Tuesday July 24th
| 5:30 – 8:30 pm | Registration desk opens |
Wednesday July 25th
| 7:30 – 8:40 am | Information desk open for registration, Welcome breakfast, informal meetings and debate briefings |
| 8:40 – 8:50 am | Opening welcome and conference introduction |
| 9:00 – 9:20 am | Opening Keynote Presentation by Nan Chen, President, MEF A Vision for Networking” |
| There are two global networks known to man: the PSTN and the Internet. The vision of the third global network is the subject of Nan Chen’s opening keynote address. | |
| Today’s Mobile Operators face a formidable challenge. As customer demand moves from voice to multimedia services, the volume of data traffic grows exponentially. This drives up the cost of the network at the same time as the average revenue per user remains flat or succumbs to competitive pressure.As bandwidth demands soar, Carrier Ethernet has become the target solution for mobile backhaul. Instead of leasing DS1s/E1s, today’s Mobile Operator leases single class of service Ethernet Virtual Connections (EVCs) from an Access Provider. Simplicity is the object: making the EVC play an equivalent role to a high-bandwidth TDM circuit (DS1/E1). But do these “high bandwidth” pipes reduce costs sufficiently? Do they meet the need to engineer for ever-changing traffic priorities?New business models based on the insatiable demand for multimedia services, both mobile and to the desk, offer a goldmine of opportunity for service providers, but how best to exploit it? Wireless operators agree that cost-effective backhaul to meet the needs of 4G-LTE is the industry’s single biggest challenge.Carrier Ethernet 2.0 introduces new opportunities based on multiple classes of service, manageability and easier interconnection between providers. The technology is now within reach, and the users’ appetites remain voracious, but can business models develop fast enough to turn this opportunity into profit?We have taken care in selecting for our panel – not only including those with a deep understanding of the challenges, but also those with strong views about the optimal way to address themPanellists: Mark Durrett, Director, Marketing, Overture; Greg Spear, Director, Product Education & Technology, Accedian; Nan Chen, President, MEF; Greg Gum, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Telco Systems ; Ron Mudry, Founder, CEO & President, Tower Cloud | |
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| 9:55 – 10:35 am | Conference Debate Session II-Security Intelligence for tomorrow’s networks Introduced and chaired by: Wayne Rash, Editor, in Chief, FierceMobileIT |
| With next generation protection devices processing real-time data at gigabit speeds – is there anything more that can be done to improve security for tomorrow’s networks? One look at the statistics for successful cyberattacks and the answer is “yes”. Or rather: it has to be “ yes”.Cut to the TV crime series cliché: when the serial killer has struck for the second time and the operation chief says: “I want to know EVERYTHING, every alibi, every movement, about EVERYBODY having ANY connection with the victim or crime scene!” And the police team groan – knowing it means days ahead sifting through mountains of mostly meaningless data.It’s an amazing human ability: to scan those mountains and pick out meaningful patterns that lead not just to a criminal conviction but even to stopping the next crime before it happens. It’s the holy grail for IT security – anticipating attack – but we have a long way before machines can match the intuitive skills of the criminal fraternity.Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) has long been collecting event data for security visibility and providing monitoring to fulfill compliance reporting requirements, but it delivers the equivalent of the mountains of police data. So how well can we mine that data for meaningful patterns? How readily can the search be shaped to detect potential threats, avoid false alarms, respond to incidents? And most importantly, take action protect the enterprise?e? In short how do we turn data into intelligence that is actionable?The vision true security intelligence is a complex one to achieve on the backdrop of a gulf of practical choices: hardware v software solutions; centralized v distributed; unified, heterogeneous or layered approaches. We have brought together the top names in security for our panel, and we invite them to look over the horizon, share ideas and guide us through these challenging choices.Panellists: Jill Knesek, Head of Global Security – Professional Services, BT Global Services; Vik Davar, VP of Corporate Development, ClickSecurity; Ram Appalaraju, VP of Technology and Product Marketing, Enterasys Networks; Jurrie van den Breekel, Director of Product Marketing, Networks & Applications Group, Spirent Communications | |
