• 2023 Qualified TSC Voters & Companies Page

  • An active contributor is defined as any member of the Nephio community who has made twenty or more measurable contributions as assessed by the TSC during the previous twelve month period, inclusive of code merges, code reviews performed, presentations, technical documentation of software functions, wiki page edits, or JIRA activities.

  • In addition the decision was made to allow a company to appoint a candidate in the event that no single individual has met the 20 contribution threshold if there are contribution in aggregate by employees of that organization to meet the 20 contribution threshold.  Candidates running under this provision should note "appointed" below their company name.


Nomination Period: open   close 11:59 pm Pacific Time

Election Period: open: close 11:59 pm Pacific Time


Name (Use @ Macro)
+ Headshot (100 x 100 px)

 Company Brief Bio

Candidate's Statement

Clearly show case 20+ contributions

1Balaji (Bala) VaradarajuRed Hat

2Wind River

A hands-on Solution Architect and an experienced Techno Manager with demonstrated history of delivering solutions while leading Global Project Teams.
Skilled at providing and building E2E solutions, architecture, design and implementations for both commercial and open source projects, using various tools and technologies.
One of the key contributors of the LF community, constantly striving to build an overall solution with the user centric designs. Demonstrated leadership capabilities in handling global teams across time zones and binging back value to the stake holders with his technical knowledge of networking and programming.

Speaker at various global forums like the ONES, Kubecon, Open-infra, ETSi, LFN, on various topics including Orchestration, 5G, Slicing, NFV/SDN, PaaS, K8s, ETSi, Edge, Cloud native and many more. Been a guest lecturer to various reputed Universities (IIT-Madras, BEC-Bagalkot).
Strong information technology professional with a distinction throughout the academics.

Roles held in Open-Source communities:
Member of the Technical Steering Committee for the Nephio, ONAP, EMCO and XGVela projects.
Member of the LFN Marketing Advisory Council.
PTL of the ORAN-SC SMO
PTL of ONAP Service Orchestration.
Liaison officer of the ONAP and ORAN-SC-RSAC.
Contributor to the ORAN-SC, Nephio, Sylva, Straling-X.

Key Awards and Recognitions:
Individual Gold Medal Award, Highest Individual Award across Global R&D.
Best Project Lead Award,
Future Star Award (2017, 2019, 2021).
Multiple Excellent and Outstanding contribution awards for different roles handled.
The Open-Community Recognitions:
Top Achievement Award (2021)
Best Demo Award (CNFO 2021)
Best Code Developer Award (2017 and 2018)
Best Project (as PTL of SO 2018)
Best Contributor award Open-O

Contributions including TSC, OSC-OAI-ORAN documentation, contributions in WG2 and Cross community collaboration. Below are some of the details of technical participation and Panel discussions:

  • LFN DTF June 2023 
  • Nephio R2 summit Oct 2023
  • OAI summit Nov, 2023
  • Promoted Nephio in ORAN Aliance.
  • OSC RSAC - Showcased possible integrations with Nephio
  • ONAP - Nephio integration
  • OSC-SMO Nephio through O-Cloud operator

Currently working on:

  • Contributor to the WG2
  • OSC and Nephio integration for O-Cloud Operator for IMS and DMS from OSC and WG2.
  • Happy to render my help to LFN MAC Board (was part of it from other communities earlier and know how the processes in detail).
3

Raj Panchapakesan Raj Panchapakesan 

AccuKnox Inc

As the Global Head of Partner Ecosystem and Business Development at AccuKnox, I lead the creation and execution of innovative strategies to grow our cloud-native security platform and solutions across diverse markets and segments. With over 25 years of experience in technology-driven global enterprises, I have a proven track record of establishing and managing Strategic alliances, Business Development & collaborating with cross-functional teams like Product, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Solution Eng., Legal, etc. for product integrations, joint solutions & GTM activities

Skills: Global Strategy · Strategic Relationships · Global Alliances · GSI · Teamwork · Partner Relationship Management · Global Business Development · Executive Management · Strategic Partnerships

I am the TSC and Security SIG lead representing AccuKnox in Project Nephio. I chaired a motion for Security SIG, created the charter presentation, and assisted with operational aspects such as Gdrive, mailing list, and Slack channel.


