Dave Belanger

Dave Belanger is AT&T Labs' Chief Scientist and Information & Software Systems Research Vice President at AT&T Labs in Florham Park, NJ. As Chief Scientist, he is responsible to the CTO for identifying pre-product technology important to the future of AT&T; evaluating technology; building alignment within AT&T on technology directions; and serving as AT&T liaison to external technical communities such as universities, government agencies and industry laboratories.

The Information & Software Systems Research Lab conducts research in large scale and real time information mining related to operations of a (communications) service business; interactive, information visualisation; scaleable, reliable software systems; and new, information based, communications services. It is also responsible for delivery and operations of very large-scale (e.g. >100TB), near real time service management capabilities to AT&T and its customers.

Dave joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1979 working in the area of database support for economic analysis for product lifecycles. This was followed by research on large-scale data and information systems and programme generation for data manipulation systems. He has subsequently led research efforts in software systems and engineering, information mining and visualisation.

Prior to joining AT&T, Dave was on the Mathematics and Computer Science Faculty at University of South Alabama, a consultant for a variety of companies and co-founder/VP of computing services company Gulf Coast Data Systems. He received his BSc in Mathematics from New York's Union College and an MSc and PhD from Case Western Reserve University. In 1998 Dave was awarded the AT&T Science and Technology Medal for his contributions in very large-scale information mining technology.

Synopsis

For more than 100 years, communications infrastructures were built based on a simple axiom: a network for each service. As new technologies -- such as wireless and data communications -- emerged, network providers developed infrastructures to enable customers to take advantage of these technologies. The growth of the World Wide Web changed that axiom forever, setting the groundwork for network providers to deliver a full range of services and applications over a single, converged IP network infrastructure. Today, network providers like AT&T are deploying next-generation IP networks supporting a full range of evolving multimedia applications. Dave Belanger of AT&T will discuss the effect the Web has had on network infrastructures and the challenges and opportunities it has brought to carriers as they evolve their infrastructures to support the evolving new applications required by enterprises and consumers.