2025 Conference Agenda

• Board of Directors
• Technical Advisory Board
• Enterprise Leadership Council
• CEO Advisory Board

• Networking & Refreshments
• Innovation Station Demos
• Media & Analysts
• Sponsor Tables & Rooms

• Introductions
• Key GNE Takeaways
• Mplify Press Releases
• Sponsor Press Releases
• Q&A

Get in the game as we kick off GNE in style!

Join us for an unforgettable night of music, mingling, and momentum as DJ Kelly Hooper brings the energy and spins the beats. Let’s raise a glass to the start of something big—this is the party you don’t want to miss!

• Cocktails & Light Bites
• Sponsored Bars
• Vibes All Night Long

Emcee: Stan Hubbard, Mplify, Principal Analyst

Debika Bhattacharya, Verizon Business Group, CTO; Mplify, Board Chair
Franck Morales, Orange Wholesale International, Senior VP, Marketing & Business Development; Mplify, Board Member
Daniele Mancuso, Sparkle, Chief Marketing & Product Management; Mplify, Board Member

Ethan Blodgett, Lumen, VP Product Management

Pascal Menezes, Mplify, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

Introduction: Sunil Khandekar, Mplify, Chief Enterprise Development Officer

Securing a Massive Health Care Network – Managing Millions of IoT Devices
Dan Snyder, UPMC, Chief Principal Architect

Accelerating Network Operations with AI Ops – A Multinational Enterprise Perspective
Nabil Bitar, Bloomberg, Head of Network Architecture, Office of the CTO

Executives from Mplify’s Enterprise Leadership Council share how leading enterprises across various industry verticals are evolving network strategies for agility, security, and AI-readiness.

Jeff Hulse, Verizon Partner Solutions, President
Interviewed by Kevin Vachon, Mplify, Chief Operating Officer

Chad Townes, AT&T Partner Solution, Senior Vice President

Bob Victor, Comcast Business, Chief Solutions & Product Officer

Benjamin Vigouroux, Orange Business, VP Digital Infrastructure

Paul Gampe, PCCW Global, Chief Technology Officer

Moderator: Darius Singh, STL Partners, Director, Consulting & Enterprise Platforms Lead

• Franck Morales, Orange Wholesale International, Senior VP, Marketing & Business Development
• Salma Bezrati, Bell Canada, Director, Product Management – Network, Data Center & SD-WAN
• Antonella Sanguineti, Sparkle, Head of Marketing & Product Management – Networking, Cloud Security & Identity
• Shashi Kiran, Nile, Chief Marketing Officer

Service providers are reshaping enterprise networking and wholesale ecosystems with NaaS experiences that are on demand, observable, manageable, programmable, modular, flexible, and secure. This session will show how these attributes elevate the customer experience by simplifying consumption, enabling agility, and aligning networks with business outcomes. It will also highlight how providers are creating new revenue opportunities through innovative wholesale solutions that extend value across mobile and B2B markets. Strategic decisionmakers will gain insight into how NaaS is redefining competitive advantage by giving customers greater control over how they consume, manage, and scale their networks.

Sridhar Gollapudi, Google Cloud, Head of Partnerships & Telco Market Lead
Chetan Narang, Colt Technology Services, Principal Innovation & Strategy Manager

NaaS, reimagined for the age of Agentic AI: join Google and Colt as they set out their shared vision for the evolution of NaaS, enhanced with Agentic AI. The session will outline the shift from the current NaaS model focused on digital experiences to AI-powered, outcomes-driven NaaS, built on intelligence, automation, and autonomy. Get set for the NaaS evolution.

Emcee: Ray Mota, ACG Research, Chief Executive Officer & Principal Analyst

Silent Comet showcases how Agentic AI transforms NaaS by making it easier to design, order, optimize, and troubleshoot networks. Participating companies include Amartus, Colt Technology Services, and NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS.

More details about the Silent Comet Accelerator >

Moderator: Ray Mota, ACG Research, Chief Executive Office & Principal Analyst

• Christian Nascimento, Comcast Business, SVP Connectivity & Digital Customer Solutions
• Benjamin Vigouroux, Orange Business, VP Digital Infrastructure
• Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology Services, Vice President, Innovation 
• Henry Calvert, GSMA, Head of Network

As demand accelerates for GenAI, agentic AI, and edge intelligence, enterprises require agile, high-performance connectivity across cloud environments, data centers, and the edge. In this new era, AI agents tap into network APIs to request, configure, and optimize resources on demand. Modern NaaS solutions—built on standardized, validated service components and powered by LSO APIs—deliver programmable connectivity for real-time data flows, distributed inference, and federated orchestration. Join industry leaders as they explore how NaaS forms the foundation for deploying and scaling AI, accelerating insights, ensuring performance, and powering the intelligent digital economy.

