NaaS Project – ONUG Collaborative Update
The goal of the ONUG Collaborative NaaS project is to generate actionable outcomes and deliverables that will inform the decision-making processes of enterprise IT networking leaders who are evaluating, procuring and implementing network-as-a-service offerings. In 2023, the project team explored and documented the definition of NaaS, articulated the benefits of adoption by large enterprises and outlined the high-level requirements common to all NaaS use cases. In 2024, the NaaS project has been delving into leading NaaS use cases, such as multicloud networking and branch site connectivity, calling out the key business and technical requirements that NaaS adopters need to consider when evaluating alternative solutions.
Attend this session to learn how the ONUG Collaborative is enabling NaaS adoption by providing resources that IT networking teams will utilize to develop their NaaS strategy and engage with communications service providers to ensure that the network delivers maximum business value for all stakeholders. Project team leaders will discuss 2024 project goals and provide an overview of specific outcomes and deliverables.
Robert (Bob) Wysocki is the Client Solutions Leader for IT Networks and Cybersecurity. His
responsibilities include driving innovation, incubating emerging technologies, and enabling
customers to deploy key digital technologies for rapid business and operational transformation.
Bob is a seasoned IT evangelist with over 30 years of industry experience, gained at Fortune 20 as
well as start-up organizations. During his 16 years at General Electric (GE), as an executive in
Corporate Shared Services IT, he drove strong business results in numerous disciplines of
procurement, product management, engineering, operations, and financial management. Bob led
the initial services definition of infrastructure for GE’s Predix Cloud platform and most recently
played a key role in executing GE’s transformation of Edge Networking to enable their cloud-first
strategy. Before GE, he also led technology and engineering leadership roles at Pilot Network
Services and AT&T, architecting solutions with the commercial value of $1 Billion. A recognized
industry leader, Bob most recently co-chaired the ONUG Hybrid Cloud Working Group for which
he received an award at ONUG Fall 2017 for leading the engagement of Cloud Services and
Container Orchestration Providers to embrace enterprise IT requirements of their services.
Bob graduated from Georgia Tech and holds a Masters in Computer Engineering from the
University of Central Florida.
Zaheer is a distinguished technology leader with over 25 years of experience in networking, security, and cloud. He currently serves as the Services Incubation Lead for SASE and SDWAN at Cisco Customer Experience, having joined the company through its acquisition of Viptela. Zaheer is a recognized expert in his field, having authored two books – “Cloud Scaled Cisco SD-WAN Solution” and “Troubleshooting IP Routing Protocols” – and holding multiple patents. He is a frequent speaker at leading industry events such as ONUG and CiscoLive, where he shares his insights on the latest trends in networking and security. In addition to his professional achievements, Zaheer is also a passionate coach and mentor, helping to develop the next generation of technology leaders. When he’s not working, Zaheer enjoys playing cricket and ping pong, and spending time with his family.
Ken Patel brings over thirty years of experience as an Associate Fellow at Verizon Business Global Solution, guiding sales and product for the deployment of Network as a Service (NaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions. He balances the needs of enterprise customers with the curation of an enriched roadmap of ‘as a service’ solutions with security, AI/ML automation, orchestration, portal and deep insights. These services are provided to Enterprises such as Walgreens, Cintas, JetBlue, Johnson Controls, Xerox, numerous Fed/Gov agencies with a managed end to end digital supply chain with proactive monitoring and digital experience management of users/devices. His expertise revolves around advanced network and security technologies such as NaaS, SASE/SSE, SDN, MPLS/Internet/5G, Private 5G, Multiaccess Edge Computing, PaaS and IaaS, with a focus on migrating global customers from legacy to an automated real time enterprise environment with a multitude of partner technologies.
