Nidal Abou-Ltaif is one of the regions most respected and celebrated ICT and business leaders, known for his unmatched track record of success, enormous love of people, fierce passion for winning, and desire to help governments and businesses use technology to make a real difference in people’s lives.

In 2003, Nidal joined Avaya as the regional sales leader for the ME. He began a journey of rewiring the business by building a winning team & go-to-market strategy from scratch. He has been instrumental to transform Avaya from a niche voice/IP telephony player to become a business communications powerhouse by market share in the region in Contact Center, UC & Infrastructure businesses across verticals & geographies.

Nidal has a long history with the networking business at Avaya. He was instrumental in maintaining business continuity when Avaya acquired Nortel, and managed a successful integration process in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey.

In 2013, Nidal was the mastermind behind Avaya’s growth in the region’s mid-market business when he developed and led iConnect, a strategic initiative for Avaya globally, aiming at building and driving a channel friendly program for the mid-market.

In early 2014, Nidal was selected to lead Avaya’s newly formed Global Growth Markets theater that includes MEA, Turkey, Russia & CIS, India and SAARC, and China, a challenging market the with highest global growth potential. As president for Avaya GGM, Nidal took the challenge to turnaround Avaya in India, and drive Avaya’s networking business in his geography. In FY14, and under Nidal’s leadership, Avaya GGM led the networking business, achieved impressive growth mid-market with Avaya’s flagship channel engagement program iConnect,, and is currently expanding into territories.

In his 30 years as a sales leader, Nidal has transformed businesses for the 3 companies he worked for: NCR/ATT & Avaya. From 1980 to 2003, Nidal lead various teams at NCR/ATT into new business lines well before competitors ventured into them. His latest role as sales director for ME, North Africa, and Eastern Europe for Infrastructure & Networking business grew to become the area’s most recognized SI/reseller of IT infrastructure, eBusiness & enterprise apps.

Nidal has always been driven by a passion & commitment to build and develop leaders. At NCR, he fostered a culture of self-motivation, agility & integrity. Most of the associates Nidal mentored went on to join & lead successful careers themselves in technology across Middle East & Africa. At Avaya, his team members have been often described as “a pocket of brilliance” within the corporation and the associates Nidal recruits & coaches are widely recognized as some of the highest of calibers across functions.

Nidal has been recognized for his leadership and management skills by a number of organizations, including:

• President Award, Avaya - 2013
• Listed among the top 5 most influential IT executives in the region (Network Middle East)
• Nidal is a founder and former member of the Young Arab Leaders Organization (YAL)

Nidal is based in Dubai with his family and 4 kids and holds an MBA in management.

Gary Barnett is senior vice president and general manager of the Engagement Solutions business unit at Avaya, the leading provider of customer and team engagement solutions. In his current role, Barnett has responsibility for Avaya's customer engagement, team engagement and mobile engagement portfolios.

Gary joined Avaya in April 2011 and prior to his current role, he led the Collaboration Platforms and UC Applications team. Gary is also a domain expert who was a founding engineer at Octel, the founder and CEO of Prospect Software, and later served as president and CEO of Aspect Communications.

As executive vice president and Chief Technology Officer at Aspect Software, Gary was responsible for corporate planning, product architecture and lifecycle management. He directed strategic partnerships and long-term product integration plans in support of enterprise-level applications.

Gary has delivered outstanding leadership and stakeholder value as either a Chief Executive Officer or Chief Technology Officer for over 20 years and is recognized worldwide as an authority on contact center technologies and solutions. In 2006, Mr. Barnett was recognized by the contact center industry with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Gary and Sharon Barnett have been married for 31 years and reside in San Jose, California, and Brentwood, Tennessee.

Jean Turgeon (JT) is Vice President & Chief Technologist for Software Defined Architecture (SDA), Worldwide Sales in Avaya, a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions. He has more than 30 years of experience in networking design and implementation that spans WAN, LAN and gateway technology, Unified Communications, open system architecture frameworks, data center, campus and branch solutions.

In his current role, JT is responsible for defining SDA strategic direction, working across the Avaya portfolio to deliver on automation and orchestration. He also ensures accelerated growth of Fabric Technology deployments and strategic solutions initiatives. His previous roles in Avaya included Vice President of Worldwide Solutions Engineering, and Vice President and General Manager of Portfolio and Solutions Strategy. Prior to joining Avaya via the Nortel Enterprise Solutions acquisition which included Bay Networks, JT held Senior Network Architecture and Technical positions at AmeriData and Bell Technical Services. He holds an Executive MBA from the University of Ottawa.

Alan Hase is the Vice President of Avaya’s Unified Access Research, Development and Product Management organization. Alan is responsible for the strategy and execution of Avaya’s Mobility, Identity and Access Switching products. Alan has been in the technology industry for over 20 years with 15 years of experience at Cisco. Alan joined Cisco in 1996 leading the Cisco 7500 High-End Router software engineering team. During this time, Alan’s team developed and delivered key innovations in the area of distributed processing and services acceleration that enabled Cisco to extend its leadership position in high-end routing. In 2001, Alan became a Director of Engineering responsible for Cisco’s IPsec VPN product development and strategic direction. In a collaborative effort with Cisco’s router teams, Cisco changed the IPsec marketplace from a point product security technology to an embedded routing and networking technology. In 2006, Alan became the Vice President of Engineering for the Wireless Networking Business Unit where he led a global engineering team that delivered innovative, industry leading, award winning products and technologies.

