As telecom infrastructures become commoditized and values move up in the value chain, operators, telecom manufacturers, and IT manufacturers are asking themselves how to ride this transition and the business sector at large is looking at what kind of resources they will be able to leverage for their own business. Platforms may be the new connectivity infrastructure in the future, where the word, platform, spans the area of application support, applications interoperability, service component support and delivery, and network resource access. Additionally platforms may become a fabric, extending from within the network to private networks and enterprise networks. They may become a strong ecosystems enabler. This panel will discuss how IT, telcos, and application providers will respond to these challenges.

Roberto Saracco Head of Future Center and Technical Communications Telecom Italia

Dr. Saracco is leading the area responsible for future trends and scientific communications at Telecom Italia. He is a senior member of the IEEE and vice president for the Sister Societies Relation. Dr. Saracco has been involved in many standardization efforts and is leading a group of foresight centers in the European Community Project FISTERA to identify technology trajectories in the next 15 years. Dr. Saracco graduated in computer science and has a degree in mathematics and a doctorate in elementary particle physics.

Chris Bray Telecoms Industry Solution Sales IBM Software Group

Mr. Bray is the industry solutions expert for the communications sector in northern Europe. Previously he ran the communications sector sales for IBM's Wireless e-business group. He was a leading member of the global IBM team that defined the services and offerings in the wireless sector and was an executive consultant in IBM's Telecommunications practice. Before IBM, Mr. Bray held senior management positions in two major U.K. telecommunications companies. He has an honors degree in mathematics from University College in London.

Sapthagiri Chapalapalli Client Director Tata Consultancy Services

Mr. Chapalapalli has been with TCS for the past 13 years, where he has worked on and managed multiple global programs, including many in consulting, covering business strategy, business processes, and systems. He has been associated with several large telecom relationships, including Tata Teleservices, Verizon, Qwest, and British Telecom. Mr. Chapalapalli has played multiple roles such as a business process specialist, a telecom BSS/OSS architect, and a relationship head. Mr. Chapalapalli has a bachelor's degree in management specializing in systems and a master's degree in management specializing in finance.

Denis Guibard Vice President, Innovation and New Ecosystems France Telecom

Mr. Guibard is in charge of developing, mainly through partnerships, new businesses adjacent to France Telecom-Orange core businesses. Prior to this position he was vice president of Videotelephony, CTO of the Fixed Services division. Mr. Guibard started off his career in R&D for satellite communications before moving on to heading the France Telecom R&D Strategy division. He then managed several innovative business development projects such as designing and deploying France Telecom's pan-European fiber-optic network.

JP Rangaswami Managing Director, HQ Service Design BT

Mr. Rangaswami is responsible for group operations as well as enterprise management platforms and Web technologies. He has extensive international experience and is passionate about delivering outstanding end-to-end customer experience. Mr. Rangaswami joined BT from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, where he served as global CIO, demonstrating recognized market leadership in the use of innovative tools and techniques. He is a compelling advocate for community-based open-source development methods and practices. He was named CIO of the Year by Waters Magazine in 2003, CIO Innovator of the Year by the European Technology Forum in 2004, and one of the top 10 CIOs on silicon.com's CIO50 list for 2007.

Hendrik Van De Velde Vice President, Product and Solution Management Belgacom EBU ai

Since December 2007, Mr. Van De Velde has been in his current role, which encompasses product, pricing, quality, and sales operations activities. He joined Belgacom in 1994 to be part of the team that introduced SDH in the network. In 1998, Mr. Van De Velde joined the marketing division as product manager for frame relay services. In 2001 he became responsible for the professional fixed data portfolio. In 2003, Mr. Van De Velde switched to international solutions and satellite. In 2005, he became responsible for the product management of the Belgacom fixed-line services, encompassing products such as IPTV, fast DSL Internet, and voice.