About The Authors

Robert Sparks

Robert Sparks is principal software engineer for Tekelec, and he joined the company recently with Tekelec’s acquisition of Estacado Systems. At Estacado, Robert was responsible for managing Estacado's research activities and development of products and product components for new markets.

Robert has over 20 years experience in the computer and communications industries. He was CTO at Xten Networks prior to joining Estacado Systems and has held management and research positions at Dynamicsoft, Lucent, MCI, and Texas A&M University. For the last nine years, Robert has focused on designing and developing SIP-based IP communications systems.

Robert is very active in standards and industry development. He coordinates the industry's premier interoperability event, the SIPit. Robert chairs the IETF's SIMPLE working group, which defines extensions to SIP for Presence and Instant Messaging, and the GEORPIV working group which provides tools for applications to carry geographic location information and privacy rules to affect its use. He is a co-editor of the core SIP standard (RFC 3261), several key SIP updates and extensions, and the lead for the SIP essential corrections process within the IETF.

Robert is a member of the board of directors of the SIP Forum. He holds a Master's degree in Mathematics and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.

Ajay Deo

Ajay Deo is AVP Engineering for Tekelec. He joined Tekelec with the company’s acquisition of Estacado Systems where he was responsible for overseeing the management of the company, and for establishing its strategic direction. Ajay helped found Estacado Systems in 2004 with a goal to build a company from the ground up. Ajay has more than 13 years of experience at corporate and divisional levels of public and privately held companies. Prior to Estacado, Ajay worked as a director of engineering at Dynamicsoft, a provider of networking solutions, where he was responsible for the design of signaling products for wireless and wireline service providers. Ajay has extensive experience in designing communication services and equipment. He held various positions within MCI, BT Labs, and DSC Communications, gaining experience in network design, server product development, and OAM&P. While working at MCI, he developed the SIP Servlet specification, which was standardized through Sun's Java Community Process (JCP). Subsequent to this work, Ajay was involved in the design and implementation of two different application servers that implemented the SIP Servlet specification. Ajay holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Indiana University, and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, with a Minor in Business and Math from Western Kentucky University.

Ben Campbell

Ben Campbell is a principal engineer for Tekelec. He joined the company recently through Tekelec’s acquisition of Estacado Systems where he was responsible for managing the development of products to customer requirements.

Ben has been an active participant in the SIP, SIMPLE, and related working groups at the IETF since 1999. Ben was an original contributor to the presence and instant messaging protocol proposals which formed the basis for the current SIP-based presence protocols.He co-wrote the first prototype of a SIP based Instant Messaging and Presence system, which was demonstrated at the Summer 2000 IETF meeting. Ben edited the core messaging efforts in the SIMPLE working group (RFC 3428 and RFC 4975), and co-authored several essential guidance recommendations for the use of these emerging real-time communication technologies (see RFCs 3087, 3824, and 4662).

Ben has over 20 years of experience providing technical and managerial leadership focused on messaging systems for organizations including Dynamicsoft, MCI Worldcom, Lucent Technologies, and JCPenney,

Ben holds an MBA and a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science with a Minor in Electrical Engineering, both from Texas A&M University.

Adam Roach

Adam Roach is principal software engineer for Tekelec. He joined Tekelec recently with the company’s acquisition of Estacado Systems. At Estacado, Adam was responsible for setting the technical direction for the company. Prior to joining Estacado Systems, Adam held research and development positions with Dynamicsoft and Ericsson.

Adam has been working with the IETF in the area of real-time communications since 1998. Adam authored RFC 3265, which forms the foundation of presence subscriptions. Adam has been heavily involved with subsequent work relating to user presence (including a protocol for subscriptions to buddy lists, RFC 4662). Adam has further performed significant standardization work in the areas of SIP interworking with legacy telephony systems (RFC 3578 and RFC 3398) and signaling compression for mobile telephony networks (RFC 3485 and RFC 4077).

Adam currently co-chairs the IETF XCON and SIPCORE working groups.

Jiri Kuthan

Jiri Kuthan is the Assistant Vice President (AVP) of Engineering with Tekelec, where he is responsible for the company's SIP technology. Jiri joined the company via Tekelec's acquisition of iptelorg, a company that Jiri co-founded and was the Chief Technology Officer of. At iptelorg Jiri led a team that developed the SIP Express Router - known as SER - a widely deployed SIP routing engine in the world. The SIP Express Router has become the foundation of Tekelec's TekCore SSR technology.

Prior to founding iptelorg, Jiri worked at Fraunhofer and MCI Worldcom. Jiri has been actively participating in IETF standardization, serves on the technical panels of several SIP-related conferences and is a frequent industry speaker.

Dan Bantukul

Dan Bantukul has more than 20 years of telecommunications experience and the vast majority of that time has been with Tekelec. Dan has held a variety of positions with Tekelec in hardware engineering, embedded system programming, product management and product marketing. In his current position as director of product marketing for Tekelec’s Signaling and Control product portfolio Dan is responsible for evangelism of Tekelec’s SIP Signaling Router (SSR) and for providing direction to the product roadmap based upon industry and customer requirements. Dan has extensive knowledge of SS7, SIP, IMS and Intelligent Network services in both fixed and mobile telecommunication networks and he has been awarded numerous patents in these areas. A trip to Dan’s office is always an interesting experience because you never know whether he might have spent the weekend building a new robot or performing a software or hardware hack on the latest consumer electronics device in order to “enhance” its functionality. Dan graduated with a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University, works at Tekelec’s Morrisville, NC offices and lives in the area with his wife and two daughters.

Ravi Ravishankar