi. He co-authored the first VPN protocol in the industry — Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) — which received the prestigious Innovation of the Year award from PC Magazine in 1996. He also authored several documents and standards in the networking area in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body in the mid-1990s.

Pall was appointed general manager of Windows Real-Time Communications efforts in January 2002 and helped develop a broad RTC strategy that led to the formation of the Real Time Collaboration division and acquisition of PlaceWare Inc. (now called Microsoft Office Live Meeting). Since then Pall has led acquisitions of Media-Streams and Parlano and key industry partnerships. Pall was named one of the "15 Innovators & Influencers Who Will Make A Difference In 2008" by Information Week.

Pall has more than 20 patents (filed or approved) in networking, compression and collaboration areas. He holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Oregon and an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Birla Institute of Technology in India.