The panelists describe the development of new services from a cradle-to-grave perspective, explaining the role of App servers and how 3rd party development can occur. - What is the average time to bring a new service to market? - What roles do the vendors have to provide to the customer to complete the process?

Jon Arnold is Principal of J Arnold & Associates, an independent telecom consultancy with a focus on IP communications. Previously, he was the VoIP Program Leader at Frost & Sullivan, where he was responsible for managing their subscription service for Global VoIP Equipment Markets. Jon is a frequent speaker at VoIP and telecom conferences, and has been a regular at VON since 2001. He leads the IPCC's Working Group on industry research, and is a contributing editor to the IP Telephony Dictionary. Jon is frequently quoted in the business and trade press, and television, including BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, NYT, WSJ, Financial Times, and CNET News.

Eric Burger is vice president, chief technology officer for Next-Gen Communications for Brooktrout Technology where he is responsible for setting the technology direction for Brooktrout's current and future next generation products. Mr. Burger represents Brooktrout by participating on several industry standards forums including the IETF, IEEE and SIP Forum. Prior to joining Brooktrout, Mr. Burger co-founded SnowShore Networks where he served as Chief Technology Officer responsible for building real-time, Internet-centric, large scale, packet media processing servers. Mr. Burger has held several strategic positions in the communications industry, including chief scientist at ADC/Centigram Communications Corporation, where he led the development of Centigram's IP-centric architecture; and vice president of engineering for The Telephone Connection, Inc. (TTCI).

An accomplished telecommunications professional with more than a decade of experience, Harold Klett has served as Vice President, Product Management for Excel Switching Corporation since the company’s spin-out from Lucent Technologies in 2003. In this position, Mr. Klett is responsible for the continued evolution of Excel’s flagship product line – the Converged Services Platform (CSP) family of high-performance, carrier-grade open services platforms that have been deployed at thousands of service provider locations worldwide. Mr. Klett is also responsible for the definition and direction of Excel’s recently introduced Multi-Signaling Platform (MSP) 1010 signaling server for SS7 and IP networks.

Mr. Klett holds a BSEE in Telecommunications from the University of Connecticut, School of Engineering.

Piyush Modi, Senior Vice President, Engineering, is a leader in advanced speech processing technologies, platforms and applications. His 16 year R&D experience spans highly scalable/available telecommunication platforms, enhanced messaging, collaboration and communication services, and their integration with the Internet, digital signal processing, automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis. Piyush is responsible for the worldwide R&D organization that developed the industry's first comprehensive carrier grade enhanced services product portfolio.

Piyush holds several patents and has served on international committees driving speech processing standards/specifications, including SIP, SALT, SAPI and VoiceXML. Piyush earned his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University, MS in computer science at the University of Tennessee, and BSEE from IT BHU, India.

As VP of Partner Development and Chief Architect, Garland Sharratt managesConvedia's service architecture, standards, and partnering initiatives. Histelecommunications experience includes Bell-Northern Research (BNR) andNortel Networks and has covered PSTN switching, ISDN, AIN, PCS, packettelephony, and multimedia communications, in a range of business andtechnical capacities. Garland received a BASc in Electrical Engineeringfrom the University of Toronto and an MBA from the University of Ottawa.

Setting the telecommunications strategy for BEA and industry, Mr Tait Founded the JAINTM initiative defining Java™ technology for communications. He is responsible for the development and marketing of Java specifications and products into the telecommunications industry. He organized international standards, community, and user group meetings for creating standards and driving the communications market toward standard based interfaces, platforms, and protocols. At BEA, Mr Tait is driving Java platforms into Telecommunications with the Weblogic Communications Platform and he Weblogic SIP Server.