Events
2020 OIDA Executive Forum at OFC
09 March 2020
Held every year in conjunction with OFC, OIDA Executive Forum features C-level panelists in an informal, uncensored setting discussing the latest issues facing the industry and your business.
About
200+ leaders from top companies will discuss critical technology advancements and business opportunities that will shape the network in 2020 and beyond.
With four panel presentations, a Fireside Chat panel, a Keynote Presentation presentation by Elizabeth Rivera Hartling from Facebook and two networking events this is your opportunity to:
- Spend one full day with 200+ senior executives
- Connect directly with the decision-makers in the industry
- Participate in high-level networking
- Ask your challenging questions
- Leave with critical information
Attend on 9 March to learn from global leaders about their challenges and successes. Develop new relationships, nurture existing ones and form new business partnerships at OIDA Executive Forum.
Who Should Attend?
- Service Provider Network Executives
- Service Provider Technology Evaluators
- Data Center Managers
- Enterprise Network Managers
- Business Development Executives
- Communications Technology Development Managers
- Optical Systems Developers and Managers
- Core Router Developers
- Test Equipment Vendors
- Data Center Switch and Router Vendors
- Semiconductor Manufacturers
- Venture Investors
- Financial and Market Analysts
Join Executives from these Innovative Companies:
- II-VI, Inc.
- Acacia Communications
- ADVA Optical Networking
- Apple
- Arista Networks
- Blue Planet/Ciena
- Broadcom
- CableLabs
- Cisco Systems, Inc.
- Comcast
- Corning
- Edge Micro
- Go!Foton
- Huawei
- Infinera
- Intel Corporation
- Lumentum
- MRSI Systems
- Nokia
- Quantum Xchange
- Source Photonics
- Sterlite Technologies
- Telecom Italia
- Tencent
- Vapor IO
- Verizon Communications
Committee
- Heidi Adams, Executive Director, Network Infrastructure Research, IHS Markit
- Shamim Akhtar, Global Newtwork Architecture & Technology Strategy, Apple
- Becky Andersen, Executive Director of Research, LightCounting Market Research
- Frank Chang, Chief Engineer, Transceiver Design, Source Photonics
- Jörg-Peter Elbers, SVP Advanced Technology, Standards & IPR, ADVA
- Eve Griliches, Sr. Product Marketing, Optical BU, Cisco Systems
- Stephen Hardy, Editorial Director/Associate Publisher, Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report
- Natarajan ‘Subu’ Subrahmanyan, Principal, AO Asset Management
Schedule
| 7:30 - 17:30 | Registration Open |
| 7:30 - 8:30 | Breakfast |
| 8:30 - 8:45 |
Welcome Remarks & Opening Comments |
| 8:45 - 9:30 |
Featured Keynote Speaker: The Growing Facebook Network: Connecting the Planet Elizabeth Rivera Hartling, Facebook |
| 9:30 - 10:40 |
Panel 1: Will Open Optical Networking Change the Service Provider Landscape? Moderator: Stephen Hardy, Lightwave
|
| 10:40 - 11:10 | Coffee Break |
| 11:10 - 12:20 |
Panel 2: Network Automation: When Do We Get There? Moderator: Heidi Adams, IHS Markit
|
| 12:20 - 13:20 | Networking Lunch |
| 13:20 - 14:30 |
Panel 3: The Next Big Things – AI, Cloud Gaming, and AR/VR Moderator: Jörg-Peter Elbers, ADVA
|
| 14:30 - 15:00 | Coffee Break |
| 15:00 - 16:10 |
Panel 4: What is Going on at the Edge? Moderator: Shamim Akhtar, Apple
|
| 16:10 - 17:20 |
Fireside Chat: The View from the Top Moderator: Natarajan 'Subu' Subrahmanyan, AO Asset Management
|
| 17:20 - 17:30 | Closing Comments |
| 17:30 - 19:00 | Networking Reception |
Bandwidth growth for cloud providers continues to drive a new surge of subsea cable builds, driven by many factors, including Machine Learning and AI machine-to-machine interactions on a global scale. Continued efforts to get closer to the ever-impending Shannon's Limit have led the subsea industry to embrace the recent spatial division multiplexing “SDM” design strategy, charging towards petabit cables. Meanwhile, the open cables movement has moved beyond the sea into open global networks, simplifying connectivity and operations via integrated subsea & terrestrial networks.
Elizabeth Rivera Hartling, Facebook
Panel 1: Will Open Optical Networking Change the Service Provider Landscape?
While the use of open software and systems has now become commonplace in the data center world, communications service providers (CSPs) are still evaluating whether such an approach can meet their requirements for reduced equipment costs, improved service velocity, and greater innovation. Key technology vectors include disaggregation, virtualization, SDN, open source software, and contributed reference designs for hardware. Open organizations such as the Open Compute Project (OCP), Telecom Infra Project (TIP), and ONF, along with MSAs such as Open ROADM, are challenging and complementing the role of established standards bodies in driving such innovation into transport networks. Meanwhile, new hardware and software players see open networking as their opportunity to enter the CSP market.
