ONUG Collaborative 2025 – Enterprise AI Buyers Guides for IT Decision Makers
Enterprise IT organizations are facing a host of AI adoption challenges, starting with how to build and operate trusted IT infrastructure for generative AI and agentic AI applications, but also how to leverage the power of generative AI and agentic AI to streamline and automate network, security and IT infrastructure operations. In 2025, the ONUG Collaborative is pivoting to new initiatives that will focus on enabling IT organizations to overcome these challenges.
The Collaborative provides a unique, unbiased forum for driving industry change, with its mission to empower enterprise IT organizations to break through technology adoption barriers and realize better outcomes. Collaborative projects unite industry leaders who work together on essential IT projects in which companies benefit by combining their collective knowledge and experience, rather than go it alone.
Project teams develop Enterprise Buyers Guides that document methods, advice, and scalable approaches for implementing solutions that satisfy enterprise use case requirements. Buyers guides also benefit the broader enterprise IT ecosystem by educating suppliers, who leverage this information for planning and designing products and services.
In this session, ONUG CTO Stephen Collins and ONUG Fellow Forrest Bennett will provide an overview of how the Collaborative works, the active project teams in 2025 and the benefits of participating. Interested IT professionals are encouraged to attend to learn more about getting involved and helping to shape the future of IT infrastructure for enterprise AI.
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.
Cyber Security Advisor with FedEx Services, Inc. My current focus is on securing SDN and hybrid-cloud workloads as FedEx moves towards digital transformation and away from traditional L3 networks and data centers. In my role as Cyber Security Advisor I am called on to consult on many IT projects across the various operating companies that comprise FedEx. I am the team leader for the Network Security team that is responsible for implementing micro-segmentation, security analytics, identity services, and Wifi intrusion prevention among other security platforms and initiatives. I currently hold active ISC2 CISSP and GIAC GSEC certifications and have been a guest speaker on network and cloud security at various conferences including Proofpoint Connect, VMworld, and Future:NET.
My background is 30+ years of experience as a Network Security Engineer / Network Manager / Network Engineer working in the IS/IT division of various companies which span half a dozen industries and government agencies.
