Michael Howard co-founded market research firm Infonetics Research (www.infonetics.com) in 1990, and today is recognized worldwide as one of the industry’s leading experts in emerging markets, service provider trends, and user buying patterns. He developed the industry’s first carrier Ethernet switch forecast per Metro Ethernet Forum specs, was the first to track packet optical transport system equipment, and was the first to forecast the decline of SONET/SDH against the rise of WDM optical equipment – one measure of the move toward packet transport networks.
Nicknamed the “Ethernet pope,” Michael leverages 40 years of communications industry and market research experience to author regular market forecast reports and opinion pieces year-round, including the service provider survey MPLS-TP and PBB-TE Go Toe-to-Toe, and in 2008 co-authored the book, Carrier Ethernet: Extending Ethernet Beyond the LAN.
Before founding Infonetics, Michael was IT Director at Tymshare/Tymnet, where he created network accounting, and led the First Interstate Bank project that developed the world’s first pre-Internet in-home banking system. Prior to that, Michael worked for Systems Development Corporation on operating systems and programming language compilers for ARPAnet, which later became the Internet.
