Over 35 digital infrastructure luminaries speaking at the second IEIC Global NAP Summit in Henrico, Virginia that will include the official ribbon cutting of DE-CIX Richmond

The Internet Ecosystem Innovation Committee (IEIC), an independent global committee that promotes Internet diversity and resilience through the formation of new global Internet nexus points, today announced that Zaid Kahn from Microsoft has joined as a Board Member.

IEIC will host its second annual summit in Henrico Virginia on November 8^th, 2022. Dr. Vint Cerf, "Father of the Internet will deliver the keynote followed by five panel discussions, a fireside chat and the ribbon cutting ceremony of DE-CIX Richmond Internet Exchange platform, world largest data center and carrier neutral Internet Exchange. 

The event will feature 35+ digital infrastructure luminary speakers from six continents representing all sub-sectors of Digital Infrastructure including—Data Centers, Subsea Cables, Terrestrial Fiber, Internet Exchange, CDN, and SDN. The event will be attended by hundreds of executives from industries such as Automobile, Finance, Academia, Banking, Healthcare, and Hospitality.

"IEIC is an independent global committee, and I am glad that it attracts like-minded people who are working on keeping the Internet open and stable," said Vint Cerf, Chairman of the Board of IEIC. "I have worked with Zaid before in establishing the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Internet Society (ISOC). Zaid is passionate about technology and the Internet, and I am delighted to welcome him to the board of IEIC."

"What I like about the IEIC charter is the focus on hardening the infrastructure and the right group of experts that are currently on the board to steer a wider audience," said Zaid Kahn, GM of Cloud AI & Advanced Systems Engineering at Microsoft. "My past experience of Internet infrastructure development will be helpful for the IEIC cause and also many aspects of what I am working on now with advanced technologies at Microsoft. I care that we propel digital economies so that technology becomes much easier to attain as society grows over time," "Attending the upcoming IEIC summit is extra special for me, as I have been on the board of DE-CIX, and to witness the continued global expansion of their platform, is an honor."

"It is pioneers like Zaid who have made a difference in the stability and the innerworkings of the Internet," said Vinay Nagpal, Executive Director and Founding Member of IEIC, and President, InterGlobix, LLC. "Generally we take it for granted that the Internet just works, but there is relentless work done behind the scenes to keep the Internet running. I welcome Zaid to the IEIC board and look forward to collaborating with him on Internet diversification and creating more interconnection hubs globally. The upcoming summit will be a great and unique opportunity not only for Henrico but for the entire Commonwealth of Virginia to learn about the economic impacts and benefits to local business of the rapidly evolving digital infrastructure. I encourage everyone to take advantage of this opportunity to meet with the Internet infrastructure luminaries from various parts of the world."

The comprehensive summit program also includes the ribbon cutting ceremony of DE-CIX Richmond. DE-CIX Richmond is the company's 5^th Internet Exchange in North America offering low-latency Layer 2 connectivity between Richmond, New York, Dallas, Phoenix, and Chicago, creating the largest carrier and data center neutral interconnection ecosystem in North America. Customers connected to the DE-CIX North America interconnection ecosystem are also able to connect to DE-CIX's IXs across the Atlantic.

Additional information about the summit can be found at: https://ieicco.com/summit-2-0/ 

Zaid Kahn is currently the General Manager (GM) of Cloud, AI & Advanced Systems Engineering at Microsoft where he leads a team focusing on advanced architecture and engineering efforts for Microsoft's AI infrastructure. Zaid is part of the technical leadership team across Microsoft that sets an AI hardware strategy for training and inference. Zaid's team is also responsible for software and hardware engineering efforts developing specialized compute systems, AI and Network Accelerators, and advanced network technologies in the 400/800G space. Prior to Microsoft Zaid was head of the infrastructure at LinkedIn where he was responsible for all aspects of architecture and engineering for Datacenters, Networking, Compute, Storage, and Hardware. Zaid also led several software development teams focusing on building and managing infrastructure as code. This included zero-touch provisioning, software-defined networking, network operating systems (SONiC), self-healing networks, backbone controller, software-defined storage, and distributed host-based firewalls. The network teams Zaid led built the global network for LinkedIn including POP's, peering for edge services, IPv6 implementation, DWDM infrastructure, and data center network fabric. The hardware and datacenter engineering teams Zaid led were responsible for water cooling to the racks, optical fiber infrastructure, and open hardware development which contributed to Open Compute Foundation (OCP). Zaid holds several patents in networking and is a sought-after keynote speaker at top-tier conferences and events. Zaid has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Physics from the University of the South Pacific. 

The IEIC is an independent committee that promotes Internet diversity forming new global Internet nexus points. The mission of IEIC is to partner with communities globally to create new Internet nexus points through public and private partnerships with local municipalities, academia and businesses. The Founding Members of IEIC are industry luminaries from many of the world's most respected companies and leaders including: Vint Cerf/Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Clint Heiden/IEIC, Vinay Nagpal/InterGlobix, Steve Alexander/Ciena (NYSE: CIEN), Rafael Arranz/Telxius, Jason Black/NVIDIA (NYSE: NVDA), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Mark Boxer/Cigna (NYSE: CI), Barbara Boyan/Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Andrew Dugan/CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL), Staffan Göjeryd/Telia Carrier (VSE: TEL1L), Brent Bensten/QTS , Asher Kagan/Blade, Vinay Kanitkar/Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), Sarah Keller/Uber (NYSE: UBER), Athanasios (Sakis) Kitsopanidis /Ford (NYSE: F) Michael Leidinger/Hilton (NYSE: HLT), Steve Alexander/Ciena (NYSE: CIEN), Krishna Narayanaswamy/Netskope, Frank Nazzaro/FreddieMac, Anthony Romanello/Henrico Economic Development Authority, and Zaid Khan/Microsoft. For additional information visit: www.ieicco.com

IEIC Media Contact:
Carter B. Cromley
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