Ronald has been appointed as Avaya’s Vice President Europe North - responsible for driving growth and executing on Avaya’s strategic imperatives in areas such as Germany, UK, Ireland, Benelux & Nordics.

Ronald brings with him a wealth of senior level management experience in the telecommunications and enterprise software industry. He has previously worked for Avaya in sales, strategy & product management leadership roles both in Europe as well as in the US and was part of the driving forces behind the success in contact center solutions globally. He is a well-known authority in the industry when it comes to contact centers, unified communications and cloud. Prior to returning to Avaya, Ronald held general management roles with disruptive (cloud) technology providers such as CosmoCom, Thinking Phone Networks (currently known as Fuze) and Atlassian.

Ronald holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering, and an MBA degree from New York University in the United States.

Roberto Schmidl leads the Strategic Services & Cloud Sales team for International region, with responsibility for go-to-market strategy and sales execution.

With a proven record of success, Roberto has more than 20 years’ experience in the technology industry, having previously led the Private Cloud Sales team at Avaya, and also the lead for Client Services in EMEA, covering various lines of business, including Professional Services and Global Support Services.

As Director of Channel Services EMEA, Roberto was responsible for executing tactical and strategic growth initiatives, increasing channel services revenue and improving the partner and customer experience.

Before joining Avaya, Roberto held various leadership positions within Lucent Technologies and CompuServe Central Europe.

Steve Joyner is the Director of Sales Engineering Europe and has led the transformation of the team to help them better align with sales. His experiences as a Strategic Account Manager, Sales Manager and Channel Manager have all helped him facilitate the change. His team consists of pre sales specialist for Team Engage, Customer Engage, Networking and Cloud (Public and Private). The Sales Engineering team support direct customers, service providers, system integrators and channel partners.

Steve has worked at Avaya and previously Nortel since 1990, so he has a great understanding of the company and the technology. At Avaya he was also in Specialist Sales and Technical Operations, working with the enterprise markets to develop programs for the business partner community and consultative sales support for Europe and Global Growth Markets. At Nortel he worked from the Dubai office as the Sales Manager for the Gulf and previously as the Channel Manager for Saudi Arabia.

Steve is married with a daughter and loves football.

Maan Al-Shakarchi leads Avaya’s networking business for Europe, Asia Pacific and MEA Growth Markets Theater. Having been at Avaya since 2005, Maan has been integral in the drive to recreate Avaya as a software and business collaboration powerhouse, and he is a leading force in the Global Growth Market theatre’s adoption of the leading Avaya Fabric Connect networking technology. In this role, he is responsible for one of Avaya’s most exciting key growth areas. As Avaya leads the transformation of the networking market towards Fabric based architectures, Maan’s role is to bring this state of the art technology to serve our customers in the region. Avaya currently boasts the most advanced fabric-defined network deployments in the growing region.

Maan is part of high-talent team brought on board to revamp the channel and go-to-market strategy in this critical region. The Global Growth Markets purview is one of the largest geographical theatres of any leading enterprise in the world, and is the fastest-growing portfolio for Avaya globally. It is being run from Dubai in the UAE, and includes Africa, Turkey, India, Russia, CIS, and Greater China regions.

Maan has worked in technology for more than 15 year. He first started his career with Nortel Networks in Montreal, Canada as part of the Optical Networking R&D team. He has since then taken on several roles of increasing responsibility across the sales engineering and services sales teams. Maan has worked in the Middle East since 2002, and has a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is based in Dubai with his wife and three children.

Savio has been in the Communications industry for over 18+ years spanning across AT&T, Lucent Technologies and currently at Avaya.

Savio leads the Technical Operations covering the Middle East, Africa, Turkey & India. He is a key influencer in defining technology strategy to drive demand across a diverse market landscape, that touches on Distributors, System integrators and Service Providers, with a strong focus on customers consumption of technology. He has significant experience in developing traditional channels and assisting and driving new Channel Models based on XaaS, Cloud and Managed Services.

Savio plays a critical role in aligning technical resources to deliver business solutions that address technology evolution, competitive dynamics and market demands, to drive innovation within a customer base. He is seen as Technologist and has presented at several Technical forums in the Middle East across all Real-time Communications technologies.

Savio is a Technology Professional in Enterprise Communications., with a comprehensive view of telecommunications and technologies within the Enterprise arena. He has extensive knowledge in Unified Communications, Contact Centers, Data networks, SOA based Applications, and SIP. Savio is instrumental in driving Avaya’s initiatives in the region with regard to evolution of Cloud, Virtualization, Mobile Video & Social Media Strategies.

