Director, VES Product Marketing, Strategic Enterprise Networks

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Danny Johnson is Director, Product Marketing for Network Services at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. With over 13 years at Verizon in a variety of technology and marketing positions, Mr. Johnson’s current focus is to grow Verizon's revenue base across its Enterprise and Government sectors with the Verizon Intelligent Network Services portfolio. His responsibilities include program and campaign creation/design, internal and external portfolio messaging, brand awareness, offer creation and advertisement, and thought leadership. Mr. Johnson has a degree in Electrical Engineering from George Mason University in Virginia where he currently resides.

Founder, Partner & Principal Analyst

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Patrick has 25 years of experience in the data networking and software industry. He has consulted and advised telecommunication companies in Europe, Asia, and North America. He is founder and Principal Analyst at Appledore. Prior to starting Appledore, Patrick co-founded OSS Observer in 2003 which was acquired by Analysys Mason. He was Research Director for Analysys Mason responsible for managing all software programs. His area of focus includes NFV Orchestration and Management, Analytics, Customer Experience Management, Cloud Computing, and M2M. Patrick is a frequent speaker at telecommunication conferences, client customer events, and is quoted frequently in industry trade publications.

Virtualization Standards Manager

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Stephen Fratini is Virtualization Standards Manager at Ericsson and is an industry leader in the area of Operations Support System (OSS) interface design. Mr. Fratini is currently responsible for covering virtualization standards and developing associated patent ideas. He was previously responsible for Telcordia’s standards strategy as part of the Chief Strategy Office and was a Distinguished Fellow of the TM Forum. Mr Fratini has a PhD in Mathematics, and had a brief career teaching Mathematics before entering the telecommunications industry.

CTO, Media and Telecommunications Industry

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Eric Troup is CTO for Worldwide Media and Telecommunications Industry, Microsoft Corporation. As an industry technology strategist, Mr. Troup is responsible for a growing ecosystem of industry solutions for customer and resource management, data analytics, media delivery, service orchestration across cloud platforms, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software Defined Networks (SDN) and device management. He held a variety of leadership positions in the U.S. Army before joining NYNEX (now part of Verizon) in 1985. He held management positions at Unisys and Cap Gemini before coming to Microsoft Consulting Services in 2004. Mr. Troup earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree from USMA at West Point, received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Utah and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.  He was the first individual recipient of the NYNEX Chairman’s Award and a Distinguished Fellow of the TM Forum.

Senior Director of Product Management

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Lance Uyehara is Senior Director of Product Management at Dali Wireless and is responsible for the overall management of Dali’s wireless product portfolio.  Technologically rooted in Digital Signal Processing and Communication Theory, Lance has over 25 years of experience in all facets of product development from technology incubation to commercial product release.  Prior to joining Dali in 2016 Lance held senior engineering management positions at CommScope, TE Connectivity, ADC Telecommunications and LGC Wireless.  Lance holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Oregon State University.

Head of Product Development

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Anand Thummalapalli is Head of Product Development at gen-E Technologies. He has twenty plus years of software industry experience and focuses on Telecom and Enterprise software start-ups in the recent years. Anand joined gen-E from CommScope where he was responsible for Device Management System which manages millions of small cells. He started his career at Metrica when it first launched the Network Performance Management Solution for wireless carriers. He was a key player and was involved in the development of the solution and closely worked with customers to implement the solution for both Wireless and Wireline industries. Metrica with over 200 plus wireless and wireline customers was acquired by ADC. At ADC the initial focus was to manage the delivery of solution for new customers with multiple million dollar contracts. Anand has held a number of senior positions within ADC in the professional services, sales and product management departments while developing key relationships with strategic partners and customers such as Accenture, Cisco, Nortel, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, etc. Anand founded Inkrea a company focused on intelligent mobile collaboration platform for CSPs and HealthCare. He strategized the company’s vision and developed the business for 5 years. Inkrea was acquired by CHR Solution based out of Houston, TX. At CHR he led the product management and development groups. He led these organizations to be more Agile and helped bring new solutions to the market like the brand new “lead to cash” telecommunication solution. Anand holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Connecticut, USA and Bachelors of Engineering from University of Mysore, India. He is member of various professional organization and mentor/investor for various start-ups.

Managing Editor

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Susana Schwartz is Managing Editor of Pipeline and has been writing about emerging technologies for 20 years. Previously she was Technology Editor of Telestrategies' Billing World & OSS Today, as well as Connected Planet Online's OSS/BSS, Data Center and Cloud Computing beats. She also helped spearhead TM Forum's Research & Publications and served as a Marketing Manager in its Collaboration Programs.