I have contributed to the development and growth of the cloud-native computing industry as a Governing Board Member of CNCF and CD Foundation for 3 years. During my tenure, I helped shape the vision, direction, and governance of these influential open-source foundations.

My passion is to empower businesses and organizations to understand the Open source tools and ecosystem to build their products and achieve their goals with strategic partnerships, cutting-edge technology, and industry best practices.

In Project Nephio, I aim to contribute by helping make it the de facto standard for K8S-based cloud-native network automation in different industries, as well as LFN projects.

I want to represent Project Nephio in the LF Networking Strategic Planning Committee and Marketing Advisory Council, build relationships, and promote Nephio with other LF and open-source projects, as well as various verticals in the industry.


4Nokia

I'm Head of Open Source Network and Service Automation at Nokia, where I'm responsible for driving Nokia’s overall engagement in Nephio. In this role I work across multiple industry organisations, both open source and standardisation, engage with both customers and other industry players, as well as internally across all Nokia businesses.

I have over 25 years of experience in network systems, ranging from multivendor interoperability verification, systems architecture research, new business incubation, to network and operations systems standardisation.

I've been with Nephio from the very beginning and I'm currently Nokia’s Nephio TSC representative. In addition to Nephio, I serve at EMCO TSC and ended my multiyear ONAP TSC journey just recently.

I am excited of the opportunity to help Nephio to become successful in the industry and to accelerate its adoption. I’m looking forward to making it easier for new people to get involved in the ONAP community. Further, I intend to help fostering fruitful industry collaboration between Nephio and other relevant open source communities and standards organisations.

Nokia is among the top contributors to Nephio.

I've contrbuted to Nephio engagement with other communities, first by driving for Nephio participation to LFN D&TF´s - 3 so far, one even before Nephio was an LFN project - securing relevant D&TF program from Nepio was in place, as well as representing Nephio at D&TF Program Committee to ensure proper schdeuling of the event. Co-presented Nephio current state at the most recent D&TF. Also participated to the recent Nephio Summit Program Committee and built and facilitated External Communitites panel. After Nephio induction to LFN and while there is yet no official representative, as a Nephio TSC member I've acted as a one to ensure our community voice is heard. Finally, I've ensured our community will have contributions by professional technical writers to improve our documentation.

5Ericsson (appointed)

Ciaran is a senior expert in operations support systems (OSS) and programmable network architecture, and he is the chief architect of Ericsson’s Network Management portfolio. He has over 20 years’ experience in software development and architecture in the OSS domain, driving the evolution of management paradigms through multiple generations of networks.

In the past Ciaran has represented Ericsson on the ONAP TSC and architecture sub-committee. He is a strong believer in the use of open source software to progress industry alignment, drive standardization, improve openness and simplify processes in telecommunications network management. 

Ericsson has actively participated in Nephio in the following areas:

  • Contributing code improvements to the Nephio codebase
  • Developed and contributed support for installation of Helm based workloads using Flux
  • Developed a PoC that trials using Argo CD distributing Nephio workloads as an alternative to Configsync
  • Contributing to the standalone VM based sandbox install and testing of that install
  • Reviewing of PRs in Nephio
  • Contributed to the documentation of Nephio (Sandbox install and Sandbox walkthrough)
  • Ongoing participation in discussions in all SIGs

Currently the active developers from Ericsson with over 20 contributions include Fiachra Corcoran , Liam Fallon , Francesco Davide Lapenta  with a number of other supporting contributors.

6

Google

Kandan is currently the Head of Product for Telco Automation and Analytics at Google Cloud, where he is responsible for driving the development and delivery of innovative cloud products in Data, AI/ML and Cloud-native automation that can help telecommunications companies transform their businesses. Kandan has 20+ years of experience in product innovation, building products from scratch, and driving its adoption.