Moderator: Sterling Perrin, Omdia, Senior Principal Analyst for Optical Networks & Transport

• Rob Ward, Lumen, SVP Global Engineering
• Paul Ruelas, Verizon Business, AVP NaaS Solutions, Product & Marketing
• Travis Ewert, Digital Realty, Global Head of Platform Development
• Srikanth Manthena, SingTel, Senior Solutions Manager

As AI adoption accelerates across enterprises, communications service providers are undertaking a historic transformation of their physical infrastructure to meet surging demand for bandwidth, performance, and agility. Driven by massive hyperscaler investment and rising enterprise adoption, SPs are re-architecting metro and long-haul networks as well as data center interconnects to support AI model training, real-time inference, and emerging AI-to-AI interactions.

This session explores how providers are building networks that deliver up to terabit-scale capacity, ultra-low latency, and intelligent programmability—the foundation for the AI-powered digital economy. Learn how 400G+ wavelength services, AI-optimized Carrier Ethernet, and standards-based automation through LSO APIs are enabling dynamic, performance-assured connectivity across distributed environments. Discover how transport and data center infrastructure are evolving to support hyperscaler builds, enterprise data movement, and the rise of federated, on-demand services.

Russell Kaplan, Cognition AI, President

What happens when an AI software engineer joins your dev team? Hear from the President of Cognition AI, the applied AI lab behind Devin, the world’s first AI Software Engineer. Backed by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel) and valued at more than $10 billion, Cognition AI has quickly become one of Silicon Valley’s hottest companies, bringing together some of the brightest minds in the field. This keynote discussion will explore how AI  is poised to reshape software engineering by driving IT innovation, accelerating digital infrastructure, and supercharging service velocity.

Tyler Menezes, CodeDay, CEO

As network infrastructure grows more complex and AI-driven threats evolve at unprecedented speeds, the tech industry must develop a new generation of engineers equipped for both innovation and defense. This talk presents a proven model for building AI-ready talent pipelines through open source contributions and structured mentorship programs. Learn how industry-academia partnerships can lower hiring costs, improve candidate quality, and produce graduates who onboard three times faster than traditional hires. Attendees will leave with actionable steps to address the skills gap and strengthen their organization’s security and innovation capacity.

• View demonstrations at innovation stations located throughout the main foyer at any time during the conference!
• Meet with customers at meeting tables and conduct business in private meeting rooms and suites.

Moderator: Daniel Bar-Lev, Mplify, Chief Product Officer

• Divesh Gupta, PCCW Global, Vice President, Professional Services & Technology; Mplify, Co-Chair of Test & Certification Committee
• Mark Bennett, Vodafone Business, Portfolio Lead Fixed Connectivity
• Samaresh Nair, Palo Alto Networks, Director Product Management
• Michael Kearns, Amartus, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
• Isabelle Morency, Mplify, Director, Product Management

Against the backdrop of surging demand for agile, secure, and automated services in the AI-powered digital economy, NaaS ecosystem certification programs are evolving to validate interoperability, performance, and security across Carrier Ethernet (CE), SASE (SD-WAN, SSE, Zero Trust), LSO APIs, and LSO-enabled product payloads.

Aimed at technology and service providers looking to accelerate onboarding into the NaaS ecosystem, this session highlights how Mplify certification helps demonstrate compliance with industry standards and benchmarks, enabling faster integration, stronger positioning, and preferred partner status. Hear directly from companies who have leveraged certification to build trust, enhance visibility, and drive commercial success across a scalable, federated NaaS environment.

Deepak Karpoor, Karagrey, CEO
Michael Kearns, Amartus, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer

Join friends and colleagues for the happiest hour of the day!  

Join us at the NaaS Excellence Awards Gala Dinner for an evening not to be missed as we present the 2025 NaaS Excellence Awards, honoring advanced services, ecosystem automation, and influential professionals!

