HOSSEIN ESLAMBOLCHI, PH.D

Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi is Chairman and CEO of 2020 Venture Partners (http://www.2020vp.com), providing technology and operations consulting to private equity firms, service providers, enterprise customers, venture capitalists and start-ups as well as publicly traded companies in the areas of telecommunications technology, operations, business transformation and content distribution including wireless and all IP communications.

Dr. Eslambolchi is recognized worldwide in the scientific community as one of the foremost thought leaders and technological scientists of both the high-tech age and 21st century, often compared by industry experts to leaders such as Jack Welch of GE for his leadership in business transformation in global communications and Thomas Edison for his prolific scientific contribution in the field of IP. Dr. Eslambolchi is well-known in the scientific community for his expertise in IP network design and reliability, security, IP technologies, services, IP applications and setting an industry vision for "the "Concept of One" (do it once, do it right, use it everywhere) and the "Concept of Zero" (zero defects, zero cycle time and automate where possible), which have been used to streamline production, as well as the "Concept of None," where networks will be moved to become autonomic and in turn self healing, self-provisioning and self-restorable via fully automated network and operational support systems. Dr. Eslambolchi also developed a very unique model of Complexity for Telecom which states that over time, complexity due to the number of protocols along with interconnection of these protocols, multiplied by the number of services will increase to a point that scale becomes a very difficult factor to manage in terms cost, capability and cycle time. He has been advocating models to lower this complexity to only a Factor of One. This is now known in the industry as the "Eslambolchi Law of Complexity."

Dr. Eslambolchi is also known for his technical work on IP technologies and has a number of innovations in various fields supporting communications and worldwide IP infrastructure, technologies and applications. These accolades have earned him the respect and admiration of fellow scientists worldwide and have gained him visibility amongst influential marketplace pundits who acknowledge his ability to influence how private and public sector leaders must think if they expect to compete in a global economy. His collection of achievements include:

• Holds over 1000 patents worldwide, both issued and pending
• AT&T Fellow Award, AT&T's highest technical honor, 1999
• Thomas Alva Edison Inventor of the Year Award, 1997
• AT&T Science & Technology Medal and AT&T Significant Patent Award, 1997
• "Inventor of the Year" by the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame, 2002. Only Thomas Alva Edison and Albert Einstein have been so honored.
• Top 10 Most Influential CTOs of 2005 (InfoWorld)
• #1 'mover and shaker' in telecommunications, Light Reading, 2003, for his visionary prediction of IP and MPLS worldwide nearly a decade ago.
• 10 Internet Business Leaders of 2005 (Cisco IQ Magazine)
• Premier 100 IT Leaders of 2004 (Computerworld Magazine)
• President Obama's Science & Technology Award, 2009, for his vision and contribution to IP and technology
• Top Ten Innovators of 2003, Executive Council of New York
• IEEE Chairman Quality Award, for improving the reliability of IP networks worldwide, 2008
• Innovator of the Year, 2003 (Cisco Systems & John Chambers)
• Top 100 influential leaders of the 21st century, (Sun Microsystems)
• Top 100 alumni in the history of the University of California, awarded by UCSD
• Top 100 Global Telecom Business Leader in both 2010 and 2011
• Chairman of the IEEE Globecom 2012 in Anaheim, California

In his book '2020 Vision', Dr. Eslambolchi sets forth the foundation for the telecommunications industry over the next two decades and his prediction that "broadband wireless will eat IP" and micro-applications will dominate the industry. In his many keynote presentations to business, scientific and technology-focused audiences across the world, Dr. Eslambolchi advances a 21st century agenda that has become the transformational plan for global telecommunications technology. “His (Eslambolchi’s) evangelizing has underscored the notion of where the entire communications infrastructure is heading,” Light Reading, (11/2003)"

A quintessential telecommunications visionary, he champions the creation and delivery of pragmatic state-of-the-art transformational business strategies. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1986 and quickly climbed the corporate ladder to become global Chief Technology Officer, global Chief Information Officer, President and CEO of AT&T Labs and President and CEO of AT&T Global Network Services and was a 16B officer of the company since 2001. He also served as a critical member of AT&T's governing Executive Committee. As CTO of AT&T he developed and executed a comprehensive four-stage strategy that included Enterprise Customer Service, Network Transformation, Service Transformation and Cultural Transformation, all in a span of just three short years. Essentially, he initiated and instigated the overhaul and remodeling of the company dubbed the "new AT&T" by SBC. , The New York Times called him "the technological strategist behind AT&T's ambitious turnaround plan to become a data transmission company selling an array of software products like network security systems," (01/22/2005). He predicted and advocated an architecture that would allow all services to run on IP and work together with connectivity to any device and advised top leaders accordingly on the formulation and implementation of his strategic technologic vision. He left AT&T soon after its merger with SBC in January 2006. Upon his departure, BusinessWeek called him "a critical player in maintaining AT&T's status as a technology leader" (12/2005) and noted that he is "a bold, but pragmatic, visionary."

Dr. Eslambolchi is currently on the Board of Directors of the following companies:
- Telemetria Technologies, based in Silicon Valley
- Verecloud, based in Denver, Colorado

He is the Chief Technology Advisor to the following corporations:
- Avalon Global Solutions, based in Mclean, Virginia
- Rainstor, based in San Francisco, California
- Broadsoft, based in San Francisco, California
- Subex World, based in Bangalore, India
- Allegis Capital Venture Firm, based in San Francisco, California
- Seraph Group, based in Atlanta, Georgia
- Solera Networks, based in Salt Lake City, Utah
- Back Bay Management Consulting, based in Boston, Massachusetts

He also serves as Chief Technical Consultant for:
- Ericsson, building a worldwide ecosystem for converging wire-line and wireless using IP technologies
- American Airlines, helping transform retail strategy to ultimately increase revenue stream and reduce costs as well as transform their IT system and applications with state-of-the-art IP-based technologies

In addition, he is also on the Board of Trustees for SUSMA, based in NYC and technical advisor to the University of California School of Engineering where he started the CNS center for bringing together various engineering including nano- and bio-engineering fields.

