Speaker List

John is an experienced market analyst and research director with strong relationship-building and sales skills. His research focus has been on mobile, contactless/NFC, smart cards, payment acceptance and ID. From 2001 until he joined ABI Research in 2010, he held positions of increasing seniority at IMS Research in the UK, eventually becoming Research Director, Financial & I.D. Technologies Group, a new business area which he developed for the firm.

Prior to his work at IMS, he served as Business Development and Technical Sales Engineer at PPC Cranfield Ltd, addressing western European markets for the company’s high precision, engineered composite machine bases and components.

John has spoken at a number of industry events, including SIMposium in Vienna (keynote). At the request of Ingenico he has chaired two industry roundtables that involved companies such as MasterCard, Barclays Bank, HSBC and Barclaycard, and has served as a judge for the GSM Association for its Best Mobile Money Service.

He has also been quoted widely in industry publications such as Smart Insights, Payments, Cards & Mobile, NFC Times, Smart Card News, SecureID News; Card Technology Today, and others.

John earned a BSc. in Mechanical Engineering from De Montfort University.

As Chief Research Officer, Stuart Carlaw leads ABI Research’s analyst teams covering global connectivity markets.  Stuart’s primary responsibility is the management of industry research content, and he also regularly interfaces with clients and the media.  

Prior to joining ABI Research, Stuart was a Telecommunications Technician in the British Army, and then Senior Analyst and later Wireless Research Director at IMS Research. At IMS he was the primary Bluetooth analyst, and responsible for all short range wireless research.

Stuart earned a B.Sc (Honours) in Physical Sciences and Business Management from De Montfort University.

Ajoy Rajani is Senior Vice President at Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. Reliance Infrastructure is part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) of companies.

Mr. Rajani works on technology and product innovation initiatives. He has extensive experience and knowledge of Smart Grid Initiatives and communications, and has pioneered telemetry in India.

Reliance has been at the forefront of development and innovation in various technologies in India such as Automatic Meter Reading, Power Line Communications and terminal devices.

He has about 18 years' experience working in both telecom and power fields.

Dirk Lindemeier is responsible for Global LTE Ecosystem Sales at Nokia Siemens Networks. In his current position he oversees LTE devices of every kind, new applications for subscribers and enterprises that are enabled by the properties of LTE, and LTE deployments in industry sectors other than telecommunications. Dirk relies on a wide network of experts inside and outside the communications industry.
Prior to his current position Dirk was Head of IP Technology, Customer Operations, and other positions in Business Development, Solution Management, and Product Management at Nokia Siemens Networks.

Dirk joined the telecommunications sector in 2000. Prior to that he spent 10 years in aviation.

Dr. Amy Chen was a service leader in Strategy and Change, GBS IBM. For the past years, she has focused on program/project management, IT M&A transformation, business development, business strategy, business process, and product innovation management, for the most part in the technology industry, government, and telco sectors. Dr. Chen is currently leading IBM's SWG Smarter City initiative in greater China and has intensive experience in helping cities to design and implement “Quality of Life” and “Business Development” strategies.

Since 2000 Andreas Schauer has worked for G&D where he heads product management for the Industry and Government division. In that capacity he introduced the Oyster card for London. In 2006 he was responsible for the creation of Venyon, the JV with Nokia, where he held a management position as SVP for 1.5 years before he came back to G&D to take care of the Mobile Payment product line. In 2010 he joined the CTO office, where he now takes care of strategic tasks such as Mobile Money. He represents G&D within Mobey Forum where he is an active member of the marketing working group and the Events Task Force. In 2011 he assumed responsibility for all product marketing-related activities for payment and transit, and was actively involved in the foundation of the OSPT Alliance.

Frank Yuan is President & CTO of Hangzhou Anheng Information Technology Co., Ltd. He graduated from State University of California in the United States. He has earned information security certificates such as CISSP, CISA, GCIH, GCIA. Building on years of experience in R&D and project management for world-leading information security companies, Mr. Yuan has carried out in-depth research on online information security, database security and auditing as well as compliance, such sd SOX, PCI, ISO17799/27001. He was the first Chinese national to address the leading security conference BLACKHAT abouthis successful practice in technology innovation for information security.

