The SIP Forum announces the recent re-election of industry veteran and VoIP pioneer Richard Shockey to the Board of Directors, and the election of Mr. Shockey as new Board Chairman. Additionally, the Forum has re-elected Dr. Eric Burger to the Board of Directors and named him Chairman Emeritus, and elected Dr. Alan Johnston to the Board.

Meanwhile, the SIP Forum announced the reappointment of Marc Robins as Managing Director and President.

The elections were held during the SIP Forum’s Annual General Meeting in San Francisco, on Nov. 3, 2009.

The elections of Shockey, Johnston and Burger, all industry trailblazers, complement the SIP Forum’s already prestigious Board of Directors, which also includes Chris Gatch, CTO of Cbeyond; Steven Johnson, CEO of Ingate Systems; Glenn Russell, Director of Business Services at Cable Television Laboratories Inc.; Rene Sotola, a Vice President in the Global Telecommunications practice at CGI Group; and Robert Sparks, Principal Engineer at Tekelec. Each member of the Board of Directors serves a two-year term.

Chairman Richard Shockey, founder of Shockey Consulting, is a widely respected industry veteran with a decades-long and distinguished track record in helping shape numerous technical standards that have become the foundation for today’s SIP-based next generation network infrastructure and application ecosystem. He is a founder and was co-Chair of the IETF ENUM Work Group and is author of several IETF RFCs. He has also authored numerous technical articles on SIP-based Next Generation Network technologies for a plethora of publications. Additionally, Mr. Shockey served as a Director and Member of Neustar Inc.’s Technical Staff, which provides a number of critical services to the communications industry including the administration of all telephone numbers in North America, management of the wireline and wireless Number Portability Administration, number pooling, and OSS products for carriers. In addition, Mr. Shockey was a Distinguished Member of the technical staff at NSR.

“I am honored to have been elected the new Chairman of the Board,” said Richard Shockey. “I look forward to continuing to build on the solid foundation left by my predecessor, Dr. Eric Burger, and ensuring the successful completion of the important work in progress in the SIPconnect, Fax-over-IP and User Agent Configuration task groups. I also look forward to expanding the work of the SIP Forum into new and exciting industry sectors, including Smart Grid and Unified Communications.”

Rejoining the SIP Forum Board of Directors, Dr. Alan Johnston brings nearly two decades of valuable industry experience. Dr. Johnston has been involved with SIP and VoIP since the mid-1990s, helping to spearhead the development and adoption of SIP and VoIP in both the service provider and enterprise markets. He served as an architect on the first enterprise SIP VoIP product in the U.S. as a Distinguished Technical Member at MCI. Dr. Johnston is currently a Consulting Member of the Technical Staff of Avaya Inc., a global leader in business communications applications, systems and services. He co-authored the SIP protocol specification RFC 3261 and edited the Basic and PSTN call flows Best Current Practices documents, RFC 3665 and RFC 3666, along with additional RFCs. He has also worked on SIP Service Examples, Peer-to-Peer SIP and security, and co-authored the ZRTP protocol. Along with his protocol and technical work, Dr. Johnston is the author of four books discussing SIP, including the best-selling SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol, Understanding Voice over IP Security, SIP Beyond VoIP, and Internet Communications Using SIP. Dr. Johnston has also served as co-chair of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Centralized Conferencing Work Group.

“As SIP approaches critical mass in the market, the SIP Forum continues to play a significant role breaking down the barriers to true interoperability between vendors, platforms, applications and more,” said Alan Johnston. “This highly respected organization is shaping the future of how companies, customers and users communicate, and I am honored to be rejoining the board.”

Dr. Eric Burger, CTO of Neustar Inc., brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the SIP Forum Board of Directors. Dr. Burger was re-elected to the SIP Forum Board of Directors after two successful terms as Chairman, and recently named SIP Forum Chairman Emeritus. Dr. Burger has been an active contributor on a host of IETF protocols, including SIP, SIPPING, SIMPLE, LEMONADE, SPEECHSC and VPIM. He currently chairs various IETF working groups involving Speech Services Control, Mobile and Unified Messaging and Media Server Control. He is also active within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association of Computer Machinery. Dr. Burger also sits on the Board of Advisors for Mobera Systems, AGNITY, Sigma Systems and Dexrex LLC. Dr. Burger holds 17 published U.S. patents, and has been published in myriad esteemed technical and standards publications.

“I look forward to my continued participation in the SIP Forum Board of Directors, and in supporting the vital mission of the organization,” said Dr. Eric Burger. “The SIP Forum’s role as a champion of technical interoperability for the IP communication industry is more important today than ever before and I am very excited to stand on the front lines bringing the charge forward!”

Along with electing board members, the SIP Forum also reappointed Marc Robins as its Managing Director. As Managing Director and President of SIP Forum LLC, Robins brings more than 27 years of relevant industry experience, including positions as a reporter, analyst, editor, author, trade show producer and magazine publisher. Robins has also served the telecommunications industry as a marketing executive and a consultant and is founder and Chief Technology Evangelism Officer of Robins Consulting Group, an IP communications industry consultancy.

“I am honored by the continued vote of confidence by the SIP Forum’s Board of Directors, and I look forward to continuing to serve the organization, and by extension the entire IP communications industry,” said Marc Robins. “There is no shortage of important work before us, and I look forward to working with Richard Shockey and the entire Board of Directors in expanding our activities and membership ranks over the next year.”

Together, Robins, Shockey, Johnston and Burger, along with other members of the SIP Forum and its Board of Directors, will leverage their years of experience and expertise to advocate and champion new IP communications applications and technologies and evangelize the use of the SIP standard to advance communications capabilities.