Kandan is a strong advocate for open source software based products, founded and led many open source projects and associated products for mass adoption.

>Founded and current chair of Nephio

>Played key role in the inception of O-RAN RIC and was a major contributor to the O-RAN SC. This led to industry wide innovation and products.

>Co-founded the LF Edge/Akraino project, which is at the forefront of pioneering edge innovations. The blueprints are adopted by many products in Telecom.

>Instrumental role on the OpenStack board, which contributed significantly to its success. AT&T and many telecom on-prem clouds are deployed on Openstack.

Kandan played an instrumental role in transforming AT&T's cloud strategy and Domain 2.0 initiatives. Spearheaded AT&T's and industry advancements in Edge Computing, NFV, and SDN. Now spearheading innovation in the Data, AI/ML and Cloud Native automation space.

Google is a major contributor to Nephio. Kandan was instrumental in founding Nephio along with other Googlers and community members.

Google remains dedicated to Nephio's success and adoption by the industry. Kandan wants to run for the TSC position because he is committed to the community's success.

Contributions Details:

  1. https://insights-v2.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/ena/technical-contributors/participating-organizations
  2. Major contributions from John Belamaric Stephen Wong Tal Liron ,Kaushik (SIG-1 Co-Chair)
  3. More than 20+ contributions including project governance, documentation, leading SIG and TSC, Seed code contributions, R1 contributions, R2 continued contributions.
7Victor Morales Samsung

Victor is a passionate Sr. Staff Software Engineer in the Samsung Open Source Group with nearly 18 years of experience in building solutions that are easy to use, scale and adapt.

He is a regular speaker at technical conferences in Latam Open Source communities. Co-chair of the CNF Working Group in the CNCF, and Co-founder of the OpenStackGDL, Cloud-Native El Salvador and Guadalajara communities. 

Active contributor to CNCF, LFN and Open Infrastructure projects and fervent supporter of the DevOps culture.

Samsung has participated in the success on Nephio in the following areas:

  • Implemented a prow instance and CI/CD jobs to be utilized by the community during the software development process.
  • Created an installer to provision Nephio components and Sandbox VM for End-to-End process.
  • Improved the Nephio UI to support PackageVariant and PackageVariantSets.
  • Created KPT function to manipulate NetworkAttachmentDefinition resources.
  • Proposed the management of Security policies on Nephio Deployments.
  • Proposed a tool creation to facilitate the migration of existing Helm Charts to Operators.
  • Participated on the discussions related to the integration of O-RAN project.
8TELUS, Canada 

Sana is a principal technology architect leading the architecture and long-term roadmap of E2E Service Orchestration for supporting 5G/edge services over a hybrid telco cloud. She has been leading initiatives to improve cloud-native adoption through DevOps, open source solutions, and implementing organization-wide automation principles, and an API program. She has been involved in leading industry initiatives on making telco automation agile and cloud-native, founding partner of TELUS OSPO, project Nephio, and leading industry efforts around cloud-native automation.  She is actively working and leading various efforts with the Linux Foundation include TAC representative and GB member, NGMN and supporting research across North American Universities. 

Sana Tariq is a Ph.D. in Computer Science majoring in optical communications, cloud computing, and software-defined networking (Fulbright scholarship and CREOL fellowship awards)

Sana has given many presentations on service orchestration, cloud-native transformation, open source adoption and telco transformation at the edge of 5G.  Some of recent blogs published at Nephio website: https://nephio.org/on-the-road-to-public-cloud-5g-networks/

https://nephio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/07/Nephio-Telus-CaseStudy-v4.pdf?hsCtaTracking=9dfabe15-a71f-43ed-a47a-4973f8489356%7C4d50251e-b3d3-416a-b9cc-538357f59c7d

https://www.ngmn.org/wp-content/uploads/NGMN_Cloud_Native_Manifesto.pdf

TELUS has supported Project Nephio since inception as founding member with Google and other community members. TELUS is also dedicated to driving Nephio's success and vision across all NF vendors and driving the industry to embrace cloud native automation and openness best practises driven through Nephio. 