This session will explore the prospects of open optical communications in the evolution of technologies and network architectures, and will highlight the progress of key open initiatives and actors across the components, hardware, and software ecosystems.
Moderator: Stephen Hardy, Lightwave
Speakers:
- Mattias Fridström, Telia
- Ron Johnson, Cisco
- Beck Mason, Lumentum
- Hans-Juergen Schmidtke, Facebook
Panel 2: Network Automation: When Do We Get There?
The potential benefits of software-defined networking and network functions virtualization (SDN/NFV) have been discussed for several years. Recently, the community has added artificial intelligence and machine learning to the equation – all with the idea of reaching a point where software-driven, intelligent networks can flexibly reconfigure, turn up new services, and repair faults with a minimum of human intervention. This panel will feature a discussion of where we are now on the road toward this networking nirvana, what technological hurdles still need to be overcome, and what it will take for network operators to fully trust their networks to an automated approach.
Moderator: Heidi Adams, IHS Markit
Speakers:
- Kailem Anderson, Blue Planet/Ciena
- Hwa-Jang Han, Verizon
- Kartik Sethuraman, NEC Corporation of America
- Anees Shaikh, Google
Panel 3: The Next Big Things – AI, Cloud Gaming, and AR/VR
Technology is progressing at a breakneck speed with the pace of innovation across silicon and optics accelerating over the last few years. FTTH, 5G, 400G and many other technologies are increasing bandwidth available to users and machines as well as lowering latency and improving availability.
This leads to a fundamental question – what are the new applications that will consume this bandwidth and help monetize these innovations? We believe the leading candidates are AI, cloud gaming and eventually AR/VR. AI requires massive amounts of I/O and connectivity between machines inside the datacenter and eventually with edge/IoT devices. Cloud gaming is the next frontier for the video game industry with cloud operators offering high-end PC style gaming on mobile devices. AR/VR aims to reimagine the entertainment industry and change the very nature of social interaction – now you really never have to get off your couch! These revolutionary and highly monetizable applications all have one thing in common: they require very large amounts of bandwidth delivered with low latency and very high availability and security
On this panel we have experts who will talk about key roles played by next gen communication technologies to enable these new applications.
Moderator: Jörg-Peter Elbers, ADVA
Speakers:
- Jason Hoffman, Mobile Edge X
- Dhiraj Mallick, Cerebras Systems
- Jan Söderström, Ericsson
- Ed Tiedemann, Qualcomm
Panel 4: What is Going on at the Edge?
5G, fiber access, and hyperscale cloud connectivity will impose new challenges on network operators. Emerging applications with stringent bandwidth and latency requirements will call for storage and computing resources closer to the network edge. 5G networks will quite possibly be the biggest opportunity in this space. A deployment at scale means that the network edge needs to become highly automated and virtualized while simultaneously keeping cost, space and power consumption under control. Above all, fiber will be the supporting infrastructure for enabling 5G. Fiber access networks need to continue to evolve, focusing not only on delivering higher speeds, but also on low latency and enhanced optical-wireless cooperation.
This panel will debate service requirements, network architectures, and the role of disaggregation and slicing at the network edge. It will address, but is not limited to the following topics:
- How will 5G and other trends drive fiber optic expansion and edge computing?
- How will edge computing nodes look like and where will they be located?
- What will be the prevalent optical metro access architecture: P2P, P2MP or a mixture of both?
- What will be the role of coherent optics in future optical access and aggregation networks?
Moderator: Shamim Akhtar, Apple
Speakers:
- Cole Crawford, Vapor IO
- Seungjoo Hong, SK Telecom
- Greg Pattine, Edge Micro
- David Welch, Infinera
- Glenn Wellbrock, Verizon
Fireside Chat: The View from the Top
The optical landscape has seen major changes over the last year, including a slowing in webscale spending, vertical integration by systems companies, and consolidation and disruptions caused by the trade war. The big questions from here are whether these trends are transitory or signal a fundamental change in the industry landscape.
This fireside chat features leaders from across the optical networking supply chain providing their unique perspective on a broad range of industry issues including:
- Market fundamentals in 2020 and over the next 3 years
- Cloud optical spend – back to secular growth or entering Phase 2?
- Industry consolidation and the factors driving it – vertical integration, economies of scale and cost synergies, and technology roadmaps
- Are the lines between system, module and component vendors blurring?
- Quo Vadis pluggables?
- Are we going to have separate supply chains for the East and West?
This will be an interactive session with plenty of opportunities for the audience to ask their questions.
Moderator: Natarajan 'Subu' Subrahmanyan, AO Asset Management
Speakers:
- Alexis Black Björlin, Broadcom
- Bill Gartner, Cisco
- Xiang Liu, Futurewei Technologies
- Alan Lowe, Lumentum
- Chuck Mattera, II-VI Incorporated
