MEF Excellence Awards

Greg Bryan

Senior Manager, Enterprise Research,
TeleGeography

Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He’s spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts the WAN Manager Podcast.

Roy Chua

Founder and Principal,
AvidThink

Roy Chua is a principal at AvidThink, an independent research and advisory service focused on infrastructure technologies. Roy is a frequent speaker at telecom and cloud conferences, and AvidThink has been quoted by and featured in major publications including the WSJ, Fierce Telecom, Fierce Wireless, The New Stack, and Light Reading. Roy was also a co-founder at SDxCentral, a technology publication.  

He has previously worked as a management consultant for Fortune 500 and startup companies, specializing in go-to-market and product strategy. Roy is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s electrical engineering and computer science program and MIT’s Sloan School of Business. With over 20 years of experience in telecom and enterprise computing, networking, and security, he has also founded Silicon Valley startups.

Jennifer Pigg Clark

Principal Analyst Data Center IT and Cloud Services,

Jennifer Pigg Clark is Principal Analyst with Heavy Reading, focusing on data center IT and cloud services research. Clark provides actionable insight into service provider evolution, examining the challenges and opportunities facing network operators as they move towards an increasingly virtualized and cloud native infrastructure. Clark examines the solutions and technology reshaping the telco data center, technologies such as Edge Computing, Open Source, OpenStack, and container networking, Jennifer also advises on Telco digital transformation including quantum computing, automation, AI and AR/VR.

Clark started her industry research career with the Yankee Group, which was acquired by 451 Research in 2013. She held the role of Sr. Vice President at Yankee Group. Prior to joining Yankee Group, Clark was Manager of Network Planning and Strategy for Wang Laboratories’corporate data network. She began her career at Wang with responsibility for the domestic and international roll-out of Wang’s packet network, connecting more than 250 locations in 14 countries. Before joining Wang, she was a member of the IT research and development division of Commercial Union Insurance Companies.

Clark is a highly regarded speaker at industry seminars and conferences and is frequently cited by the commercial and trade press. She has been a guest lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is a member of the IEEE. She holds a B.A. degree from Mount Holyoke College.

Rosemary Cochran

Principal Analyst & Co-Founder,
Vertical Systems Group

Rosemary Cochran is a Principal and Co-Founder of Vertical Systems Group, which specializes in the delivery of defensible quantification and insight on networking markets, service migration trends and emerging technologies. Her expertise covers Carrier Ethernet, Layer 2/Layer 3 services, SD-WAN, business Fiber, Cloud connectivity, and SDN/NFV/LSO solutions. Frequently sourced by industry media, she also moderates for webcasts and industry conferences, including MEF events since the early years.

Erin Dunne

Director of Research,
Vertical Systems Group

Ms. Dunne is the Director of Research Services, responsible for managing the delivery and support of Vertical Systems Group’s syndicated ENS (Emerging Networks Service) Research Program offerings for clients worldwide. In this role, she coordinates analyst resources, directs content distribution for ENS research, and assures high quality client experience.

Her expertise covers migration to emerging service technologies, Ethernet and Cloud Connectivity, Hybrid Layer 2/3 VPN solutions, Managed SD-WANs, pricing dynamics for network services, and business Fiber trends.

On these topics, Ms. Dunne has moderated and chaired numerous industry webcasts and business panel discussions. She is frequently sourced by leading industry media. Additionally, she is a judge for the annual MEF awards presented at the organization’s global event.

Ms. Dunne has more than twenty years of consulting services experience at Vertical Systems Group. Her previous experience includes enterprise IT and industrial engineering projects.

Roopa Honnachari

Director - Network & Software Advisory Practice,
ISG

Roopa is a subject matter expert in next-generation intelligent services such as SD-WAN, SDN, NFV, Cloud and Edge Networking, and established WAN services such as MPLS VPN, Ethernet, DIA and Waves.  As part of the ISG Network and Software Advisory team, Roopa assists clients in transformation initiatives around networking, security and enterprise solutions. Roopa has nearly two decades of experience. Roopa’s strong in-depth knowledge of telecom technologies has helped her contribute to engagements that include strategy assessments, RFP development, contract negotiations, transformation and change management.

