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.