Digital Convergence is a phenomenon that is sweeping multiple industries and changing the way business is going to be done in the foreseeable future. Telecom/voice industry, Broadcast/media industry and Internet/data industry are converging in the space of content distribution leading to creation of new business models. Services are converging in that users want access to their content and services from anywhere using any device and expect seamless transition as networks or devices change in the course of service consumption. Networks are converging to IP/MPLS in the service provider domain and IP-based networks in several vertical industries, such as, building automation leading to hitherto unthinkable solutions. Convergence is also happening in the device space, especially in the mobile device space where the mobile devices are becoming Swiss army knives with consumer electronic features like camera, video recorder, am/fm radio, mp3 player converging with communication features like phone, SMS and IM and broadcast/media features like TV in addition to PDA features like calendar, address book and to-do lists. Given this phenomenon of multi-dimensional convergence, new challenges are emerging and creating new opportunities for device manufacturers, network equipment vendors, and convergent service providers. I will briefly discuss some of the afore-mentioned challenges and potential solutions in course of my presentation.

Sanjoy Paul (sanjoy_paul@infosys.com) is Associate Vice President, General Manager-Research and Head of Convergence Lab at Infosys Technologies Limited where he heads research and innovation in the field of Communications, Media and Entertainment. Prior to that, he was a Research Professor at WINLAB, Rutgers University, and Founder of RelevantAd Technologies Inc. Before that Sanjoy spent five years as the Director of Wireless Networking Research at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and as the CTO of two start-up companies based in New York. In a previous tenure at Bell Labs as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Sanjoy was the chief architect of Lucent's IPWorX Caching and Content Distribution product line.

Sanjoy has over twenty years of technology expertise, specifically in the areas of End-to-End Protocol Design and Analysis, Mobile Wireless Networking, Quality of Service, Multicasting, Content Distribution, Media Streaming, Intelligent Caching, and Secure Commerce. He has authored a book on Multicasting, published over 100 papers in International Journals and refereed Conference Proceedings, authored over 80+ US patents (28 granted, 50+ pending), and is the co-recipient of 1997 William R. Bennett award from IEEE Communications Society for the best original paper in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

He holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from IIT Kharagpur, India, an M.S and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an MBA from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. Sanjoy is a Fellow of IEEE and a Member of the ACM.