Lumen 2025 Analyst Forum: Transforming for the AI Economy

Cindy Whelan

Practice Leader, Telco B2B Strategies

Cindy Whelan - Practice Leader, Telco B2B Strategies

Cindy Whelan is Practice Leader for Omdia’s Telco B2B Strategies Solutions Intelligence Service. In this role, she focuses on enterprise and wholesale services and provides analysis to help service providers understand B2B market trends and how to respond to them. Cindy also covers telco network services, including Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), SD-WAN/SASE, virtualized network services, and carrier wholesale solutions. 

Cindy has more than 30 years of experience in the telecoms industry, working for communications solutions vendors and analyst firms. Cindy has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a focus in Management from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. 

Brian Washburn

Chief Analyst, Telco B2B Solutions

Brian is a chief analyst for Omdia’s Telco B2B Solutions Intelligence Service, which covers enterprise networks and wholesale services, workspace services, and digital enterprise services practices. His current focus areas include B2B AI traffic requirements and telco B2B AI monetization, managed SD-WAN/SASE, network as a service, virtualized network services, and B2B connectivity and interconnection to data center and cloud resources.

Brian has explored communications and networking services for more than 30 years. His analyses examine how enterprises buy and use network and related managed services, as well as how providers can build, market, sell, deliver, and operate their services for enterprises most effectively.

Andrew Braunberg

Principal Analyst

Andrew supports Omdia's Cybersecurity Operations (SecOps) Intelligence Service research practice, guiding vendor, service provider, and enterprise clients. He provides thought-leading analysis on technologies, trends, and innovations in enterprise security operations centers (SOCs), and specifically on the proactive technologies used to avoid breach such as vulnerability management and attack surface management.

Andrew has been covering, researching, and speaking on topics related to enterprise information technology for approximately 20 years. Prior to joining Omdia (formerly Ovum) in 2022, Andrew spent five years at NSS Labs where he led the analyst group and worked closely with the company’s security product testing team.

Prior to NSS, Andrew spent more than a decade at GlobalData (formerly Current Analysis), where he managed the enterprise team and was the firm’s principal security analyst. Over his career, Andrew’s coverage has ranged from endpoint protection suites to network security appliances and solutions for protecting cloud-based assets.

Brent Kelly

Principal Analyst, Digital Workplace

Brent Kelly is a principal analyst for unified communication and collaboration within Omdia’s Digital Workplace team.

Since 1998, Brent has been the principal analyst at KelCor, Inc., where he provided strategy and counsel to CxOs, investment analysts, VCs, technology policy executives, sell-side firms, and technology buyers. He also provided full-time consultancy to Wainhouse Research and Constellation Research. With a PhD in chemical engineering, Brent has a strong data background in numerical methods and applied artificial intelligence with significant experience developing IoT and AI solutions.