The SOFZONE Technology Theater, located right on the SOFNET exhibit floor, provides and ideal stage for 20-minute live presentations to be delivered to a captive SOFNET audience.

Please take time to visit the SOFZONE Technology Theater on Tuesday 29 April and Wednesday 30 April, 2008 to take in the following presentations.

13:30 – 13:50 Italtel SOFZONE Technology Theater Presentation

14:00 – 14:20 Who's watching? — Amplify your IPTV ROI by personalizing advertising, programming and the customer experience

IPTV offers the opportunity to forge lasting relationships with your customers and-more than ever-understand your customers' preferences and buying patterns. But to do so, you must readily and cost-effectively cull through volumes of data, make sense of it and disseminate actionable knowledge proactively and with great flexibility. This is especially true to be well-poised for one of today's most promising new revenue streams-targeted advertising.

Companies are making huge investments in IPTV. Those that effectively gather the right data and extract the right metrics to drive sound business decisions will be tomorrow's IPTV leaders.

Tony Gallacher, Hewlett-Packard
Tony Gallacher has worked with HP for 4 years concentrating on real-time billing and interactive applications. He has worked in the WW Open Call team, CME BDM team and also as an Open Call Sales Manager in the UK. The current focus is on HP BSS and BI products, supporting the new Central View initiative for BI Applications.

In his 20 years in the industry, Tony Gallacher has previously worked for Intervoice, as Product Director for Network Products, NYNEX Cable and Marconi.

14:30 – 14:50 Human Factors challenges for convergent services

This paper considers the development of convergent devices, services and content and the barriers that users may face in accessing and using them effectively. Six Human Factors challenges facing designers are presented. These include: functions fitting together comfortably, having a clear interaction model, minimising navigation, matching the context of use, meeting user expectations, and providing user support. Examples are presented covering mobile services, digital TV functionality, and social networking. Some recommendations are made for user-centred design techniques to address the challenges discussed.

Martin Maguire, Ergonomics and Safety Research Institute, Loughborough University
Mr. Maguire has a background in both computer studies and ergonomics and is an associate member of the Ergonomics Society and a Council member of the UK Usability Professionals Association. He joined the HUSAT (Human Sciences and Advanced Technology) Institute in 1983 and since 2002 he has been with ESRI (Ergonomics and Safety Research Institute). He has been involved in many EC and commercial projects to develop usability methods and tools, and commercial projects to design and evaluate user interfaces for websites, consumer products, TV services and public sector office systems. He graduated from Loughborough University with a BSc in Computer Studies and an MSc in ergonomics. His PhD was concerned with the design of human-computer interfaces for public information systems.

15:00 – 15:20 Customer Experience Transformation: Scenario Based Customer Service

Customer experience leadership is the next battlefield for communications service providers (CSP) considering converged services. To be successful, organizations must integrate knowledge scattered among disparate functional and operational units and deliver best-in-class customer support for converged IP-based services. CSPs must also introduce proactive and predictive capabilities for customer experience differentiation.

Mandeep Singh Kwatra, Partner and Practice Head, Consulting Solutions, Communications, Media & Entertainment Group, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Mandeep has several years of professional experience, working with telecom service providers and OEMs in advising them on transforming their operations enabling them for Next Generation Products/Services and optimizing their current cost base. He has helped telcos adopt a standardized process-driven culture for structuring their OSS/BSS landscape and operations. He is an expert in global sourcing strategies for processes and enables clients to derive exceptional cost-savings through non-conventional outsourcing. Telecom Customer Service Management is another of his fort. He is an NGOSS & eTOM® expert.

16:00 – 16:20 IMS and Web 2.0: Getting the Best of Two Different Worlds

Mark Diekmann, Hewlett-Packard Company, HP Software EMEA
Mark spent more than ten years of his career in telecommunications and IT. Mark is currently head of Business Development for HP OpenCall Software in Europe, Middle East and Africa. HP OpenCall combines all of HP's software assets in the telecommunication industry. Before taking on this role Mark served in various roles in Pre-Sales & Business Development for HP OpenCall Software. Prior to joining HP, Mark was Director of WW Product Line Management for Siemens Mobile Networks responsible for the Mobile Internet business. Prior to this Mark was Regional Sales Manager for Siemens-Nixdorf in the Asia-Pac region. Mark holds a Masters of Business Administration, Political Science and Law of Universtity of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and Duke University (USA).

16:30 – 16:50 Productising the benefits of SOA — Oracle Application Integration Architecture

Mark Reeves, Direct of Architecture, Communications and Media Communications Industry Solutions Group, CGBUOracle Corporation
Mr. Reeves has specialized in applying the latest software methodologies and technologies to derive business benefits for more than 20 years. He is an expert in enabling the adoption of SOA in the complex world of telecommunications service provider BSS/OSS environments and is an advisor to many companies around EMEA. He is a regular speaker and participant in various enterprise architecture working groups.

