Russell Bennett is the Principal at UC Insights and has over 20 years of experience in the software technology business in Europe, Asia and North America. For over 10 years he has been at the leading edge of SIP and unified communications product development and has played a significant role in most aspects of the development of that technology.

* In 2000, he joined dynamicsoft (acquired by Cisco Systems), where he led the product teams that created the first implementation of SIP-based presence as well as providing SIP routing network elements for many of the early next generation communications networks such as Vonage, Level(3) and Sprint.

* In 2003, he joined Avaya to lead the SIP Infrastructure Core Team and brought to market the Avaya Converged Communications Server and a SIP-enabled version of the Avaya Communication Manager IP-PBX.

* From 2004-10 he was a Program Manager within the Microsoft Unified Communications Group, where he:

--Defined the strategy for the integration of OCS 2007 with traditional telephony and led the team that implemented the OCS Mediation Server;
--Created the OCS voice partner verification program, the Open Interoperability Program, which included the SIP Trunking program;
--Played a significant role in initiating the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum.