Professional Summary
Dr. Brody has over 28 years of experience as a consultant and industry practitioner in strategic planning and telecommunications systems engineering and management. His responsibilities have included business management, product management, engineering management, sales, marketing, Intellectual Property management, expert witness testimony, and product definition and development. Dr. Brody has wide-ranging knowledge with respect to voice, call center, broadband, wireless, multimedia (MPEG) and packet-based service offerings, and operations/business support systems for those services. Has worked throughout North America, Europe and Asia, successfully managing cultural differences with respect to business practices, management styles and relationship building.
Expertise
- Broadband Communications
- Digital Switching
- Internet Infrastructure
- Network Management
- Networking
- Telecommunications & Wireless Product Marketing
- Wireless Technologies
- Multimedia Technologies
- VoIP and related technologies
Education
Year College or University Degree
1978 State University of New York at Stony Brook Ph.D., Physics
1973 City College of New York B.A., Physics
Professional Experience
From: 1990
To: Present
Organization: A. T. Brody & Associates, Inc.
Title: Principal Consultant Summary: A.T. Brody & Associates, Inc. (ATB) is a high tech consulting firm specializing in telecommunications, networking and multimedia issues, business and engineering management, and market analyses. Founded in 1990, the company provides its clients with a wide variety of services so they may keep pace with the breakneck changes in their industries. Within its areas of expertise, ATB offers the following services:
- Strategic planning
- Product planning
- Market and competitive analyses
- Intellectual property evaluation and licensing
- Proposal and bid response generation
- Business process and workflow engineering
- Product requirements and specifications
- Sales and marketing support
- Expert witness
A partial list of projects and clients includes:
Strategic Planning and Business Management
- Led interview study of Director Level and above management in the Billing and Customer Care areas to determine key buying factors differentiating vendors. Questionnaires and interviews included wireline, wireless and cable MSo service providers.
- Assisted major telecommunications manufacturer in establishing competencies, methods and procedures for both Product Management and Marketing Management functions. Work was done in conjunction with Sequent Learning Systems (www.sequentlearning.com), and was based on combining client's current industry specific needs with best of class methodologies.
- Developed strategic business plan for an IP-communications start-up. Served as interim CMO identifying and specifying initial product offerings, marketing the company’s Intellectual Property, and managing of business development efforts with both service provider and software/hardware vendor partners.
- Led team that critiqued strategic business plan for wireless Operations Support System software provider. Re-evaluated addressable markets, identified gaps, proposed merger and acquisition candidates, and provided an independent review of the final merger candidate. Return engagement one year later critiqued plan implementations, reorganized engineering teams and recommended risk reduction strategies.
- Led effort to develop an Internet/IP strategy for a major product line at a dominant circuit-switched Telecom equipment vendor. Strategy included both short and long-term product recommendations, addressable market forecasts and customer segment profiling.
- Prepared business plans and technical requirements for several international telecommunications transmission equipment manufacturers entering the U.S. market. Products included ATM switches, DSLAMs and SoNET/DWDM muxes. Work covered all major elements including technology evaluation, market and competitive analyses, product definitions, R&D plans, marketing plans, sales plans, service/support plans, P&L forecasts and risk analyses. Product requirements were validated in the marketplace through one-on-one customer interviews and focus groups.
- For a major worldwide software vendor, worked with its consulting practice to establish a vertical telecommunications practice. Based on client’s major core competencies, identified basic opportunities within the telecommunications segment, and defined initial customer care product offerings, methodologies and procedures. Helped determine delivery strategy (i.e., whether to make (develop), buy (purchase supplier) or resell (from partners) the required product elements).
- Provided both commercial and technical due diligence analysis of CLEC target for a major investment banking firm considering $250MM+ investment. Analysis included current P&L and forecast models, business strategies, service offerings, technology evaluation, network architecture and operations implementations.
Intellectual Property Management
- Helped create an Intellectual Property Licensing Pool comprised of several consumer electronics giants, major telecommunications corporations and leading research universities. Technologies being licensed (e.g., MPEG video) are used in goods and services in excess of $100B revenue annually.
- Conducted a review of patents for a Fortune 50 company, to determine commercial value and potential licensors outside client’s typical fields of use. Recommended marketing strategy that resulted in 15 times expected revenue from other fields-of-use licensing.
- Participated as board member for a major academic institution, along with other technical experts and patent attorneys that reviewed intellectual property resulting from research for commercial value and "patentability". Research areas included: telecom, multimedia, electrical engineering, computer science, materials science and chemistry.
- Developed commercialization strategy for major Asian research institute with essential intellectual property for an audio/video standards (e.g., MPEG). Considerations included identifying applications, developing market revenue models, identifying potential licensees and proposing licensing strategies including paid-up licenses and patent pooling. Work has resulted in the establishment of an MPEG Audio licensing pool.
