Mr. Aicard joined Fonality in the summer of 2009 to help with product and company growth. He is currently responsible for end-to-end product management, including research, product definition, project management, pricing/packaging, & quality assurance. He prides himself on his ability to make decisions that mutually benefit customers and Fonality. After many years of frustration with the status quo in the business telephony market, Mr. Aicard nearly abandoned the space to work in a more customer-centric industry. After learning more about Fonality, he found new hope in this market, left his previous employer of 10 years, and set a course to help Fonality reshape telephony as we once knew it.

Prior to Fonality, Mr. Aicard held several positions at Inter-Tel, including Director of Product Management and Director of Product Marketing. For roughly 7 years, he helped steer the definition, implementation, positioning and strategic direction of Inter-Tel's line-up of converged IP telephony solutions, including phones, applications and core systems.

In 2007, Inter-Tel merged with Mitel leading Mr. Aicard into his most recent role prior to Fonality. He led an international team responsible for product management functions globally for all applications in the new Mitel portfolio.

Mr. Aicard participates regularly in presentations and industry panels within the IP telephony community, including trade shows such as Internet Telephony Expo and VoiceCon, and has been published multiple times in Internet Telephony Magazine.

Thomas McCarthy-Howe has over 20 years experience in the design and development of next generation communications equipment. In March of 2007, Thomas won the first O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Mashup Contest with his “After Hours Doctor’s Office”. In January, 2008, Thomas was listed among the most influential voices in VoIP. In March of 2008, Thomas won the VON Magazine Innovator’s Award. In September of 2008, Thomas won the first Broadsoft Mashup Contest with his “Disaster Dispatcher”. In January, 2010, Thomas hosted the first cloud communications summit at IT Expo. In March 2010, Thomas was the editor of Cloud Communications 2010 : State of the Art, featuring work from twenty four thought leaders in next generation communications technology.

Thomas is an active software developer, concentrating on Voice Mashups and their supporting technologies such as Ruby, Rails, Adhearsion and Web as Platform architectures. Thomas is also a contributor to several online publications, such as VON Magazine, GigaOm, FierceVoIP and ProgrammableWeb. Since 1996, Thomas has been an invited speaker at over a hundred telecommunications shows and conferences, speaking at sessions, keynoting and running workshops.

Thomas received his bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering at University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and attended graduate school at Northeastern University where he studied Digital Communications and Signal Processing. He currently serves on several technical advisory boards and boards of directors. Thomas currently resides in West Barnstable, Cape Cod, Massachusetts with his wife and four children.