SDN: Changing Only Everything About Networking (and IT)

Agenda
6:30 Doors Open, Food & Networking
7:00 Presentation
*** Please arrive by 7:00 PM due to Security ***
8:30 wrap up

Event Details
It’s been about eight years since Software-Defined Networking (SDN) hit the headlines with a lot of fanfare, initially as a way to disaggregate a Cisco router and reduce the operating expense (Opex) in data centers. Since that time, its more fundamental changes to everything about networking have seeped into not only the technology of networking but the technology of computing and the structure of the IT industry as well. In this talk we will examine some of these impacts, involving technology,
business, and people. We will touch on security issues, from the silly to
the scary, and even on politically sensitive ones, like the relative
importance of the IEEE and ACM.

Speakers Bio
Dan Pitt is a computer scientist and engineer who has worked mainly in
networking and telecommunications with occasional excursions into academia and odd corners of technology (like eye tracking). At present he serves as Senior Vice President of the MEF Forum (formerly Metro Ethernet Forum), a non-profit trade association driving technology and service innovation in the telecom industry, and advises companies (mainly startups) as President of Palo Alto Innovation Advisors. He served as Executive Director of the Open Networking Foundation from its public launch in 2011 through 2016, creating not only the Software-Defined Networking movement but spawning all the derivative Software-Defined Everything Else movements as well. Prior to ONF he ran startup companies in the U.S., Australia, and Canada and served as Dean of Engineering at Santa Clara University. He held executive management roles at Nortel Networks and Bay Networks and prior to that developed and managed networking technology and research at HP Labs in Palo
Alto and at IBM in North Carolina and IBM Research in Zurich. He has served on industrial advisory boards at UC Berkeley and the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology. While working for IBM in North Carolina he taught
computer science and electrical engineering at Duke and UNC. He holds a B.S. in mathematics from Duke and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer
science from the college of engineering at the University of Illinois.