| 10:35 -10:55 am | Coffee break |
| 10:55 – 11:50 am | Conference Debate Session III-SDN – As the old order goes under, who will come out on top? Introduced and chaired by Casey Quillin, Senior Analyst, Storage Area Network & Data Center And Closing Keynote Presentation by Dan Pitt, Executive Director, Open Networking Foundation “The SDN Revolution – Empowering the people” |
| Why has Software-Defined Networking (SDN) become such a hot topic in the past twelve months? As a concept, it is almost as old as networking itself and proprietary network management solutions have been available from major vendors for several years already.What has changed is the launch of a new industry standard called OpenFlow. It’s the UNIX or Android storyall over again – once there is a real open alternative to vendor lock-in, the market is free to grow. It is no longer a sellers’ market – the power now lies in the hands of the users.We are privileged to welcome one of the leaders of this revolution – Dan Pitt, the ONF’s Executive Director. With 20 years at the coal face developing networking architecture, technology, standards, and products at IBM Networking Systems in North Carolina, IBM Research Zurich in Switzerland, Hewlett Packard Labs in Palo Alto, Bay Networks in Santa Clara, and Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions Technology Center – not to mention his contributions to academia – Dan was among the first to recognize SDN’s potential and to sign up with the ONF.Within months of launch, OpenFlow has become the year’s hottest topic in the USA and Japan, with top vendors competing to roll out OpenFlow enabled products. So we are offering the LatAm media to get up to speed on the SDN revolution. Dan will explain what it is all about, and outline the new vision for the future of networking.But that’s not all. Keeping pace with rapid developments, Dan will also release for the first time details on the latest ONF working groups – addressing topics including Northbound API and optical transport for remote datacenters. And, for an update on just how fast OpenFlow is catching on, Dell’Oro Group’s Casey Quillan will also join Dan onstage to present the latest market data on this SDN revolution. | |
| Conference Debate Session III-SDN – As the old order goes under, who will come out on top? | |
| When NetEvents introduced Dan Pitt to the European Press at Garmisch in February, Software-Defined Networking was a hot but little-understood topic. Since then “the walls of the city have shaken”, with industry giants such as Brocade, Dell, Extreme and HP all rolling out OpenFlow enabled switches, while the same topic has taken centre stage at Interop Las Vegas this May and again at Interop Japan in June.Even Cisco, the industry colossus with its feet firmly planted in the ‘propriety’ hardware-based model, has begun talking SDN. While challenging the ONF with its insistence that OpenFlow plays only a small role in the greater SDN picture – and muddying the waters with talk of distributed or hybrid control systems and “Northbound” interfaces – Cisco is, however, adding OpenFlow to its Nexus datacenter switches. Meanwhile Cisco’s initial $100M investment (which could grow to a massive $750M investment, according to John Chambers) in their new “spin-in” company Insieme, brings to mind the way the company reacted to storage networking and other challenges in the past…When the old order crumbles, some think its party time. But the fact is that the real struggle lies ahead – the struggle to establish the new order. Everyone is now talking SDN, but everyone has their own interpretation. That is why we have invited Dan Pitt, Executive Director of the ONF, the revolution’s main driver, to introduce this session by clarifying the issues, explaining the contradictions and outlining the key role of agreed specifications in turbulent times.We have some big players on our panel – no doubt they would each aspire to becoming leaders in this new SDN order – but they had better have a very strong case to convince our chairperson and audience.SDN has arrived – but which way is it heading?Panellists: Shehzad Merchant, VP of Technology, Extreme Networks; Ralph Santitoro, MEF Director and Cloud Focus Group Leader; Dan Pitt, Executive Director, Open Networking Foundation; Prodip Sen, Director – Network Architecture, Verizon Network and Technology; Rotem Salomonovitch, Director, IP Strategy Alcatel-Lucent | |