Emcee: Erin Dunne, Vertical Systems Group, Director of Research

Moderator: Roy Chua, AvidThink, Founder & Principal

• Brian Washburn, Omdia, Chief Analyst
• Ghassan Abdo, IDC, Vice President Research, Worldwide Telecommunications
• Steve Thomas, Frost & Sullivan, Senior Industry Director-Network Services, Information & Communications Technology
• Gorkem Yigit, Analysys Mason, Research Director

Industry experts share insights on how AI, automation, and advanced security are redefining the NaaS market. Topics include the rise of automated supply chains for network services, market growth trajectories, emerging use cases, competitive shifts, and the enabling technologies shaping the future of an intelligent, secure, and federated NaaS ecosystem.

Dave Shacochis, Lumen, VP Connectivity Fabric Services

Like Bob Dylan’s momentous and innovative 1965 pivot to electric, telecom’s shift to cloud/multicloud marks a bold break from the bespoke, manual past. Both moves stirred controversy but ultimately unlocked transformative possibilities. In this session, learn how this seismic shift to cloud-based, agile, on-demand services empowers IT leaders to simplify operations, accelerate innovation, and capture new value.

Michael Kearns, Amartus, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer

One of the biggest challenges for NaaS is delivering highly complex multi-provider, multi-technology services without exposing customers to that complexity. In this session, you will learn how NaaS providers can overcome this barrier through a powerful combination of Agentic AI and MCP servers, the well-defined context of Mplify LSO APIs, and advanced B2B2X automation, unlocking a new level of customer experience that was previously out of reach.

Moderator: Stan Hubbard, Mplify, Principal Analyst

• Jay Turner, PCCW Global, Senior VP of Development and Operations
• Michael Kearns, Amartus, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
• John Nolan, Sage Management, Chief Executive Officer
• Diego Neto, euNetworks, Director, Digital Enablement

The evolution to NaaS is more than a technical shift. It’s a strategic journey requiring alignment across business models, partner ecosystems, and operational execution. Networks supporting NaaS must be API-driven—from the enterprise edge, across multiple provider networks, and into the cloud—with automation extending across the entire supply chain. All parties must adopt standardized processes and interface through LSO APIs—whether directly or via portals and adaptors—at both business and operational layers.

NaaS spans both retail and wholesale markets, creating opportunities for players of all sizes and service portfolios to participate in a plug-and-play ecosystem. This panel will explore how standardized service components, backed by Mplify certification and LSO APIs, streamline transactions and maximize ROI on automation investments for payloads such as Carrier Ethernet, Internet Access, SD-WAN, SASE, and emerging AI-centric networking services.

Moderator: Erin Dunne, Vertical Systems Group, Director of Research

• Franck Morales, Orange Wholesale International, Senior VP, Marketing & Business Development
• Daniele Mancuso, Sparkle, Chief Marketing & Product Management
• Fahim Sabir, Colt Technology Services, Director, Digital Solutions
• Ben Edmond, Connectbase, Founder & CEO
• Daniel Bar-Lev, Mplify, Chief Product Officer

With automated supply chains in place, the next step is connecting them into a federated ecosystem that expands service reach, interoperability, and customer choice. NaaS federation links retail and wholesale providers, data center operators, cloud platforms, and emerging satellite and space-based networks into a unified, API-driven environment.

This panel will explore how standardized LSO APIs, processes, certifications, and service components enable seamless multi-provider collaboration; create marketplaces for real-time, customizable services; and unlock new business models that monetize network assets more effectively. Discussion topics include ensuring performance and security across federated domains and enabling on-demand global coverage. Panelists will share practical insights into building the trusted, performance-assured backbone for the AI-powered digital economy.

Suraj Chandrasekaran, Palo Alto Networks, Regional VP, NetSec Solutions, WW MSP/MSSPs

Andy Foerstner, AT&T, Director, Edge, SASE & Wifi

Moderator: Greg Bryan, TeleGeography, Senior Manager, Enterprise Research

• Will Amores, AT&T, Director, Product Management & Development
• Ettore Pulieri, Sparkle, Marketing & Product Manager – Networking, Cloud, Security & Identity Solutions
• Yogesh Ranade, Palo Alto Networks, Sr. Director of Product Management, SASE
• David Kettle, Arqit, SVP Sales

As AI-driven threats accelerate and hybrid networks expand, enterprises need cybersecurity solutions that are consistent, interoperable, and future-ready. This session explores how standardized SASE, Zero Trust, and Security Service Edge components—combined with quantum-safe network services—are enabling secure, automated protection across global NaaS environments. Attendees will gain insight into emerging use cases, business models, and technology strategies that strengthen resilience and defend the digital economy at scale.

