AT&T's Hossein Eslambolchi: 'IP Will Eat Everything'

During his Interop 2005 conference keynote address Tuesday afternoon, AT&T's Hossein Eslambolchi delivered a Letterman-esque list of his predictions for all things involving networks. Eslambolchi is AT&T's president of global networking technology services, chief technology officer, and CIO.

1. "IP will eat everything," meaning all systems and networks will eventually use Internet-based protocols.

2. "Security is critical." A lot of businesses have "dumb" networks and don't take security seriously, Eslambolchi said. But intelligent networks have to be created, otherwise "we are going to have a problem of biblical proportions in global communications," he said.

3. "Convergence of communications and applications will become a reality--networks will be the computer." Added Eslambolchi: "There is a huge computing power sitting on company networks." This computing power has to be utilized in order to achieve convergence, he said.

4. "Wireless Internet will be big and will drive mobility."