Contributions Details:

  1. Served as TSC vice-chair in in the 2022/23 term.
  2. Served as Nephio Sig Arch Chair in the 2022/23 term.
  3. Supported All Nephio events through active participation, coordination and presentations e.g., Nephio Summit, One Summit, D&TFs etc. 
  4. Published 2x blogs on Nephio website and contributed in various analyst reports. 
  5. More than 20+ contributions including project governance, documentation, leading SIG Architecture and TSC, R1 & R2 requirements gathering and establishing community momentum along with other Nephio leads. 
9Deutsche TelekomBernard is a Lead Architect of Deutsche Telekom. His main focus is on simplifying the lifecycle management of network solutions.Deutsche Telekom has been contributing to the Nephio project by detailing major requirements regarding the lifecycle management of cloud infrastructures, network functions and solutions from a telco operator perspective. In addition Deutsche Telekom has shared with the community a couple of design considerations regarding service assurance, modeling and dependency management between cloud infrastructures and network functions. 
10Intel

Sundar has more than 20 years of experience in the industry spanning networking, virtualization, cloud/edge computing and accelerator offload technologies. At Intel, he co-architected the OPAE software stack for FPGAs and worked on enabling FPGAs in Docker containers. As part of  KVM4NFV (a project in OPNFV), he authored a whitepaper on low-latency NFV infrastructure. He was elected twice as Project Technical Lead of Project Cyborg, which enabled accelerators such as FPGAs in the OpenStack cloud orchestration framework. His current focus is on multi-cluster orchestration, service mesh, WASM, and cloud-native Secure Access Service Edge. He serves on the EMCO and Nephio Technical Steering Committees, and the LFN AI Task Force. He is a Certified Kubernetes Application Developer, and has 12+ patent filings, issued or in progress.

Sundar Nadathur is an architect at Intel's Network and Edge Group, with a focus on multi-cluster orchestration and cloud-native security (incl. SASE, service mesh and AI use cases for networking/security). With over 20 years in the networking industry, Sundar has been active in the open source community for many years; some his contributions include:

Contributions to Nephio:

  • Presented the "5G Use Cases for Nephio" document with a team as part of requirements definition early in 2023.
  • Regularly participant and contributor in TSC meetings since the very beginning.
  • Have been keeping Intel management and teams updated on Nephio developments, so that we can make an informed decision on how best to contribute to Nephio in view of available resources and our partner engagements.
11Hunor DemeterVMware

12Sandeep Sharma Aarna NetworksPrincipal Architect at Aarna Networks

Contributions to Nephio : 
Overall 18 commits to the Nephio project.
Presented Nephio at
LFN D&TFs, Nephio Technical Events/Workshops. Aarna Networks organised (two) Nephio events in Bangalore to spread awareness about the Nephio initial release and the recent R1 release. 

13F5

Ravi comes with a contribution of over 23+ years in the Telecommunication industry contributing both on Advanced Technology and Telco products. He currently drives the Architecture and Design of F5's Orchestration and Cloud Platform  for 5G/vRAN /Core and MEC scenarios with focus on Telco Operators. He also was the Chief Architect at Corning Inc and Sterlite Tech., contributing to the architecture and design of next generation cellular products and technologies for 5G and beyond such as virtualizing DU while inter-operating with third party O-RU based on O-RAN OFH-7.2 specs (midband radios), Near-RT RIC Design and XApps, and participating in  O-RAN and driving contribution such as Dynamic Spectrum Sharing use case in WG-1, contributing to E2-AP specifications in WG-3, and actively participating in WG-6 on several work items. Prior to this, he led Advanced Technology activities in CTO's office at Futurewei technologies (Huawei) and Nortel Networks.

He has been active contributor to standard bodies such as Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), ITU, ATIS and ORAN forums. Also contributed to  International Telecommunication Union’s focus group on driving International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-2020 requirements for 5G. 