| 12:00 -1:00 pm | Lunch – Cowrie Foyer |
| 1:10 – 2:40 pm | Scheduled press & analyst meetings – Cowrie 1 |
| 2:40 – 3:00 pm | Coffee break |
| 3:00 – 4:00 pm | Scheduled press & analyst meetings – Cowrie 1 |
| 4:00 – 5:30 pm | ‘Open meeting’ time for informal networking. Press area also available for filing stories |
| 7:30 – 8:00 pm | Cocktail Reception sponsored by Iometrix |
| 8:00 pm | NetEvents Service Provider VIP Dinner |
Thursday July 26th
| 7:30 – 8:30 am | Breakfast, informal meetings and debate briefings |
| 8:40 – 8:45 am | Conference Introduction |
| 8:45 – 9:05 am | Keynote Presentation by Shehzad Merchant, VP of Technology, Extreme Networks BYOD – Challenges Faced by CIOs with the Network |
| Today’s networks are faced with an onslaught of challenges. From BYOD and security, to mobility and a collaborative workforce, and more broadly the consumerization of IT, these are all trends that are forcing CIOs to re-think their traditional approaches to managing IT. With these trends in the forefront, the network has a critical role to play in ensuring secure and safe access, a seamless user experience through rapid user, device and application onboarding, and managing cost through automation. This session will talk about these trends, how the network is evolving to address these trends and how Software-Defined Networking can play a role in this transition. | |
| 9:05 – 9:55 am | HEAD2HEAD Conference Debate Session IV-Virtualisation, Orchestration and Automation of the Datacentre Introduced and chaired by Casey Quillin, Senior Analyst, Storage Area Network & Data Center Appliance Market Research, Dell Oro Group |
| Casey Quillin has taken a new job. He will introduce himself as the CIO of a major international conglomerate, just raring to drag his business behemoth into the twenty first century. He already knows that virtuali sation holds the key to competing against the many more agile upstart companies snapping at his heels.But he cannot decide which route to take. If experienced guys like Amazon and Microsoft can’t avoid service outages, who can? And if giants like Sony and Google fall foul to such serious hacking, how can anyone trust the cloud?So he has invited each of four leading vendors to give a 3 minute ’elevator pitch’, explaining the benefits to his company, and the assurances, offered by their particular virtualization approach. The vendors have also just discovered that they are up against the competition and so have a double challenge – both to make a good business case AND to knock out the competing solutions. Can they manage that in 3 minutes? Your vote provides the answer.As CIO of this major international conglomerate Casey then grills the panel of vendors before he allows his industry consultants (a panel of analysts) to ask the vendors a few final probing questions. The consultants then confer before advising their decision as to which company they consider Casey should award this contract to and their reasons why.This contract is worth billions.Panellists: Ram Appalaraju, VP of Technology and Product Marketing, Enterasys Networks; Shehzad Merchant, VP of Technology, Extreme Networks; Rotem Salomonovitch, Director, IP Strategy Alcatel-Lucent; Carlos Rodríguez, responsible of Data Centre for LATAM, CiscoAdvisors: Nav Chander, Enterprise Telecom within IDC’s Worldwide Telecom Division; Peter ffoulkes, Research Director, Servers and Virtualization TheInfoPro | |
| 9:55 – 10:35 am | Conference Debate Session V-The Mobile Cloud & Security Issues Introduced by Jose F Otero, President, Signals Telecom Consulting Chaired by: Wayne Rash, Editor, in Chief, FierceMobileIT |
