Security consistently ranks as one of the top IT priorities and concerns year after year as evidenced by the increase in security budgets by IT. Over 90% of enterprises are investing in firewalls, anti-virus software and other protection mechanisms, yet over three-quarters of these same enterprises experience worm attacks, virus penetrations, root kit infections and the presence of spyware. Dealing with viruses, spyware and other malware reportedly costs businesses around the world billions of Euros per year in direct and indirect expenses. Our industry response thus far is a growing number of disparate security protocols and technologies which significantly increase the system maintenance costs while degrading performance. Alan Crouch, Director of Intel's Communication Technology Lab, will discuss how future technologies are being developed that will build trusted platforms without sacrificing performance.

About the Speaker: As director and general manager for the Communications Technology Lab, Alan Crouch is responsible for driving Intel's network technology leadership. Lab focus areas include network processing, optical networking, network security robust networks, wireless USB, next-gen mobile wireless LAN and WAN, and wireless sensor networks. The lab is strongly committed to standards-based solutions. Members of the lab are active participants in 3GPP, IEEE, IETF, the Network Processing Forum, and many other communications and networking standards-setting bodies.

Crouch has led Intel R&D efforts in network architectures since 1999. His teams have made key contributions to the Network Processing Forum and IETF ForCES network processing industry standards efforts, and the Intel(r) IXA Portability Framework. His team co-developed the Microblock software architecture for Intel(r) IXP network processors, to reduce the time and effort for developing network processing applications. More recently, Crouch's teams have delivered platform networking innovations that are being incorporated into Intel(r) I/O Acceleration Technology and Intel(r) Active Management Technology roadmaps. In addition, Crouch launched Intel's Communications Technology Lab in the Intel China Research Center, Beijing, and led advanced R&D external engagements with key networking fellow travelers Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, and Hewlett-Packard.

Before joining Intel, Crouch worked for Network Computer Devices, Inc. and Tektronix, Inc. In 12 years at Tektronix, he held positions of increasing responsibility starting as a software engineer and eventually holding the title of Director of Engineering from 1996 to 1998.

Crouch graduated with honors from Oregon State University and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science.

For many years people have spoken about the impending convergence of those networks that evolved from the public switched telephone network (PSTN), the Internet and the diverse media used to deliver broadcast video. It finally appears as if the trend is about to be realized but there are still many different views on what form the converged network will take. While the traditional telco industry has its sights set on the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), the proponents of the next generation Internet have other ideas. The Net Neutrality debate has raised the question of who will control and who will really derive revenues and profits from the converged network of the future. In this talk, we will review technology enablers for the converged network and examine the major questions that are shaping this evolution.

About the Speaker: Donal O’Mahony graduated with 1st class honours in Engineering from Trinity College Dublin in 1982. After a brief career in industry at the Sord Computer Systems (a Japanese microcomputer startup company) in Tokyo where he worked as a researcher on new microcomputer operating systems and at IBM in Dublin, he re-joined Trinity College as a lecturer in Computer Science in 1984. At Trinity, he built a research group working in areas such as network architectures, protocols and computer security. He is the author of two books and over 60 papers in these areas. Prof. O’Mahony is a fellow of Trinity College and was a Fulbright fellow at Stanford University in 1999. In July, 2004 he led a team to establish the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR), a major multi-university research centre involving over 100 active researchers working closely with a network of industrial partners including Alcatel-Lucent (Bell Labs). He is now full-time director of this centre.