He has held several technical roles in AT&T and Lucent Technologies prior to his role at Avaya. He started his career as a Technical Engineer and has touched all technical aspects of an IT Company, from Tech Support to Consultancy. Savio holds a master's Degree in Communications Engineering, was an Associate member of the IEEE for 10 years and wrote a paper on Call Admission control for video Calls over an AT.

Randy Cross is responsible for defining the role of networking in Cloud and DC applications for Avaya, as well as, developing the strategic alliances necessary for end-to-end solutions.

He has 15 years of experience in networking with customers in Enterprise , Government and Service Provider (SP). Prior to Avaya, Randy co-created a team at Alcatel-Lucent that defined and developed Cloud strategy. He also led the IP Business Development team for MSO. At Motorola, Randy led a competive team and co-led a vertical solutions team as a pre-sales leader. Additionally, he led both SE and sales teams during his 8.5 year tenure at Cisco Systems.

Randy has designed and sold solutions for voice, video, security and data center (DC) in mobile, financial, disaster recovery (DR) and healthcare applications to name a few. He is a dual CCIE with solutions experience in Private and Public Data Centers, MPLS Core and Edge, security applications and video distribution.

Satish Murthy is Avaya’s Networking R&D Leader for India. With 23 years in the industry, Satish has worked in large multi-nationals as well as startups, driving engineering innovations and bringing them to customers.

Satish brings a leadership style that is ambitious in vision, creating strategies to convert them into reality by building leaders who deliver through bold execution. At Avaya, Satish is focusing on converting his team into a lean and mean innovation engine that can take on the world, and brings to fore the full force of R&D support to India Sales teams. Avaya’s Bangalore based Networking R&D team builds SPB fabric based switches, WLAN products, IP Office, UC Collaboration Environment and SDN/Cloud and Network Management products.

Prior to Avaya, Satish worked at Cisco, Sanovi, NEC and other organizations. At Cisco, Satish was the Site lead for Network Management Technology Group, leading strategic planning for manageability for Cisco business priorities, especially Voice Manageability, and Cloud. At NEC, Satish did an internal startup, taking a lab prototype to enterprise middleware product, driving go to market with customers and partners across US.

Satish loves technology, especially those related to complex IT infrastructure – networking, middleware, and enterprise applications. Combine that with a keen eye for what the customer wants, and a business sense that is grounded, Satish brings a rigor and energy that has helped him in his efforts.

Teamwork is the key to success, and an engaged workforce can do wonders. Employee development, creating an environment for innovation, and a respectful ethos that transfuses a sense of purpose and fulfillment, is a passion for Satish.

Satish is currently based in Bangalore, but goes wherever work or life takes him.

To relax, Satish heads to the mountains, whether it is the Redwood forests of California or the Western Ghats in India. An avid reader, he reads non-fiction on natural and social sciences.

Greg has been in the communications industry for over 15+ years. He joined Lucent Technologies in 1998 after receiving his undergraduate degree in computer science and master’s degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University. During his tenure with Lucent Technologies and Avaya, he helped create some of their most profitable products as an R&D software developer and system architect, cared for customer’s technical challenges as an engineer in both professional services and support, patented a number of methods for improving reliability and performance of core Avaya solutions, and ran worldwide sales specialist teams focused on unified communications and mobile video.

Greg is now part of Avaya’s Office of the CTO and is instrumental in leading efforts to understand advanced technology impact on communication’s landscape, to craft Avaya’s portfolio strategy, and to evangelize Avaya’s vision. Greg and his teams engage at all levels – interfacing directly with tech savvy engineers and IT staffs on technical matters to corporate executives as trusted advisors on how next generation collaboration transforms businesses.

www.linkedin.com/in/gregdweber

Fred Giron is Vice President and Research Director at Forrester Research, with 17 years industry experience spanning Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific, and the US. In his current leadership role, Fred leads a team of Forrester analysts in Asia Pacific who focus on the digital transformation opportunities for businesses around customer experience. His research team advises CIOs and CMOs and their teams on best practices for digital transformation and innovation. Fred's personal areas of research focus on how firms can shift their culture and adopt organizational structures, processes, sourcing strategies, and metrics that help them embed digital tools and capabilities throughout their organizations to become more customer-centric, agile, and innovative in how they embrace change. He is also an expert in tech services and outsourcing trends as well as the underlying market dynamics. Fred came to Forrester through its acquisition of Springboard Research, where he managed Springboard's Indian and Middle East & Africa research operations. Prior to Springboard, he was a research director at Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), managing its research activities in southern Europe and its coverage of the IT software and services markets. Fred also launched PAC's activities in the US, where he covered the software and IT services markets. Prior to PAC, he worked as an SAP consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Fred has a master's degree in electronics and project management from ENSEEIHT Toulouse, France.

As the Director of Adoption Services, Carl Knerr is responsible for helping customers, partners, and account teams get the most out of their support contracts through connectivity, alarming, and diagnostics.

Carl has been with Avaya for over 15 years as an Interaction Center Tier 4 Engineer, Project Manager with Professional Services, Services Lead for new Contact Center products, Product Manager for Support Advantage, and other responsibilities.

Carl holds an AB from Duke University in Computer Science and a MBA from WPI. He is married with 4 young children.