Stephen Collins is Principal Consultant at 1024tm, a boutique consulting firm that serves leading-edge networking, telecom and cloud infrastructure companies across multiple segments of the enterprise IT and service provider markets. His clients range from startups to billion-dollar businesses, with projects typically involving a mix of business and product strategy, go-to-market planning, thought leadership, product marketing, business development and sales enablement.

Stephen has a proven track record of successfully introducing innovative products into highly competitive, rapidly growing markets, and he brings clients four decades of operational experience in a wide range of executive, product management, engineering, consulting, industry analyst and advisory roles, working primarily with communications equipment manufacturers and telecom software vendors.

In recent years, as a result of numerous client engagements, Stephen has developed a specialization in network visibility, Big Data analytics, full-stack observability and the application of AI and machine learning to drive network automation and service orchestration in complex, mission-critical service provider and enterprise IT infrastructure. He has applied this expertise to a diverse range of projects in 5G network analytics (NWDAF), Open RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) xApps and rApps, SD-WAN infrastructure, Internet visibility and cloud-native infrastructure observability.

Stephen was hired out of college by AT&T Bell Labs, where he worked in software development on T-carrier data communications systems. Leaving in search of a startup opportunity, he joined multi-protocol router pioneer Wellfleet Communications as a founding engineer, where he spent a hyperactive decade in the rapid expansion of the global internetworking market. Stephen then went on to co-found Spring Tide Networks, which developed an innovative IP service switch for service provider networks, culminating in an acquisition by Lucent Technologies for $1.5 billion.

As VP of marketing at Sonus Networks and later at Acme Packet, Stephen gained experience in service provider VoIP. At Tatara Systems, he was active in the formative years of the small cells market. At Active Broadband Networks, he was involved in applying software-defined networking to the development of a Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) router based on a white box switching platform.

Stephen has been a frequent blog contributor and speaker at industry conferences, and he has authored numerous articles for industry trade publications. He holds an M.S. in Computer, Information and Control engineering from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Andrew has over twenty-five years experience in telecommunications and networking, and has held executive management positions in Brocade, Juniper, Carrier IQ and Unisphere in network engineering, product management, strategy, sales and marketing.

Prior to joining IBM, Andrew was CEO of Lumina Networks, an open source networking vendor, focused on SDN solutions.

Originally from the UK, Andrew spent a decade in Asia, in Hong Kong and Tokyo, before moving to California in 2006.

Pranav is a VP of Products at F5, leading F5’s Distributed Cloud SaaS Platform. Pranav joined F5 through the Volterra acquisition where he led Product Management and was one of the first hires. At F5, Pranav leads a portfolio of products including Secure Multi-Cloud Networking, App Performance (GSLB, CDN, DNS), Edge Compute, Telco Cloud Platform, and SaaS Platform. Prior to Volterra, he led Connected Car Product Management at Jasper which was acquired by Cisco. Prior to Jasper, Pranav led Product Strategy and Optimization at PayPal helping drive improvements in the conversion rate for PayPal’s core checkout product. Prior to PayPal, Pranav led Corporate Strategy for Cisco’s Enterprise collaboration technology group. He holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, an MS in Computer Engineering from Purdue University, and a BS in Electronics Engineering from the VJTI, University of Mumbai. He was awarded six patents in the field of Internet Routing Technology. His research studies have been published in several publications including the IEEE Distributed Computing Systems and IEEE InfoComm. In his personal time, Pranav enjoys playing basketball, golf and badminton while coaching his daughters’ robotics team.

Justin van Schaik is a seasoned thought leader and subject matter expert on high-performance networks. He is an individual contributor on World Wide Technology’s AI initiatives and has over 30 years of experience in both generalized enterprise architecture and focused low-latency design.

Prior to joining WWT in 2013, he spent almost 20 years on Wall Street with various banks, hedge funds, and electronic trading firms. He is also a combat veteran and served in the US Army.

Justin is an empty-nester and is currently enjoying not driving his children everywhere. He also once managed to cut his thumb on a banana.