2024 TSC Member Elections

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 and Developer relations. 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, and collaboration with cross-functional teams like Product, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Solution Engineering, Legal, etc. for product integrations, joint solutions, and GTM activities.

Skills: Global Strategy · Strategic Relationships · Global Alliances · GSI · Teamwork · Partner Relationship Management · Global Business Development · Executive Management · Strategic Partnerships, Open Source Strategy and representation in Open source Consortiums

As a governing board member of CNCF and CD Foundation for three years, I contributed to the development and growth of the cloud-native computing industry. During my tenure, I helped shape these influential open-source foundations' vision, direction, and governance.

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 and LFN projects. I started the SIG Security and Accuknox is the core contributor and maintainer of the SIG, besides contributing to project Nephio.

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 and various industry verticals.

Avinash Bhat

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd

I have 24 years of experience in telecom industry and had the opportunity to work in many diverse and cross functional teams. I have front ended many pre-sales discussions with various global operators and have played impactful roles in securing key business wins. Apart from this I have led many R&D Product development and currently leading virtualized RAN product development.

Apart from this as part of the Global Open-Source Group, I am leading the Telecom related Open-Source Initiatives. I have played impact full role in O-RAN SC and represent Samsung in TOC, where we introduced a new project to bring in an AI/ML Framework that can work with non-RT RIC and Near-RT RIC based on the usecse. In Nephio, I have joined TSC around Apr’24 time frame but from the last year or so, I am driving the Nephio contribution strategy viz., O-RAN SC Support, Service Assurance, Helm to Operator tool etc. With my unique cross functional experience, I consider myself to be Telecom Industry expert with deep insight into the technology and market.

Samsung Electronics has been actively contributing to the Nephio Community. We have assigned many resources to the community and in the current eligible list 5/37 are from Samsung Electronics. I have internally nominated to represent Samsung Electronics in Nephio TSC and will internally coordinate the contribution strategy.

I strongly believe in the power of open source and the role it will play in the telecom industry. In my opinion, we need to focus on Operators Business Outcomes and look at helping operators in areas such as improving customer experience, operational efficiencies etc. With a Cloud native based architecture, we can bring many IT capabilities like CI/CD, Scaling etc to Telecom. For orchestration and overall management, we should look at actively adopting open source-based solutions . Nephio has important role towards this journey, and I look forward to enabling features towards the same.

Ciaran Johnston

Ericsson

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 is an active participant in the Nephio community, with significant contributions to features, robustness and characteristics over the last two releases.

I have worked as a TSC member and community participant since 2023, working on modelling in the Network Architecture SIG, contributing to user story definition and development, and documenting the Nephio architecture.

I have a strong belief in industry collaboration on open source projects to improve overall the quality, security and interoperability of the systems we build. I believe the Nephio project has significant potential to contribute to this through the development of software solutions to materially improve network operations. I would like to see broader synergies between telco, the IT sector, and standardization to improve interoperability and enable innovation, and I believe the Nephio community can be an enabler of this. I look forward to continuing to contribute to Nephio and participate in the community in 2025.