He was nominated as Special Advisor of Zhejiang Province from Oversea Countries; he is or has also served as vice-chairman of OWASP (China branch), director of information security commission for the Zhejiang province computer information security association, member of the information security expert panel for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and a member of ISACA.

As a European public and advisor on government affairs (including regulatory issues) Frans-Anton Vermast has been involved from the outset in the Amsterdam Fibre from the Home initiative (www.citynet.nl), the open access communication infrastructure in the City of Den Haag (The Hague) and the Province of Limburg. Since 2004 he has built up considerable business and regulatory knowledge on open communication infrastructures based on glass fibre techniques in the Netherlands and Europe.
As Strategy Advisor for Amsterdam Smart City he presently also focuses on appliances and services that are available with an open access symmetrical communication infrastructure to provide social and economic benefits as well as more sustainable solutions for a better environment.

He has a great deal of Dutch, European and worldwide experience with local government and municipality participation in these initiatives.

Mr. Xu is the Chief Engineer (Professor Level of senior engineer) of the Telecommunication Standard Research Institute of MIIT China. He heads the signaling and protocol team, Network and Exchange Group Technology Commission of CCSA, and a member of Ministry of Information Industry. He is also the Head of the ITU－T SG11 China working team, the Head of the tertiary taskforce of ITU－T SG11, and an academic mentor of master graduates of the Research Institute of China Telecom.

He has been engaged in the research and benchmarking of telecom network and switching technology for many years and has in-depth knowledge of signaling and network protocols.

Now, Mr. Xu is focused on research into next generation networks (NGN), M2M, and other topics.

He graduated from the Computer Engineering Faculty of Tianjin University in 1986 and obtained his Masters degree in Telecommunication & Electronics from the Post and Telecommunication Research institute of Ministry of Post and Telecommunications in 1989. From 1989 to 2003, he held various positions in the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and the Telecommunication Research Office of the Ministry of Information Industry, including engineer, senior engineer, and senior engineer of research office.
Mr. Xu has been awarded many honors for his contributions in pushing forward science & technology development.

Since 2008 João Prudente has been Manager of the Gabinete de Tecnologias de Informação - MIS, in the Câmara Municipal (Local Government) of Matosinhos.

Previously he was Director Municipal de Tecnologias de Informação, Modernização Administrativa e Manutenção in the same government, responsible for steering coordination of all IT work, security, cleaning and equipment.

He had joined this administration as President Advisor, where he oversaw preparation of IT plans and their application to projects such as “Cidades Digitais” and Process Reengineering.

Earlier, he worked as IT Coordinator, responsible for IT and GIS (Geographical Information Services) of Porto 2001 S.A.(  - Event, and Public Works coordination for Porto European Capital of Culture), later Casa da Música / Porto 2001 S.A.

He was Systems Administration of the Computer Science Department at the Universidade do Minho, and early in his career was an IT engineer for semiconductor manufacturing at Texas Instruments (later Texas Instruments-Samsung Electrónica) Portugal, Lda. (S Mx ).

Nitin is an expert on telecoms and telecoms-enabled industries. He specializes in new product conceptualization, business blueprints, technology trending, lean transformation, benchmarking, service provider maturity models and customer experience management paradigms.

Mr. Bhandari has spoken at a number of industry events across Asia, Europe and the Americas. He is widely quoted in industry publications and has co-authored “Service Model Framework” published by the TeleManagement Forum.

Nitin currently holds the position of AVP at Frog Design, Inc. He is responsible for managing the innovation strategy practice for the APAC region. Earlier, he worked as Consulting Partner at Wipro Technologies where he was responsible for managing the Business Advisory practice for the Telecoms & Media industry vertical.

Nitin has more than 15 years of experience in advising telecoms and telecoms-enabled businesses. He holds a B.Tech (Honours) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Institute of Technology-BHU.