He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Carleton University. also served as an editor of Photonics Journal and been on the TPC of several other IEEE/ACM Conferences. Over the course of his career, he has been granted over 50 U.S patents and many still pending in various areas of data networking technology, and have over 50 peer reviewed publications in IEEE and ACM journals and conferences, with overall google scholar citations of patents and papers exceeding 2000.


14OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA)/OAISagar is currently working at OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA). At OSA he is responsible for DevOps, Data Center management, and Radio equipment management. He takes care of packing OAI network functions (RAN and Core) and deploying them on different distributions of Kubernetes. He has experience deploying NFs via ONAP and OSM. In the past, he has worked with OpenStack and LXC/LXD.

He holds a PhD in Telecommunication from Sorbonne University (Thesis title: Cloud Native Network Slice Orchestration in 5G and Beyond). His thesis focused on the orchestration of network functions. 

Started contributing to Nephio to apply my experience of NF deployment and management. During my PhD studies, I have worked with different open-source Core and RAN network functions, and different Orchestrators (ONAP, OSM, and different European project proposed orchestrators). I would like to bring this experience and knowledge to Nephio.  

Contributions to Nephio

1. Created deployment and networking blueprint for R2
2. Created operators and packages for OAI Core network functions using an alternative of Go Kubebuilder  (Python Kopf)
3. Contributing to NF configuration management for R2
4. Contributing to O-RAN NF Deployment use cases for R3 and beyond

15

TIM 

(appointed)

Leading projects on the development of automation/orchestration solutions for TIM network services. Managing multiple stakeholders (inside and outside the organization) to harmonize external solutions and internal implementations.
Long lasting active participation in international standardization groups (ITU-T SG15, IETF CCAMP, OIF) and communities (e.g. ONAP Linux Foundation Networking).
Involved since the beginning, our team is currently working on the integration between Nephio and legacy system keeping Nephio pattern. Furthermore we made a first integration of Sylva and Nephio to explore the openness of Nephio platform and to bring Nephio pattern into Sylva. Our team also provided requirements (an sdk toolkit for operator development; a policy framework) that we believe are essential for a wide adoption    
16Orange

Eric is leading an automation team within Orange Innovation. Eric Debeau has a solid 25 years experience in the telecommunications area with a particular focus on IT & cloud techniques adoption for networks. Through his broad experience as network architect and platform development (IMS/VoIP, network API), he is recognized as a member of the Orange expert Community in charge of future network evolutions. He is currently leading a team working on the cloud native automation leveraging GitOps approaches.

He is currently TSC Member for Orange.  Eric also represented Orange on the ONAP TSC and presented different sessions in different events such as LFN D&T or ONES.

Orange is a Nephio founding member. Orange is strongly involved to drive ecosystem to embrace cloud native automation (Sylva, NGMN Cloud Manifesto). 

Personal contributions to Nephio

  • More than 20 contributions to R1: SIG1 network architecture with requirements, different tests and commits for R1, contribution to documentation, tests to validate OAI implementation
  • Contribution to R2 Roadmap
  • Presentation during Nephio event and LFN D&TF


Other Orange contributions to Nephio

Kpt Free5GC packaging by Piotr Matysiak 

End to end tests and solutions proposed for E2E call Piotr Matysiak 


17

Kubermatic 

(appointed) 

Sebastian Scheele is CEO and co-founder of Kubermatic, a start-up that is one of the leading committers to Kubernetes, focused on developing open core software solutions for automating Kubernetes operations, at scale. Sebastian, a developer himself, has his finger on the pulse of where the Kubernetes landscape is going and is contributing many of his team's resources to upstream K8s development. As one of the early pioneers in the cloud native ecosystem , he has helped hundreds of enterprises embrace Kubernetes to solve cutting edge challenges in both cloud and edge computing.   

Sebastian speaks at numerous conferences around the world about the impact of Kubernetes and cloud native technologies for IT.

Kubermatic is contributing since the beginning with multiple people to Nephio. Beside contributing do requirements and presentation some of the areas on contribution was the free5gc-packages and implementing required function for Nephio in kpt.

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