Dr. Eslambolchi received his BS, MS, Ph.D and Post Doc degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Eslambolchi served as Chief Technology Officer and advised AT&T's top leaders on the formulation and implementation of a strategic technology vision from 2001 to 2005. Early on, he predicted that IP would "eat everything" and advocated an MPLS architecture as Ethernet as being the layer 2 backbone that would allow all services to run on IP and work together with connectivity to any device, in any place using Location Based Services. In addition, his significant service ideas regarding routers, security, hosting, cloud computing, virtualization and collaboration were implemented to increase company revenue as much as $5B. He worked tirelessly with Sales, Marketing and Product Management to implement his ideas in support of customer needs in both the enterprise and consumers' market. The New York Times credited Dr. Eslambolchi as "the technological strategist behind AT&T's ambitious turnaround plan to become a data transmission company selling an array of software products like network security systems," (01/2005).

In addition to serving as CTO of AT&T, Dr. Eslambolchi was also President of AT&T's Global Networking Technology Services, President and CEO of AT&T Labs and Chief Information Officer, giving him end-to-end responsibility for implementing the company's technology and operational vision of the 21st century. As President and CEO of AT&T Labs, he led a team of some of the world's best scientists and engineers in developing an architecture that transformed AT&T's legacy voice and data networks into a converged IP/MPLS network that now reaches all major business centers around the globe.

Dr. Eslambolchi designed a state-of-the-art architecture called Service Over IP in which all legacy services can migrate over new architecture at the lowest cost, highest capability and lowest cycle time. He developed several patents for product managers and sales groups across enterprise and consumer markets to be able enhance revenue stream using this MPLS architecture.

As CTO, he led the company strategy and direction for new innovative services around call center application, e-collaboration and virtualization in both wireline and wireless infrastructures.

Dr. Eslambolchi, in a very short period of time helped transform AT&T from being perceived as ports and pipes into a single global wireless company using state-of-the-art technologies and advised the AT&T Board of Directors on which access technologies to invest in for the future success of the company.

As President of Global Network Services, Dr. Eslambolchi was responsibility for the design, development, engineering, operations and reliability of AT&T's global network, as well as for its Global Network Operations Center (GNOC) – AT&T's networking nerve center. Dr. Eslambolchi was the main architect, engineer and implementer of this new GNOC, which came to fruition in 18 months. He oversaw and managed several tens of thousands of employees in both engineering and operations divisions of AT&T Corporation.

As Chief Information and Investment Officer, he provided the leadership that reengineered AT&T's underlying information technology (IT) infrastructures with his unique Concept of One and Concept of Zero business processes. While moving AT&T's legacy networks onto an IP/MPLS platform, he also directed the convergence of the operating support and customer service systems underlying the network, making AT&T the lowest-cost major carrier. This also improved cycle times and allowed customers unprecedented access to the network that permits them to monitor and control their services. More can be found on his superb innovation at www.2020vp.com. He also managed over $14B in Capex and $20B annually in operating expense for AT&T.

The metrics surrounding Dr. Eslambolchi’s AT&T transformation of converged wireline and wireless businesses are profound:

• Contributed over $2B in expense reduction by cutting the number of systems by 80%

• Led and increased billing accuracy by 98% by reducing the number of data bases from 1,800 to 20, thus contributing to over $3.2B in annual savings of contra revenue

• Transformed Days Sales Outstanding from 72 days to 31 days in less than 2 years

• Increased AT&T’s share of revenue from IP services to 75% by increasing reliability of its IP network from 90.0 of reliability to 99.9999 of reliability

• Increased revenue per employee by 50% and EBITDA per employee by 60%, the highest and best results in the telecommunications industry in over 43 years as well as Best in Class across all categories

• Lowered CAPEX, driving efficiency and productivity and increasing free cash flow by over $12 billion over a 3 year span

• Recovered nearly $10B worth of stranded assets and avoided unnecessary capital expenditure, reducing AT&T debt from $37B in 2002 to less than $4B by the end of 2005

• Designed and implemented an E-Bonding system connecting customers to the heart of AT&T’s network, for which Yankee group gave Dr. Eslambolchi its highest ranking in over a decade. Over 90% of service orders were automated and cycle time for both physical and logical provisioning were reduced over 95% in 3 years.

• Reduced service on-time performance from 65% to over 99.9% and reduced defects by over 90% over 3 years resulting in over $3B of incremental revenue for AT&T

• Led and developed state of art strategies for AT&T using his Concept of One, Concept of Zero and Concept of None to create a state-of-the-art 21st century process. More can be found on www.2020vp.com

• Worked very closely with HR and Financial to reduce management layers from 14 to 7, resulting in over $500M savings over 12 months. Significant collaboration was involved in driving an initiative to increase company productivity

• Defined a strategy to eliminate 24 legacy networks into a single IP-MPLS network and designed processes around highly digitized network architecture, of which similar models have been replicated and utilized by several service providers in the US and worldwide

Innovated a technology called FASTAR (FAST AUTOMATED RESTORATION) which has become the foundation of protection for AT&T national network security in the event of a major cable cut in the United States.

Page Updated at:Oct 31, 2011