Mr. Zhang has been responsible for many projects on municipal information management such as:

• Special planning for Kunming Wireless Digital City (2009)
• Planning for Yangzhou Wireless Smart City ( 2009-2011)
• Batch pilot projects in Shandong province (2009-now)
• Digital city planning for Guiyang (2010-2011)
• Smart city planning for Yili city (underway in 2011)

Sheela Ganesh began her career as faculty and worked for various premiere engineering institutes for 13 years. During this tenure, she taught all core subjects in electronics and communications and mentored many undergraduate and post graduate project engineers.

She presently works for the Advanced Technologies Lab of Talent Transformation at Wipro Technologies, focused on Unified Communication and Collaboration and for the past seven years has been subject expert and key consultant in the areas of telecoms, datacoms, optical communication and networking. She has trained senior Wipro engineers in the areas of DWDM networking, DSL technologies, VOIP, SIP, IPTV, FTTx/PON, and TCP/IP Network programming.

She is a member of a number of technical bodies, and holds many certifications that includes Opnet Modeler, and Glow N/w Optical network, She has published research articles in many national and international conferences such as ICCNT and NCRTSC.

Sheela Ganesh holds a degree in BE (E&C) from Mangalore University and M.S. from BITS, Pilani, India.

Mr. Tang Jin Song is currently working as the Assistant General Manager of the Information Technology department in China Mobile, Zhejiang. He is engaged in business development, strategic planning, construction and maintenance of their IT systems.

He graduated from Zhejiang University with a PhD in Information Technology.

Since 1998 Taufik Zamzami has worked in the R&D Division of PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Tbk (TELKOM). He was a leader in project implementation for: Balimoon Island (1999-2000); Angin Mamiri for Makassar Tourism and Education Solution (2000-2001); Telecenter Workshop for Flower Farmers in Indonesia, ("Bridging the Digital Divide in Indonesia through Telecenter") (2004); Sumatera View (web-based tourist information center for Sumatera Island, 2008-2009); Kemilau Indonesia (web-based tourist information center for Indonesia, 2010 – present), and Manado Smart City (2011 – present).

Tian Yuan has more than 15 years experience in China's healthcare market. He is currently in charge of the healthcare vertical of Cisco S+CC team. He leads some local S+CC healthcare mega-projects and is involved in several city-level Smart City projects.

Before joining Cisco, he worked as leader of the strategic marketing team at GE Healthcare. He has also delivered a healthcare reform proposal directly to the State Counicl, Ministry of Health and NDRC.

Mr Tian holds an MBA in INSEAD.

Mr. Zhang Xuguang is Senior Vice President of the IT Service Dept. at Insigma, and Deputy Director of the China Digital City Commission. He holds director and senior membership positions in the Chinese Institute of Electronics Computer Application branch, and is the director of the China Information Industry Chamber of Commerce. Other positions include that of Director of the China Smart Card Commission, Commissioner of the Hangzhou Municipal Information Technology and Management Consulting Panel, and senior expert advisor for six cities including Jiangyin and Tieling, focused on research into electronic synergy services, one card for multiple use applications, M2M, and innovative application of mobile businesses.  

Mr. Xu ZuZe is specialized in Automatic Control Communication. He is involved in the development of China’s first long-distance phone billing system. In 1977, Mr. Xu participated in the development of China's first mobile telecommunication project. The integrated circuit for which Mr. Xu was responsible  was once the best unit in the Beijing district.

In the 1980s, Mr. Xu ZuZe participated in several provincial computer application competitions, and was awarded the top three prizes by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Mr. Xu also visited 27 High-Tech Development Zones of China in the 90s to promote networking, and was commended by the State Science and Technology Department for his work. Mr. Xu has also written many articles related to the latest developments and strategies of the telecommunication industry, in order to promote the application of Information Technology.

In the past eight years, Mr. Xu has concentrated on writing his book entitled, “The Origins of China Computer” where he interviewed more than 300 pioneers in this field and collected more than 3000 old pictures and computer operation data items. In 2010, he also drafted a proposal for “Completing the China Computer Program in 50 Years, and Development of the Industry and Information Conservation Regulations.” In 2001, Mr. Xu also wrote the book “Information Leap.”

He is currently the Secretary-General of the Beijing Information Industry Association.