| Beware! Where a river flows into a tropical ocean, sharks will hunt. The most intense competition arises at the interface between great currents – and “Mobile” and “Cloud” are the two most dynamic currents in IT today.This rich new ecosystem promises exciting opportunities for service providers – where dumb pipe providers could evolve into multimedia impresarios with seventy percent of all mobile users anticipating use of cloud services and mobile video by 2013. But analyst data also uncovers the many risks and challenges awaiting the unprepared – not least of which is security among these shark-infested waters.Jose Otero will share the latest research data on the likely inroads into mobile cloud security – both technological and social weak points and what might be done to address them. Greater intelligence at the edge? New generation firewalls? More advanced real-time learning combined with deep packet inspection?How do we actually assess risk to an organization? With critical damage to an enterprise inflicted within milliseconds, automated security measures become essential, but how can we control them? Should we go for a unified threat management solution, or is it safer to confront invaders with a wild scattering of hazards?We have carefully selected our panel for their strong opinions on one or more of these questions. We have also instructed Wayne Rash to light the blue touch paper – but not to retire until the fireworks are over.Panellists: Jill Knesek, Head of Global Security – Professional Services, BT Global Services; Vik Davar, VP of Corporate Development, ClickSecurity; Jose F Otero, President, Signals Telecom Consulting; Jurrie van den Breekel, Director of Product Marketing, Networks & Applications Group, Spirent Communications | |
| 10:35 – 10:50 am | Coffee break |
| 10:50 -11:30 | Conference Debate Session VI – Ethernet’s growing role in the Cloud Introduced by Roopashree Honnachari, Program Manager, Business Communication Services – ICT, Frost & Sullivan Chaired by Bob Mandeville, President and Founder, Iometrix |
| While content providers and telcos scramble to build data centres offering comprehensive software, platform or infrastructure services, there still remains the question of how to deliver their Cloud services widely, reliably and securely to the client base.NetEvents Garmisch in February saw the launch of CE2.0 – allowing fast, easy management and monetizing of multiple classes of service, across multiple access technologies – fixed and mobile – and any number of interconnected networks en route. Armed with the new generation Carrier Ethernet, the service provider should break the shackles of dumb pipe provider, and become the active partner – the new media impresario.Five months on, and is this opportunity being realized? Or even understood? Roopashree Honnachari will introduce this session by summarizing the benefits of CE2.0 and suggesting how it might revolutionize current business models.Then, questions to the panel: who are the early adopters and how are they benefitting from CE2.0? What new services are emerging and are new business models keeping pace or even driving these advances? What challenges still remain, and how is the MEF addressing these challenges?In short: how is Carrier Ethernet fulfilling its promise as the strategic enabler of Cloud Computing?Panellists: Patrick Ostiguy, President & CEO, Accedian; Roopashree Honnachari, Program Manager, Business Communication Services – ICT, Frost & Sullivan; Ben Mack-Crane, MEF Technical Committee Cloud Project Editor; Huawei Technologies; Greg Gum, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Telco Systems | |
| 11:30 – 11:45 am | Conference Debate Session VII-Analysing the Analysts-It’s take-away time Introduced and Chaired by Manek Dubash, Editorial Director, NetEvents |
| We’ve come a long way from the new security landscape, SDN directions, to getting lost in the clouds – heard a lot of opinions, shared new ideas, debated hot topics. And we’ve had a great time too…So what are the key take-aways from this NetEvents? Which facts stand out? Whose opinions and predictions will stand the test of time? Which technologies cannot be ignored? There’s nothing quite like hearing the experts’ view on what really matters, so we invite key analysts onstage to briefly present their own distillation of Americas Press & Analyst Summit 2012.Panellists: Jose F Otero, President, Signals Telecom Consulting, Courtney Munroe, Group Vice President, WW Telecommunications, Mobility & Network Infrastructure, IDC; Peter ffoulkes, Research Director, Servers and Virtualization TheInfoPro | |
| 11:45 – 11:50 am | Close of conference sessions |
| 11:50-12:50 pm | Lunch – Cowrie Foyer |
| 1:00 – 3:30 pm | Scheduled press & analyst meetings – Cowrie Foyer |
| 3:40 pm | Close of event & departures |
