Telecom Italia Partners with IEC as Service Provider Sponsor at SOFNET 08 in London; BT Serves as Official Host

Business Wire, Feb 20, 2008

The IEC's SOFNET 08 conference and exhibition will provide invaluable software and hardware solutions that will result in innovation to increase speed to market of new services

CHICAGO -- The International Engineering Consortium (IEC) today announced that Telecom Italia will serve as a service provider sponsor at SOFNET 08 this 28 April through 1 May at the Olympia National Hall in London with BT as the official host sponsor.

"There is currently no conference and exhibition exclusively dedicated to bringing software and hardware vendors together with the new breed of 'soft service providers,'" commented IEC President John Janowiak. "We're proud to partner with BT and Telecom Italia to quench the thirst for this type of knowledge."

SOFNET 08 will present 50 world-class educational sessions complementing an exhibition featuring cutting-edge software and hardware applications created to enhance IP-centric networks designed to satisfy the end user by offering a multitude of "anything, anytime, anywhere" services.

"Telecom Italia is committed to provide ultra bandwidth to its clients thus enabling a variety of services increasing industry and commerce productivity and bettering the way of life of citizens," commented Roberto Saracco, head of long term research and scientific communication at Telecom Italia. Mr. Saracco continued, "To that effect Telecom Italia is building an infrastructure based on optical and wireless that will progressively and pervasively reach all its clients...software is becoming a crucial asset for the exploitation of the ever more powerful communication and SOFNET 2008 can help in creating a better understanding among the various stakeholders."

SOFNET 08 Conference Chair and BT Group Chief Technology Officer Matt Bross further commented, "While transforming our business at BT, we realised early on that, in a software-driven world, collaboration with external partners was crucial. The SOFNET 08 conference and exhibition will address why service and application innovation has become imperative for sustainable customer and shareholder success."

Keynoters joining Matt Bross include Sally Davis, CEO of BT Wholesale; Bhaskar Gorti, senior VP and GM of Oracle; Helmut Leopold, director of platform and technology management at Telekom Austria AG; and Andreas Mueller-Schubert, GM of global solutions at Microsoft TV Microsoft Corporation.