With virtual machine populations running into the millions across geographically dispersed datacenters, plus the rise of SaaS and other cloud based services, companies face many business and technical challenges. OpenCloud Connect provides a unique consensus-building framework for industry stakeholders to collectively develop solutions that address the challenges of integrating multiple clouds, managing security and policy models across multi cloud and carrier environments, and enabling applications and networks to exchange status requirements and changes.
James Walker, President of the OCC, said, “Our aim over the next few months is to enable our members to start aligning their external API interfaces to the OCC’s standard interface definitions. There are huge benefits to enterprises, including dramatically reducing the cost of integrating their suppliers, allowing them to enforce a single consistent security policy across all their network and cloud services, as well as opening up new business opportunities.
I’m extremely excited and proud to be at this stage where all the hard work done over the last two years, will be visible and start delivering the promised benefits our members believe so passionately in.”
The new Board of Directors who will serve for a year in office were elected during the 2015 Annual Members Meeting in Dallas on November 16, 2015.
Serving on the OCC Board of Directors for 2015-2016 are:
Chairman:
Jeff Schmitz is Executive Vice President of Spirent, where he is responsible for leading the business segments that deliver solutions for Wireless Networks & Devices, Service Assurance, Positioning & Automotive, and Customer & Network Analytics. Jeff serves as Chairman of the OCC, where he led the OCC in defining key initiatives to address the growing demands of delivering cloud services.
President:
James Walker is Vice President, Managed Network Services for Tata Communications, and is responsible for leading the company’s VPN line of business – covering enterprise and wholesale Ethernet, MPLS, managed IPSec and datacentre interconnect services. James launched OpenCloud Connect in May 2013, and has served as President since OCC’s formation.
Treasurer:
Doug Wills is vice president of marketing for Akanda, Inc, an OpenStack network virtualization start-up that delivers routing-as-a-service inside VMs and Linux containers. Wills has 20 years software and network infrastructure experience, working for Cisco, Ericsson, Juniper and Microsoft. At Juniper, Doug was responsible for its network operating system and several software defined networking programs and was Juniper’s lead representative at the Open Networking Foundation, OpenStack, MEF and CloudEthernet Forum.
Plamen Minev is a Director of Engineering at Cisco’s Chief Technology and Architecture Office (CTAO). He leads a team focused on next generation network and systems management architectures for cloud and communications service providers and large enterprises.
Vinay Saxena is Distinguished Technologist at HP, and acts as the Chief Architect for HP’s NFV business. In this role, Vinay is responsible for defining the overall NFV technology architecture, strategy and future vision including the evolution of the solution plan of record.
Dr. Mehmet Toy is Distinguished Engineer of Comcast, co-chair of OpenCloud Connect Programmability Working Group and chair of IEEE Cable Networks and Services Committee. Currently he is leading the development of Business Ethernet Services over DPoE (DOCSIS over EPON).
Dr. Hongwen Zhang is a co-founder of Wedge Networks. As Chief Technical Officer, he is instrumental in developing Wedge’s high performance security platform. Dr. Zhang holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Calgary; an M.Sc in Computer Engineering from the Institute of Computer Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Fudan University. With more than two decades of high-tech leadership experience, Dr. Zhang is a co-inventor and holder of several patents in the area of computing and networking. Prior to establishing Wedge Networks, he was a co-founder of the 24C Group Inc., which pioneered the first digital receipts infrastructure for secure electronic commerce. Dr. Zhang was previously principal of Servidium Inc., now ThoughtWorks Inc., a global leader in agile development methodology.
Dawane Young is the Division Vice President of Platforms and Applications for Verizon’s Partner Solutions organization. Dawane’s team engages in Security, Data Center Collocation, Professional Services, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud sales opportunities with partners and resellers globally.
Dawane holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mass Communications from James Madison University.
