The Scientific Committee

Peter Konings is Enterprise Networks and Managed Services for EMEA, LATAM and Canada at Verizon and brings with him more than 20 years of product managing IT and Telecom solutions for enterprise customers. In his current role he is responsible for managing the regional requirements for the Verizon global managed network services, enabling products for resellers in region and optimizing access solutions.   Since joining the company in 1998, he has headed up the Global Managed MPLS & Ethernet product teams, the managed services product team for Europe and the European & APAC Advanced Data team for Verizon.   Before this, he has worked as a product manager for data and internet services. Prior to this, Konings worked at Digital Equipment Corporation for the Belgium and Luxembourg region as a Product Manager for UNIX servers, messaging software and Year 2000.   Peter holds a master's degree in applied linguistics from the VUB- University in Brussels. He is based in Brussels.

Claudio Scola heads the Product Management team for CenturyLink and is responsible for go-to-market strategy and planning for network based services.   Claudio has over 25 years’ experience in the international telecommunications industry, spending the last 16 years bringing new products and services to market and growing them into key revenue streams for the business.   Prior to joining CenturyLink, Claudio served in various product related roles for Tata Communications, Level 3, Easynet, Interoute and Cable & Wireless, bringing Internet and network services to the international enterprise and wholesale market with particular experience in the European managed network services.  Claudio is British and based in CenturyLink’s EMEA regional headquarters in London.  

Professional Experience:
System as network Specialist for 10 years in Pirelli (1 year in Spain and 8 in Italy - Milan)
System and Network Specialist from 2 years in Interroll
Network Manager in Interroll since 3 years.

Within Orange Business Services, Franck is in charge of developing the portfolio of connectivity services to meet Orange Business Services customer needs. Since his appointment in 2013, he has developed an ambitious strategy around Hybrid Networks with Value Added Services, with strong evolution now towards SDWAN, Orchestration and Virtualization technologies.   With more than 30 years within the Orange Group (formerly France Telecom), Franck has extensive experience including 12 years in Mobile Business within Orange France. Franck has spent his all career facing business customers or managing strategic partnerships.   Outside his professional life Franck enjoys cultural activities such as Opera, especially Italian ones, and also loves the theatre. Sport also figures in his freetime, especially cycling, running, and skiing.

Chris has over 15 years of extensive experience in the Data Communication industry. He has worked as the Chief Marketing Officer in the SD-WAN field, R&D Manager, and System Architect, and led various teams to work closely for key customers and support global projects to offer innovation solutions.

Hector Avalos has over 25 years of experience in the computing, networking and telecommunications industries. He currently holds the position of VP EMEA Sales and Business Development at Versa Networks. His current activities are focused on “virtual CPE”, “Software-Defined WAN” and “Software-Defined Security” solutions for Service Providers and Enterprises.   Prior to Versa, Hector worked 4 years at Ericsson as “Head of technology, architectures, solutions and strategy”, and 9 years at Juniper Networks as “Technical Director”.   Hector possesses a BSc. in Computing Science from ‘UDLA’ Mexico.

Mr.Wim Henderickx is Director Network Consulting Engineering & PLM – Technology in the ION Division at Nokia, based in Belgium. Mr. Henderickx provides senior level consulting on advanced IP solutions for Service provider and Enterprise customers around: Cloud Networking (SDN/NFV), Triple Play, Mobile, IOT, etc.  He has over 20 years’ experience in the communications and networking industry, and is a regular speaker at technical conferences all over the world. He is active in a number of SDO’s like IETF, BBF, openStack, etc.   Mr. Henderickx holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Data Communications and a Masters degree in Economy and is a Bellabs Fellow.

Amir Zmora is CEO & Co-founder of SwitchRTC, a Real-time, interactive WebRTC based video CDN and B2B/B2C collaboration solution. Amir has been working for more than 15 years in the telecommunications industry with strong focus on VoIP and WebRTC.   For the last several years Amir is consulting companies in the fields of WebRTC and SD-WAN. Among his previous positions, Amir was VP Products & Marketing for the Technology Business Unit of RADVISION, an Avaya company, where he led the BU turnaround from low level SDKs to client solutions and complimentary products.   Amir is the author of TheNewDialTone and co-founder of WebRTCStandards.info and WebRTCIndex.

Dean Bubley is the Founder of Disruptive Analysis, an independent technology industry analyst and consulting firm. An analyst with over 20 years’ experience, he primarily specialises in wireless, mobile, and telecoms fields, with further expertise in certain aspects of the broader technology industry.  His present focus is on wireless technology, especially the evolution of mobile broadband, service provider business models, mobile device architecture & software, applications ecosystems and enterprise mobility. He provides clients with advice and analytical opinion on topics such as business models validation, technology innovation and go-to-market strategies, "addressable market sizing", planning and due diligence.

Janne Mikola is the Product Manager of Telia SD-WAN service at Telia Company. He has been responsible for the service’s technical aspects since, and even before, its inception in 2017.   Mikola is a Master of Science in Computer Science from Tampere University (of Technology) and he originally wrote his M.Sc. thesis on Software-Defined Networks when SDN was in its early days. Mikola sees virtualization, automation and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) as today’s most important principles in modern networking services. For the immediate future Mikola is looking forward to push Telia’s networks into the direction of Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics and possibly even true AI.   Mikola is an active participant in international and inter-organizational talks which define the future direction of SDN and NFV. Lately, Mikola has made appearances as a Guest Lecturer in academia.