SIP Beyond VoIP: The Next Step in the IP Communications Revolution
Dr. Henry Sinnreich is Chief Technology Officer at pulvermedia. He was an MCI Fellow who contributed to the first carrier-based in-house SIP development at MCI and worked on the design of the SIP-based MCI Advantage flagship service. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the International SIP Forum based in Stockholm and is an active participant to the work on SIP and related standards in the IETF. His earlier book, Internet Communications Using SIP, co-authored with Alan Johnston, is considered the definitive reference on SIP-based IP communications. In March 2004, Dr. Sinnreich was featured on the cover of VON Magazine, referred to as the Godfather of SIP and in 2000 was awarded a Pioneer in Telephony at VON Europe. He is a guest lecturer at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas and speaks at various corporate and industry events worldwide. Dr. Alan B. Johnston is a Distinguished Technical Member at MCI and an architect of the first enterprise SIP VoIP product introduced in the US. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Johnston is a co-author of the SIP protocol specification RFC 3261 and editor of the basic and PSTN Call Flows Best Current Practices (BCP) documents RFC 3665 and RFC 3666. He has co-authored two previous books on SIP, is co-chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Centralized Conferencing Working Group and sits on the Board of Directors of the SIP Forum. Dr Johnston holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. Robert J. Sparks is currently the Vice President of Research and Development for Estacado Systems. He has championed SIP technologies, building implementations at MCI, dynamicsoft, and Xten. Mr. Sparks is a co-author of the core SIP specification in RFC 3261 and several of its extensions in other standards documents. He co-chairs the IETF’s SIMPLE working group, chartered to develop a standard way to provide instant messaging and presence. He sits on the Board of Directors of the SIP Forum and leads the SIPit international SIP interoperability events and is also President of the open source SIPfoundry community. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and a Masters of Science in Mathematics from Texas A&M; University.