An all-star lineup for our Convergence Showdown

Three weeks ago, I challenged 3Com, Cabletron, Cisco, Lucent and Nortel Networks to take part in Network World's Convergence Showdown at NetWorld+ Interop next month. I'm happy to report that these enterprise network rivals all rose to the call of duty. They've committed to sending a top technical executive to this presidential-style debate aimed at getting past the hype to find real strategies and applications for converged enterprise nets.

From 3Com, we'll have Bob Roman, director of business development and emerging technologies. Cabletron is sending Romulus Pereira, chief operating officer, while Cisco is sending Marthin DeBeer, a director overseeing Cisco's enterprise convergence strategy. From Lucent, we have Karyn Mashima, strategy vice president and chief technical officer, and Nortel has committed T.J. Fitzpatrick, president of voice solutions/enterprise solutions.

I left a slot open for an enterprising start-up, and after hearing from a number of readers, I've asked Scott Pickett, chief technology officer and co-founder of Vertical Networks, to join the fray. Vertical is taking an interesting approach to voice/data integration by handling convergence at the switch and letting traffic run over separate wiring infrastructures.

Pickett has promised to give as good as he gets from our lineup of tech experts, and that's what the showdown format is designed to encourage. We get past the slides and standard corporate positioning statements to get real answers to tough questions.

Our vendor executives will first face questioning from a panel of industry experts who've heard all the convergence hype and know the holes in vendors' stories. Our experts panel includes Network World Senior Editor and showdown veteran Jim Duffy; Jim Metzler, a principal of Ashton, Metzler and Associates, and host of Network World's State of the WAN seminar tour; and Kevin Tolly, president of The Tolly Group and master of ceremonies for our State of the LAN seminars.

After dealing with the experts panel, we'll let the vendors go after one another with their own questions and, finally, we offer them up to the audience for further questioning.

Join us in Atlanta for the Convergence Showdown, which will be held from 12:30 p.m to 2 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 14, in Ballroom 1 of the Georgia World Congress Center. See you there.

- John Gallant

jgallant@nww.com