13:00 – 13:20 Building Marketplaces with Services Syndication

Traditionally, communications service providers have developed their services closely tied to the network infrastructures they own and positioned those services as unique and specific to their industry. A number of these services, like ordering, billing and QoS, have wider applicability and can be decoupled from the network environment and made available to a larger ecosystem of providers and enterprises through syndication. This session will discuss consistent, flexible and cost effective ways to mass commercialize new products and services across service providers from all industries and present a model for the new value chain. The resulting marketplace could vastly expand the universe of services readily available to users, driving accelerated use and adoption.

Michel Burger, Service Architect, Server and Tools, Microsoft Corporation
As the service architect for the Server & Tools division at Microsoft, Michel Burger is responsible for defining the long-term vision and architecture for software as a service and service delivery solutions. More specifically, Burger focuses on developing the technology that delivers the core enterprise-class capabilities of Microsoft software as hosted business services.

Burger joined Microsoft in 2004 as chief architect for the Communications Sector, a sales vertical responsible for solutions targeting telecommunications companies, hosting service providers and media & entertainment organizations. In this role, Burger defined the technical strategy for the Communications Sector, including its Telco 2.0 vision. He also invented Microsoft Connected Services Framework, a service delivery platform that has been deployed by over 30 communications organizations, including the top telecommunications operators, media companies and content providers.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Burger was chief technology officer at Embrace Networks and director of innovation at Sapient. He also spent 12 years in various technology roles at Nortel Networks, including Web technology pioneer. In addition, Burger has been granted three published patents on various technologies.

Burger was recently reelected to the board of directors for the TeleManagement Forum, a leading trade association for telecoms, media and information services. He has spoken at a number of industry events, including 3GSM, CTIA, NXTcomm, and TeleManagement World.

Burger holds a master's degree in science and engineering from the Grenoble Institute of Technology in France.

13:30 – 13:50 Who's watching? — Amplify your IPTV ROI by personalizing advertising, programming and the customer experience

IPTV offers the opportunity to forge lasting relationships with your customers and — more than ever — understand your customers' preferences and buying patterns. But to do so, you must readily and cost-effectively cull through volumes of data, make sense of it and disseminate actionable knowledge proactively and with great flexibility. This is especially true to be well-poised for one of today's most promising new revenue streams-targeted advertising.

Companies are making huge investments in IPTV. Those that effectively gather the right data and extract the right metrics to drive sound business decisions will be tomorrow's IPTV leaders.

Tony Gallacher, Hewlett-Packard
Tony Gallacher has worked with HP for 4 years concentrating on real-time billing and interactive applications. He has worked in the WW Open Call team, CME BDM team and also as an Open Call Sales Manager in the UK. The current focus is on HP BSS and BI products, supporting the new Central View initiative for BI Applications. In his 20 years in the industry, Tony Gallacher has previously worked for Intervoice, as Product Director for Network Products, NYNEX Cable and Marconi.

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14:00 – 14:20 Benefits of Control Based Routing in an Open Chassis Environment

This session focuses on the evolution of networking from standard IP header based routing to flow based routing and now to incorporating content based criteria. With the proliferation and rapid growth of bandwidth hungry Web 2.0 applications, service providers need advanced tools to analyze and manage their networks. In contrast, stand-alone firewalls are becoming less effective due to the overuse of port 80 for many different kinds of traffic. Additionally, the economics of open blade based solutions for building next generation IP infrastructures will be described. Their attendant lower CAPEX and OPEX and quicker time to new service delivery will be explored.

Peder Jungck, CTO and Founder, CloudShield
Peder is a serial entrepreneur, networking industry visionary, and IT executive who has pioneered high-speed content-based networking and security systems to meet the needs of government, carriers, and large enterprises. For more than 20 years, Peder has helped these organizations simplify and streamline the deployment and management of their large-scale, complex networks. Peder is the founder of CloudShield and architect behind the company's CS-2000^TM Network Applications Server and RAVE^TM, CloudShield's unique and powerful packet processing development language. Previously as CTO of yesmail.com, Peder helped guide the company to a successful IPO and subsequent acquisition by CMGI.

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16:00 – 16:20 IMS and Web 2.0: Getting the Best of Two Different Worlds

Mark Diekmann, Hewlett-Packard Company, HP Software EMEA
Mark spent more than ten years of his career in telecommunications and IT. Mark is currently head of Business Development for HP OpenCall Software in Europe, Middle East and Africa. HP OpenCall combines all of HP's software assets in the telecommunication industry. Before taking on this role Mark served in various roles in Pre-Sales & Business Development for HP OpenCall Software. Prior to joining HP, Mark was Director of WW Product Line Management for Siemens Mobile Networks responsible for the Mobile Internet business. Prior to this Mark was Regional Sales Manager for Siemens-Nixdorf in the Asia-Pac region. Mark holds a Masters of Business Administration, Political Science and Law of Universtity of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and Duke University (USA).