New to SDNCentral? Want to learn more about SDN and NFV? Interested in hearing from top vendors and organizations about new products and services? All of these are great reasons to visit our events page to register for more SDNCentral SDN and NFV events, including webinars, DemoFridays, and more. If you want to see what we’ve done in the past, check out our archives for DemoFriday and SDNUniversity.
The 10th Annual OPEN Forum will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California on Saturday, June 8th from 9 AM to 5 PM. It will feature a diverse panel of experts that will cover the future of Software Defined Infrastructure (SDN, NFV, and beyond). This one-hour long panel will convene at 11:30 AM and comprises excellent speakers from all corners of the Software Defined Infrastructure ecosystem:
Industry Analyst
Craig Matsumoto (West Coast Editor at Light Reading)
Craig Matsumoto covers software defined networking, routers, Ethernet, chips, and optical components for Light Reading, which he joined in late 2002. Craig brings a strong background in optical networking to the table and will bring the Service Provider and NFV perspectives to the discussion.
Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Startup
Awais Nemat (CEO of PLUMgrid)
PLUMgrid is one of the most talked about SDN startups in the Silicon Valley, even though they have been in stealth mode for over two years. Awais has previously worked at Cisco and D5 Networks, which he sold to Marvell Semiconductors.
Growth Startup
Howie Xu (VP of Engineering at Big Switch Networks)
Big Switch is a big proponent of the open source movement. They pioneered the most popular OpenFlow controller – Floodlight. Learn how Big Switch is affected by the new open source consortium, Daylight, which, incidentally, Big Switch is a member of. Apart from leading the engineering team at Big Switch, Howie also holds multiple patents in network virtualization and has worked at Cisco and VMware in the past.
VC
Luis Robles (Sequoia Capital)
Sequoia needs no introduction. Nor do 3COM, Arista, Blue Coat, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, or Ruckus, who are all in Sequoia’s portfolio. Luis has been a Venture Capitalist with Sequoia since 2010. The added value that Luis will bring to the table is that he has worked in Product Management at VMware.
Large Enterprise Networking Vendor
Dominic Wilde (VP of Product Management at HP Networking)
Did you know that HP offers the most number of OpenFlow-enabled switches by any single vendor? Dominic has played an instrumental role in helping HP earn the #2 spot in overall networking market share Many argue that SDN means the end of innovation in hardware. HP backs its own custom silicon for its SDN-ready switches and is a founding member of the Open Network Foundation.
Top Four Reasons to Attend this Panel Discussion:
- You don’t get time during the week to attend most networking events or discussions where industry experts speak because they are in the middle of the week when you have no time. This panel discussion at OPEN Forum is conveniently scheduled on a Saturday.
- The panel session has a broad spectrum of experts. From industry analysts to venture capitalists to stealth mode startups to growth startups to virtualization experts to large enterprise networking vendor, this panel session covers the gamut of the SDN/NFV ecosystem.
- For various reasons, you could not attend ONS 2013 or OpenStack Summit. Maybe your company couldn’t afford to send you, the conference was sold out, or you had other commitments. The event features speakers and other attendees who were present at ONS 2013 or OpenStack Summit 2013.
- It’s a fantastic opportunity to network with like-minded professionals who are either already immersed in SDN/NFV or are at the fringe. Over 500 people attend OPEN Forum conferences each year.
For more information, visit the OPEN Forum website.