KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Roberto Saracco
Director-Marketing and Communications, Telecom Italia, Italy

The Future of Communications:
Managing What? Managing How?

Abstract: We used to live in a technology-driven evolution. In that framework, we invented the OSI model and the TMN architecture, we dreamed of a unified network, the ISDN, and we pursued the dream of broadband for everyone, anywhere.

In the last decade more and more people have started to talk about a shift from technology push to market pull. However, in the next few years we are going to see a mutual interplay of these two evolutionary forces, thus creating a tremendous variety of solutions, architectures, paradigms.

The dream of a unification, call it ISDN, broadband or UMTS is over. Physicists and engineers working on unifying architectures are being overrun by physicists and engineers creating new approaches that apply mixes of old and new technologies.

And along with the dream of unification goes the dream of a unified management architecture, of seamless end-to-end service management and of standardised management interfaces.

Unheard of questions like "Managing What?" are starting to surface. And the question "Managing How?" is drawing new answers. This talk is intended to intensely challenge the audience, casting strong doubts and stimulating divergent thinking.

Bio: Roberto Saracco graduated in Computer Science has a University degree in Mathematics and a doctorate in Elementary Particles Physics. He was involved in Software Design for the first Italian SPC systems in the 70ies. Since the middle of the 80ies he led research activities in Telecommunications Management in CSELT, the research centre of the Telecom Italia Group.

He has been directly or indirectly participating in a number of international standardisation organisations including CCITT, OSI, ETSI and T1M1. He chaired the group at EU level for planning European research activities in the area of software technologies and the EURESCOM group designing the framework for European co-operation on TMN. He has led the EURESCOM group on Information modelling for Pan European Services and Network Management. He served as member of the Advisory Board of the Journal on Network and Systems Management, and chaired the Committee on Network Operations & Management in 1994-1996 and the Committee on Enterprise Networking in 1996-1998 of the IEEE Communications Society. Since 2000 he is Director of Marketing for COMSOC and Member of the Board.

In 1996-97 he chaired the Visionary Group on Super Intelligent Networks to steer the cooperative research at EU level beyond year 2000 and contributed to outline scenarios of telecommunications in the year 2010 within the cooperative European framework of AmI (Ambient Intelligence).

In 1999 and 2000 he proposed and carried out a World Bank project in the InfoDev framework to foster entrepreneurship in Latin America countries.

Since 1994 he is head of the Marketing & Communications area in CSELT. He has published over 100 papers in Journals and Magazines, four books –the latest "The disappearance of Telecommunications" is published in the USA by IEEE- and several articles in the scientific section of daily newspapers. He has been giving speeches and keynotes at many international conferences. At several stages in his career he taught at Universities in Italy and abroad on the subject of Telecommunications, Innovation and Network Economy.

 

Ira Machefsky
General Partner of Odeon Capital Partners, USA

A Brief History of Venture Capital in Internet Time:
The Recent Past, Present and Near Future
of High Tech Venture Capital

Abstract: Private equity markets have just gone through an extraordinary period when anything seemed possible, and money was available for almost every idea. In the current straightened circumstances, no idea seems good enough to fund, and some VCs are even declining offers of capital to invest. Where will this lead the venture industry, and what will it mean to you as you try to raise new rounds of capital for your existing companies or get new companies off the ground? When public markets get burned by acting like venture investors, throwing money at companies with little revenue, no profits, and questionable business models, it won't be long before private markets act like public investors, insisting on profitability and "traction" even in early stage start-ups. The upshot could well be a period of venture drought that strangles promising start-ups before they have time to mature.

Bio: Ira Machefsky, General Partner of Odeon Capital Partners. Prior to joining Odeon, Ira was Vice President and Senior Analyst at Giga Information Group where he covered the Internet, electronic commerce and security technologies markets. Ira is a frequent speaker at conferences, commentator in the media as well as a published researcher. Ira worked at Digital Equipment Corporation from1978 to 1996, where he served in a number of capacities. The most interesting and important of these was a period of more than a decade, beginning in 1984, managing Digital's West Coast University Research Program. In this research program, Ira was responsible for managing the investment of over $50 million in many university projects in the areas of chip design, storage systems architecture, computer architecture, databases, high-speed networks and communications systems. Included in these research projects were successes that led to start-up companies such as MIPS Computer, Illustra Software and Cisco Systems. Ira has a BA and MA from the University of Chicago in Philosophy and the History of Ideas. He currently serves as a director for eMaiMai, Eb2x, and GoShip.

Odeon Capital: Odeon Capital Partners, LP is a private equity limited partnership formed with the express purpose of offering capital and talent to information technology companies that share a common vision for creating markets and wealth in the networked economy.

David Thompson
Vice President, Windows Server Product Group, Microsoft, USA

Managing the New Internet Environment

Abstract: Traditional server and datacenter environments have focused on scaling up - big boxes with lots of processing power and clearly defined management boundaries. Meeting the dramatic and dynamic demands of Internet scale means addressing new challenges - managing complex services with "scale out", as well. In this environment, services may be confined to the domain of a single customer, or as wide as the "pool" of customers of a Service Provider. Processing and managability must rapidly expand or shrink, depending on the needs of the businesses, time of day, and other factors. What are the key challenges and opportunities in this environment? How are availability, reliability and security maintained and managed when competition is "just a click away"?

Bio: David is responsible for the Windows 2000 Server product line. He joined Microsoft in 1990, initially working on the Lan Manager product line. Later that year, he moved to the NT development team and formed and led the Networking group. Since that time, he has been responsible for a variety of distributed system technologies in 5 releases of NT, including Active Directory, moving from Development Manager to Director to General Manager. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, then later at Concord Communications as Director of Software Development. David has had responsibility for the Windows Server Product since April '99. He is originally from New Jersey and graduated from Cornell University with Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Engineering.