Tuesday, 30 November 2004 • 10:30 – 12:00

Jack Jachner, Alcatel, USA
Abstract: User Centric Communications
Following the recent convergence of voice and data transport, the next convergence is of voice and data in applications focused on the user experience, rather than on the device or on the network. These User Centric Applications aim to deliver more diversity but also more simplicity. What users want is access to more services, across more devices, but also want a simple experience, where the network orchestrates, the experience dominates, and which is device agnostic. In the Enterprise, CIOs, employees and customers each can benefit from a convergence of the telecommunication and IT applications. User Centric Applications provide an interface to information systems, which is intuitive, user-friendly, and context aware. This session discusses the promise, the enabling technology, the business opportunities, and illustrative examples of these converged applications.

Bio: Jack Jachner is currently with Alcatel Research and Innovation as Senior Director leading the IT-Coms initiative, focused on Convergence of IT applications and Communications. While at Alcatel, Jack has served as CTO for North America for enterprise Communication Servers, responsible for engineering groups supporting the OmniPCX enterprise IP telephony product in North America.
Jack has a Doctor of Science in Digital Signal Processing and a Master of Science in Data Networking both from MIT, and a Bachelor of EE from McGill University. With over 20 years in Telecommunications R&D, he has implemented VoIP in Xylan data switches, implemented wireless basestations for Tellabs, researched signal identification and detection for DoD at AAEC, and researched vocoders for Bell Northern Research.
Speaker: Tim Ozugur, Alcatel, USA

Bio: Timucin Ozugur received the M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1995 and 1993, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 2000, all in Electrical Engineering. He is currently a manager in Research and Innovation Center at Alcatel, Plano, TX, leading a user-centric applications group. Prior to his current position, he worked at Nortel Networks, Richardson, TX, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, and Lucent Technologies-Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ. He has been actively involved in several journals and conferences as a reviewer. He was the Guest Co-Editor of Kluwer Photonic Network Communications. He has published over 35 articles in journals and international conferences. He also holds one U.S. patent and over 25 patent applications pending. His current research interests are session initiation protocol, user-centric applications and mobile networking. Dr. Ozugur participated as a Local Chair in OptiComm'2003 and Publicity Chair in BroadNets'2004, and as a TPC Member in IEEE IPOM 2002, IEEE INFOCOM 2002-2003, IEEE ICC 2003-2004, and IEEE GLOBECOM 2003. He was the recipient of NATO Scholarship Award in 1995.

Talk Title:  Towards a User-Centric World
Abstract: The face of communications is changing as service providers increasingly offer personalized services that are tailored to the needs of individuals. The framework that will enable this user centricity depends on various elements, such as presence and preference of users in order to deliver new user-centric services across domains, networks and devices.
Speaker: Henry Sinnreich, MCI, USA

Bio: Dr. Henry Sinnreich is Distinguished Member of Engineering at MCI. Operating in more than 65 countries, the company is a premier provider of facilities-based and fully integrated local, long distance, international and Internet services. Dr. Sinnreich has held at MCI various engineering and executive positions working on lightwave systems, digital crossconnects, lab testing and vendor product evaluation/integration and in telephony switch systems engineering. Dr. Sinnreich has worked on Internet and web services since 1993 and has initiated multimedia and voice projects based on standards developed in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), where he is an active contributor, having authored several IETF drafts.
Dr. Sinnreich has received the award of Pioneer in Telephony at the June 2000 Voice On the NET conference, VON Europe 2000 in Stockholm.
Dr. Sinnreich is a founding member on the board of directors of the International SIP Forum based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Dr. Sinnreich is frequent speaker at various conferences and his book "Internet Communications Using SIP" co-authored with Alan B. Johnston published by John Wiley is considered the reference on IP communications. Dr. Sinnreich has been recently featured on the cover page of the VON Magazine as the 'Godfather of SIP'.
Henry Sinnreich is a contributor to the SIP based MCI Advantage flagship service design and is currently working on new features to extend the reach and appeal to customers of MCI Advantage.
Henry's current focus is on extending MCI IP communications beyond VoIP to mobility services, IP based presence, instant messaging, multimedia and using the SIP events architecture to integrate communications and IT applications for the enterprise market. Henry is also going back to his roots as a microwave radio engineer by participating in the MCI evaluation and planning of new mobile services.

Talk Title: SIP Beyond VoIP
Abstract: Though most Internet communications based on SIP are now dedicated to voice, the real potential is beyond VoIP for such applications as mobility, context aware communications (presence, IM, location services), the integration of communications with application, contact centers, ENUM and security based on SIP identity and other. NAT and firewall traversal are also discussed in the light of services beyond VoIP.

Speaker:   Shadman Zafar, Senior VP Verizon, USA

Bio: Shadman Zafar is Verizon's senior vice president of Architecture and eServices, with responsibility for creating new-generation communication services and enterprise system architecture. Prior to this position, Zafar was chief technology officer and senior vice president for Verizon eBusiness leading both technology and design for Verizon online services.
Prior to the merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic that created Verizon, Zafar was assistant vice president E-Commerce - Enterprise Systems with GTE where he worked in close partnership with national marketing and business groups for fast and focused delivery of GTE's e-commerce capabilities. He also held the position of director-Enterprise Systems Architecture Design and Planning.
Zafar began his GTE career in 1994 as a technical staff member where he held positions responsible for the application and deployment of several major projects. Zafar received GTE's Leslie H. Warner Technical Achievement Award in 1997.
Zafar holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science from Ohio Wesleyan University. Zafar is active in web research groups nationally and internationally, including IEEE and WWW consortium. He is currently researching sociological impacts of emerging technology trends on contemporary society.

Talk Title: Transforming The Communications Experience
Abstract: