Jeff Shafer is an innovator at AT&T, with a record of building new technologybased businesses, having garnered more than 30 industry awards for services launched since 2015. He currently leads the Cloud Solutions product organization, with responsibility for Edge Computing, Colocation, AT&T CDN, Box from AT&T, Enterprise Recovery Services, Tech Support 360, Website Solutions, and more. Additionally, he is leading a strategic initiative to transform how AT&T Business innovates and assembles capabilities across the portfolio to deliver Edge-to-Edge solutions with greater speed and agility. Most recently, Jeff led the product organization for AT&T’s fast-growing Virtual Edge business, creating value for customers by aiding their shift toward software-based solutions at the edge. With a portfolio including AT&T FlexWareSM, SD-WAN, and a range of traditional managed services, AT&T grew under Jeff’s leadership to become the largest SD-WAN provider globally. Previously, he was founder and product development lead for AT&T Network on Demand, where he dramatically improved the customer experience and operational efficiency of key AT&T network services via software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) capabilities. Earlier roles at AT&T included strategy and market development for AT&T Business and more than eight years in product management for cloud, As Cloud Product Director, Jeff brought AT&T’s Compute and Storage as a Service offerings to market and launched the innovative networking approach that evolved into AT&T NetBond® for Cloud, a premier secure cloud connectivity solution for businesses. Prior to joining AT&T, Jeff directed product management for an award-winning optical edge router at Lucent Technologies. He has also worked with early stage startup companies in strategy, marketing, and web application development. He began his career as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, where he received the Hughes Trophy from the Secretary of the Army as the top-ranked of more than 3,500 officer peers. Jeff holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Arizona State University. He is currently based in Dallas, Texas.

ABSTRACT:

Edge computing and processing aren’t new concepts, but in today’s technology landscape, they’re quickly becoming a driving force in shaping networks. So why are we talking about the edge? Existing and upcoming nextgeneration technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), software-defined networking (SDN), blockchain, artificial intelligence and 5G – all of which are essential to the future of the customer experience and back-end business operations – require massive amounts of near-real-time computation. Edge-to-Edge intelligence is poised to help make this computation possible and make seamless user experiences a reality.
This presentation will address key benefits to utilizing the network edge including:
• real-time data analysis
• improved performance
• long-term cost benefits
• added security