Unified Communications

John Del Pizzo is the Senior Offering Manager for IBM's Lotus Sametime product family. In this capacity he is responsible for business strategy for the market's leading unified communications and collaboration platform. Sametime integrates enterprise class instant messaging, presence awareness, online, video, telephony and many other capabilities into a seamless user experience.

Prior to joining the Sametime team, John was a Global Solutions Executive in IBM's Sensor Solutions unit. There, he led multiple software, services and sales teams to deliver sensor-based supply chain solutions for the Pharmaceutical, Defense, Consumer Products and Retail Industries.

John has over ten years experience in the technology industry, holding sales and business development roles in several startups prior to joining IBM. He earned his MBA from Carnegie Mellon and has a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. John currently resides in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and three children.

 Eric Schoch holds the position of Sr. Director Product Management Cisco Systems Voice Technology Group IP Communications Business Unit.  He is responsible for UCaaS, hosted and managed solutions, strategic pricing and licensing, and business development.  Previously, Eric was the Vice President of Americas Sales at Polycom.  Prior to Polycom, Eric held numerous executive leadership positions across sales, marketing, business development, and general management at Nortel Networks.  Eric was the principal architect of Nortel’s Enterprise North American go-to-market model and partner program while leading marketing, channel strategy, commercial operations, distribution, and inside sales.  Eric played key roles in the success of various business units.  He led the successful spinout of the blade server switch business unit where he represented Nortel on the board of directors of the newly formed company for two years after serving as the general manager global services for wireless.  During his first six years at Nortel Eric held various corporate finance and product marketing management positions with increasing scope and responsibility.  Prior to Nortel Eric held various sales and marketing positions at DSC Communications Corporation.   Eric holds a MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas and studied at the London Business School focusing on innovation and perspective, resources and processes, leadership skills and change, in high tech companies.

Ross Sedgewick serves as Senior Director, Large Enterprise Solutions at Siemens Enterprise Communications, leveraging over 20 years of management experience in the Enterprise Software, Telecom, CRM, Channel Management and Solution Marketing arenas. Ross has responsibility for the global Large Enterprise solutions marketing team, which drives positioning and messaging for SEN’s Voice and Applications solution portfolios worldwide. Prior to working at Siemens, he acquired broad industry experience in senior positions with companies such as IBM Corporation and Delano Technologies.  Ross holds a Honors Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto, and an MBA (Marketing) from the Schulich School of Business at York University.

Stephen L. Schilling currently serves as President & CEO of Cypress Communications. Mr. Schilling has over 20 years of experience in the telecom and data communications industry where he has specialized in turnarounds, start-ups and managing high-growth firms. Prior to Cypress Communications, Steve was the founder and President of Netifice Communications, a company he created in 1998 and led until its merger with MegaPath Networks. Prior to Netifice, Steve was President and COO of Charter Communications International, and prior to Charter Communications, he held executive positions at GE Capital-ResCom, MFS and RealCom Office Communications.

Mr. Burrell brings 25 years of expertise in voice, video, and managed services. His current responsibilities at Orange Business Services include global responsibility for managing the marketing of unified communications and collaboration portfolio, including telepresence.   In 2009, Burrell managed the global launch of Managed Microsoft OCS with Enterprise Telephony supports advanced telephony features within Microsoft applications by integrating Cisco and Avaya IP telephony. According to industry analysts, Orange was "first to market" with this type of packaged service offer.   In 2005, Burrell led a team to launch an Avaya-based IP telephony solution and become the 1st global Avaya Strategic Partner. In 2004, he launched Optimize Telephony Solution based on life cycle approach to IP Telephony. In February 2002, Burrell helped develop and launch of the industry’s first end-to-end IP Telephony solution with global availability. The service received the Frost and Sullivan 2002 Market Engineering Award for Product Innovation.   As a senior manager at BellSouth, Burrell led a team to build a Professional Services practice called Enterprise Network Consulting around network design, performance assessment, and security consulting. In 1998, he helped to plan and launch BellSouth Managed Network Solutions in an alliance with EDS to offer customers managed services for WAN, LAN, and messaging.   During his ten years at MCI, Mr. Burrell provided decision support, market program management and competitive assessment. In 1995, he helped launch MCI ’s entry into the ISP business through internetMCI. In 1994, Burrell supported the launch of Concert, MCI global services’ joint venture with British Telecom, contributed to the successful offering of VPN voice and data services to multinational businesses.   Mr. Burrell’s speaking engagements include: Orange Business Live in Europe, VoiceCon, VON, Network World Technology Tour - VoIP, Connect – Reality of Convergence, Wall Street Technology Association Hot Technologies, and BellSouth Major Client Association Conference.

Dan York is Director of Conversations at Voxeo Corporation heading up the company's communication through both traditional and new/social media. Previously, Dan served in Voxeo's Office of the CTO focused on analyzing/evaluating emerging technology, participating in industry standards bodies and addressing VoIP security issues.  Since the mid-1980's Dan has been working with online communication technologies and helping businesses and organizations understand how to use and participate in those new media. Dan frequently presents at conferences, has authored multiple books on Linux and networking and has written numerous articles in print and online. His writing can be found at DisruptiveTelephony.com and Voxeo's weblogs at blogs.voxeo.com

Pat Galvin joined IBM in 1998 as part of the original Sametime team.  He is now the lead architect for Sametime, and has contributed to every release along the way.  He is also a leading evangelist for the use of SIP within IBM, and he lead the team that extended the WebSphere Application Server to support the development of SIP-based applications.  Most recently he headed up the team that built Sametime Unified Telephony, an add-on that seamlessly integrates Sametime with the enterprise telephone system.

Allan is the Senior Marketing Manager for Unified Communications at Avaya.   While he resides in Canada, his effectiveness in his global role is a testament to the application of Unified Communications solutions.  His marketing, product management, and business development career has spanned 20+ years dealing with the planning and application of voice, data, and information systems to support the needs of business with particular focus on employee productivity and customer service.  His applications focus has included: unified communications, messaging, IVR, contact center, CTI, voice over IP, and remote data access.  Prior to joining Avaya (via Octel and Lucent) in 1998, Allan led marketing and business development teams at two mid sized organizations entering new stages of growth, which followed his applications marketing tenure at Nortel.  Allan holds an MBA in Information Systems (McMaster University) and an Honors BA in Economics and Psychology (York University).  Next to family activities with his 13-year old twin girls, his favorite pass times include playing golf and ice hockey.