Prior to joining ISG Roopa led the Global Network Services & Edge practice at Frost & Sullivan. In her role she provided strategic advice to companies on product strategy, competitive strategy, market share expansion, partnership development.

Grant Lenahan

Partner and Principal Analyst,
Appledore Research

Grant has more than 25 years experience in the telecommunication infrastructure and software industry. He provides a unique combination of management and technical acumen from a focus on technology and business model innovation.

He previously served in CTO for Ericsson and is actively involved in the industry standard bodies, including TM Forum, ZOOM and Open Digital initiatives.  His areas of focus include NFV orchestration and management, SDN policy control, service creation and fulfillment, real time charging, digital ecosystems and M2M.

Grant holds a Bachelor of Science from Drew University and an MBA (SM-Management, SM-Engineering) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ian Redpath

Research Director, Transport Networks and Components,
Omdia

Ian is the Research Director for Omdia’s, optical transport, components, routing, and networked edge services. He is responsible for strategy, client, product, and team development. Managing a team of communications technology professionals, he covers how communications and cloud service providers and enterprises utilize and deploy leading-edge optical networks, components, routing, and edge technologies.

Ian and the team have been advising clients on how to evolve and grow networks based on a rapidly evolving 5G, cloud, and edge world. Ian’s past advisory efforts have included work on the evolution of open optics and transport SDN, right of way value for new entrants, and cloud-communications SP partnering. He has also supported open industry fora, built hot topic conference tracks, and supported industry player mergers and acquisitions. Ian is the 2019 winner of the NGON & DCI World People’s Choice Award and is a regular speaker at industry events. He received his MBA from Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada and a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Manitoba.

Mauricio Sanchez

Sr. Director, Enterprise Networking & Security Market Research,
Dell'Oro

Mauricio Sanchez joined Dell’Oro Group in 2020. With Dell’Oro Group, Mr. Sanchez leads the Network Security, SASE & SD-WAN market research programs, which will encompass ways in which contemporary network security solutions are being adopted and deployed, whether as appliances, virtually or as a service. Additionally, Mr. Sanchez helps shape the coverage of next-generation networking architectures and services models.

Mr. Sanchez brings over two decades of experience as an executive manager in networking and security technologies, products, and solutions spanning data center, campus, and mobile architectures. Prior to joining Dell’Oro Group, Mr. Sanchez served at Intel Corporation as Product Line Director of Ethernet products within Networking Division for Data Platforms Group, focused on Ethernet controllers, NICs, and SmartNICs for data center servers. Before Intel Corporation, Mr. Sanchez spent seventeen years with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in a variety of networking and security roles, focused on defining and driving security technology strategy for all HPE Networking solutions spanning product security, access control, and SDN-based real-time threat management.

Mr. Sanchez has a BS degree in Computer Engineering, an MSc in Electrical Engineering, and minor in German from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He has thirteen patents granted.

Rob Schult

Research Director,
TeleGeography

Robert Schult is a Research Director at TeleGeography and manages the company’s wholesale pricing and enterprise network research groups. His areas of expertise include telecom service pricing, international transport and Internet backbone networks, corporate WAN technologies, and Cloud service integration.

Steve Thomas

Senior Industry Director,
Frost & Sullivan

Steve Thomas is a Senior Industry Director in the ICT-Enterprise Network Services practice at Frost & Sullivan. He has 20+ years of experience managing network technologies and the ecosystem that supports them.  During his career, he has held roles in Service Management, Network Engineering, IT, and Marketing.

Steve joined Frost & Sullivan in 2022 after more than 25 years working with leading service provider and enterprise IT firms, including Orange Business and General Motors IT Telecom Group. He holds a BS in Economics and Masters Telecom Management.

Brian Washburn

Research Director,
Omdia

Brian Washburn works in the service provider, enterprise and wholesale group, supporting its enterprise networks and wholesale, workspace services, and digital enterprise services practices. Brian has covered communications and networking services for nearly 30 years with Ovum and now Omdia. His coverage spans how enterprises buy and use network and related managed services, as well as how providers can build, market and sell, deliver, and operate their services for enterprises most effectively.