- Analyzed Fortune 500 company patent portfolio for essential patents and other commercially valuable patents with respect to a major international standard for multimedia broadcasting. Rank ordered patents by commercial potential and essentiality to the practice of the standard.
Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
- Led Systems Integration and Testing technical due diligence team for analyzing risks associated with a multi-billion dollar loan to a large telecommunications service provider for an international consortium of banks. Risks were analyzed with respect to impact on cost, schedule and performance. Total SI&T and Business Readiness due diligence required the integration of data from complex project schedules, engineering plans, vendor capabilities and technology choices.
- Lead systems engineer and one of two system architects for re-engineering of a service assurance Operations Support System. System used both in-band monitoring and network element data to determine Quality of Service. Work required structured analysis of undocumented current system capabilities melded with new features. Process included requirements and scenario generation, eventresponse analysis, functional partitioning, hardware selection, runtime software and development tool selection, performance/sizing analyses, and architecture/design reviews.
- Lead service assurance systems engineer for requirements and design of a major Operations Support System designed to coordinate alarm, event, traffic, performance and billing data (CDRs) from transmission, switching and SS7 network elements. By correlating events from multiple and independent sources, system improves fault isolation and management, service assurance and revenue assurance operations.
- Based on client’s business drivers, enabling technologies and market needs, defined business strategy and core functionality of a generic dispatch management system incorporated into its Customer Care/Work Management product offering. Resultant RFP responses generated $100MM+ potential; several awards were confirmed.
- Developed detailed specifications for an intelligent work delivery system for a major IXC. The goal was to deliver the right job to the right person at the right time within a central office (CO) environment taking into account work load, priorities, network equipment type, job type, skill sets, skill ratings, craft availability, etc. Constrained by current procedures so that processes had to migrate over time. Complexity covered reducing over 700 CO procedures and interfacing with 12+ legacy systems, while evolving to a TMN-compliant implementation. System also had to interface to “personnel” systems to automatically obtain or update technician schedules, skills, overtime pay and other technician data.
Market Management and Analysis
- Developed market model forecasting company-by-company sales by application of GaN based products such as high-brightness LEDs and laser diodes.
- Developed market model for telecommunications applications software and professional services segmented by customer type, region and product type. Econometric model included forward-looking growth projections and was used by the client to value its business for sale and to direct business and product strategies.
- Developed market model for Voice-over-Packet revenues segmented by service provider type and geographic region.
- Conducted interview survey on key buying factors for major supplier Billing Support Systems and operations Support Systems. Conducted interviews with director level and above customers and potential customers. Analyzed the interviews to generate recommendations for product and solution roadmaps, and to identify key messages for marketing communications.
Employment History
From: 1988
To: 1990
organization: ADK Pressure Equipment Corp.
Title: Director, New Products
Summary: P&L responsibility for new product planning, development and sales, focusing on products for both existing and new customer bases. Managed multi-$MM budget and development team of 20 people including various contractor and sub-contractor organizations. Directed development and release of 4 new products resulting in several large contracts and entrance into new markets.
From: 1985
To: 1988
organization: Technicom Systems, Inc.
Title: Vice President, Marketing and Sales
Summary: Technicom was a subsidiary of TIE/communications, providing network monitoring, cable pressurization and loop test products. Managed Marketing and Sales staff of 14 with a budget of $1MM+ (excluding commissions) based throughout the country, successfully addressing regional and cultural differences. Both direct sales force and manufacturer's representatives were used. Had P&L and customer service responsibility for sales revenues of $10MM to $20MM annually. Activities covered both domestic and international customer bases. Planned and introduced to the market five new products, culminating in sales of products to five of the eight major U.S. telephone companies, and a successful joint venture with a major Japanese firm.
From: 1981
To: 1985
organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Title: Technical Manager
Summary: 1981-1984 As Technical Manager, Dr. Brody managed group of 6 Members of Technical Staff (MTS) generating product-marketing strategies, application architectures and planning tools for digital transmission and switching systems. Group output had direct impact on $300MM+ of product sales and 100+ MTS development activities annually. As Member of Technical Staff, Dr. Brody was lead engineer in R&D area where he was responsible for network Operations, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning products and procedures for leased line service assurance. Championed and engineered new OSSs designed to streamline customer operations and increase revenues with respect to network management, testing and surveillance products.
From: 1978
To: 1981
organization: Syracuse University
Title: Research Associate, High Energy Physics Group
Professional Affiliations, Achievements & Awards
- Member, Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- Member, IEEE Communications Society
- Member, Product Development & Management Association
- Member, American Physical Society
- Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Member, Sigma Chi, Scientific Research Society
- Panel member in PBS program "opening The Lines: The Great Telephone Debate"