Robin Harwani, Amazon Web Services, Head, Telco Industry Solutions
Manoj Krishnan Nair, Wipro, General Manager, Communications, Media, and Networks, North America

Emcee: Rob Schult, TeleGeography, Research Director

Moderator: Grant Lenahan, Appledore Research Group, Partner & Principal Analyst

• Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology Services, Vice President, Innovation 
• Lorella Scalcione, Sparkle, Chief Information Officer
• Wenyu Shen, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Senior Manager & Principal Architect
• Ashish Khare, Wipro, General Manager and Global Head – Telco Enterprise Business and Industry Solutions

As NaaS scales, AI Ops is emerging as the control plane for experience assurance by combining observability, predictive analytics, and automation to prevent incidents, heal services, and protect SLAs across multi-domain networks. This session will explore how providers can leverage anomaly detection, AI-driven assurance, and closed-loop responses to enable self-healing and reduce MTTR. Speakers will share use cases such as SLA breach prediction, automated path re-routing, and capacity optimization, along with the API frameworks needed to drive actions across domains. Attendees will gain practical insights into how AI Ops is redefining service operations while advancing providers toward autonomous, experience-centric networks.

Moderator: Rob Schult, TeleGeography, Research Director

• Executive, Vodafone
• Niroop Kumar, Arelion, Global Product Manager
• Jonathan Chireix, Arista, VP N.A. Service Provider & DC Metro Sales

As the workhorse of digital infrastructure, MEF 3.0 certified Carrier Ethernet (CE) provides the high performance, uptime reliability, low latency, and scalability essential for the AI-driven, cloud-connected world. Widely deployed and automation-ready, certified CE sets the gold standard, empowering providers to unlock new revenue streams, accelerate service delivery, and provide foundational NaaS connectivity.

This session explores how CE services—scaling up to 100G—are transforming into monetizable, AI-optimized solutions capable of moving and synchronizing massive AI workloads, supporting deterministic latency for real-time inference, and serving as a trusted backbone for AI security and governance. Attendees will hear how providers are enabling dynamic, on-demand services through LSO APIs and operating seamlessly across automated, multi-domain environments. Industry leaders will showcase how certified CE solutions are powering the next phase of AI infrastructure and delivering tangible ROI.

Henry Calvert, GSMA, Head of Network

• Ted Wagner, Zayo, Global Lead, DynamicLink NaaS
• Eli Karpilovski, InsidePacket, Founder & CEO

Moderator: Stan Hubbard, Mplify, Principal Analyst

• Charlie Reed, ATLANTIC-ACM, Partner
• Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis, Founder & Director
• Caroline Chappell, CCSquared, Founder
• Ian Redpath, Omdia, Research Director Transport Networks and Components

• View demonstrations at innovation stations located throughout the main foyer at any time during the conference!
• Meet with customers at meeting tables and conduct business in private meeting rooms and suites.

Moderator: Stan Hubbard, Mplify, Principal Analyst

• Divesh Gupta, PCCW Global, Vice President, Professional Services & Technology
• Dominik Pacewicz, Amartus, Vice President of Product Marketing
• Jeremy Villalobos, Orchest Automation, Chief Executive Officer
• Speakers TBA

A growing ecosystem of tools and solutions is making it easier to automate business and operational transactions between buy- and sell-side partners using standardized LSO APIs and processes. This breakout highlights resources available through Mplify’s LSO marketplace, website, and members, including: an open-source LSO adaptor that converts proprietary APIs into Mplify-compliant APIs; LSO buyer and seller portals; developer guides for building and implementing LSO APIs; an LSO API blending tool that combines SDKs, APIs, and payloads; LSO solution providers offering pre-built, standalone API implementations that extend BSS/OSS capabilities; and BSS/OSS application vendors delivering software components that enable LSO business and operational functions. Rounding out the picture are Mplify’s LSO API Test and Certification programs, ensuring conformance and interoperability.

Attendees will leave with proven strategies and resources to accelerate onboarding, reduce integration costs, and expand service reach.

Celebrate the finale of GNE with cocktails and new connections.