LinuxAsia Stars

Robert Adkins is co-founder of Technetra, a Silicon Valley software company which implements and deploys large-scale software projects specializing in Open Source solutions. Mr. Adkins has over 20 years of experience in the Information Technology industry having led products and services groups at Apple Computer, IBM Corp., BBN Communications, Litton/PRC. He has a MS in Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Adkins has published in many technology magazines and journals including Linux Journal, Linux For You, the ACM and Government Computer News.

Prakash has been working with Information Technology since 1994 and with Linux since 1996. His articles have been published in various publications such as Economic Times, Linux Gazette, Network Computing, Express Computer, Linux.com, and Newsforge.com. He is also the founder of FreeOS.com and the co-founder of IndLinux.org. He has worked with various Operating Systems such as Linux, Netware, Unix, Xenix, OS/2, BeOS, Windows and DOS.

Rav Ahuja is the worldwide Linux strategy manager for DB2 Information Management software at the IBM. He first started working at IBM in 1994 and has authored numerous articles, papers and books on databases and Linux clusters. Rav holds a Computer Engirneering degree from McGill University and a Masters in Business Administration from University of Western Ontario.

Mani Anantharaman is a senior Business analyst at Cognizant Technology Solutions. He is part of the Media Vertical in Cognizant, and working closely with Cognizant Center of Excellence (CoE) for delivering OSS based solution for Media & Entertainment clients. Has made "Linux a Disruptive Technology" talk in IIT Delhi and also published an article in "Linux for You" magazine (March 2003) on the same topic. Holds a MBA (IIM-B) and Engineering degree (REC) and claims he is 51% marketer and 49% Geek.

David Axmark was involved with the MySQL database well before it had a name. David's primary focus now at MySQL is Open Source licensing and strategy, as well as community relations. He also actively promotes Open Source software and MySQL at conferences and other venues around the world. Interested in free software since the early '80s, David is committed to developing a successful business model through Open Source software.

Brian Behlendorf founded CollabNet, with O'Reilly & Associates, in July 1999. The company provides tools and services based on open source methods. Before launching CollabNet, Behlendorf was co-founder and CTO of Organic Online, a Web design and engineering consultancy located in San Francisco. During his five years at Organic, Behlendorf helped create Internet strategies for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. During that time, he co-founded and contributed heavily to the Apache Web Server Project, co-founded and supported the VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) effort, and assisted several IETF working groups, particularly the HTTP standardization effort. Before starting Organic, Behlendorf was the first Chief Engineer at Wired Magazine and later HotWired, one of the first large-scale publishing Web sites. Behlendorf is Director of the Apache Software Foundation.

Danese Cooper has a 10-year history in the software industry and has long been an advocate for transparent development methodologies. Danese has been working for the last three years at Sun Microsystems, Inc. on the development of the various Open Source programs sponsored by Sun (including OpenOffice.org, NetBeans and JXTA to name but three). She has unique experience implementing Open Source projects within a large proprietary company. She speaks internationally on Open Source and Licensing issues.

Karunakar is a BE computer science graduate from Bhopal University. He has been working on IndLinux project since 2000. A specialist in Free/Opensource internationalization and localization. He is project manager of IndLinux.org , his primary role being coordinating Indic localization activity countrywide, with our group focussing on Hindi. His other interests include working on FOSS technologies, astronomy and digital photography.

P. K. Gupta has 20 years of experience in IT Industry. He did his B.E. in Computer Science in 1985 from MNREC, PGDM from AIMA and currently doing Doctorate in Business Administration from AMU. He is chairman of SNIA India and Directors-at-Large for SNIA South Asia. Currently working as Director Strategic Development - Asia Pacific, Japan and Korea for a major storage vendor. His area of work has been LAN Management, Network Management, Storage Management, Mobile Computing and Real-time systems. He has been visiting professor in India from last 9 years in various MBA institutions. He writes technical and management articles in various leading magazines and have been international speaker on storage management.

Juergen Geck is responsible for aligning and communicating the company's technology strategy. Juergen joined SuSE in 1997, and served since early 2000 as Vice President Technology Partners. He built strong alliances with partners AMD, Fujitsu-Siemens-Computers, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Oracle and SAP. Geck built a framework for SUSE to cooperate with all major hardware vendors and CPU manufacturers.

In 2002, he introduced SuSE's Technology Partner Program to provide a scalable offering for all SuSE partners. Juergen also helped design SuSE's flagship product, SuSE LINUX Enterprise Server and its maintenance model, enabling the first enterprise Linux offering in the market. He holds a masters degree in production engineering from the University of Erlangen, Germany.

Manmohan has been with with CA since 1995 and has worked on development of storage management and data protection products. Several years of experience as development manager in the areas of backup, archiving, data protection, hierachical storage management, etc. Manmohan holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Master's in Computer Science. After 10 years in the US, returned to India last year to help setup CA's India Technology Center.

Mukesh Jha has 16 years of extensive experience in the Software and Product industry. He has worked with HCL Consulting, Anderson Consulting, RMSI Pvt. Ltd. and Hexaware Technologies Ltd. Currently, he is spearheading the Global Delivery function of Onward Novell Software (I) Pvt. Ltd. He was instrumental in setting up CMMI, Sarbanes-Oxley implementation, Global Delivery model. He was also a part of Rational Excellence Centre implementation. He has undertaken various Open source initiatives and has presented papers on outsourcing, open source computing environments, Productivity enhancements and successful project execution in multishore environment etc. He holds a MCA and MBA Degree.

Responsible for delivering Red Hat's training, support and consulting services globally, Johnson possesses over 13 years of client service experience, from sales through delivery. Her experience ranges across several industries, mainly focusing on helping organizations manage through significant change and transformation.

Prior to joining Red Hat, Johnson was Managing Director in charge of Investment Banking Division Technology and Logistics at UBS Investment Bank. Other experience includes several years as a senior practitioner in Management Consulting with focus on business transformation programs at Deloitte Consulting Group. Johnson graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA with Finance concentration from the Wharton School.

Mr. Rajeev V. Kamath is a Program Director and Project Executive with the IBM Corporate Linux Group. His responsibilities include development, communication and implementation of IBM Linux programs. Over the past three years he has also been involved with Linux as a Project Executive, working with multinational customers developing Linux strategy, long term plans, managing proofs of concepts, and developing and implementing Linux migration plans.

He has worked with IBM for 19 years and has held positions such as Program Director, Project Executive, Senior Project Manager, IT Specialist and Client Representative. During this period he has marketed and managed all aspects of IT projects. He has successfully managed large, complex, turnkey projects involving custom Application Development, Systems Integration (SI) and Application Package implementations. His customers have included multinational corporations in the Automotive, Textiles, Plastics, Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals, Consumer Goods and, Machining and Fabrication industries. He has also managed projects in the government sector in particular for the US EPA & the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.

He is an IBM Certified Project Executive & IT Specialist. He also holds the PMP certification from Project Management Institute (PMI) and CPIM from APICS. He also holds Masters degrees in Industrial Engineering and Production Engineering.

Mr. Kataria is associate editor for BenefIT magazine - an Indian magazine covering technology for businesses.

Mr. Kunju is associate editor for BenefIT magazine - an Indian magazine covering technology for businesses.

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay works at Red Hat as a PreSales Consultant. He is a FOSS enthusiast and is a member of various LUGs as well as the Free Software Foundation of India. Sankarshan is joint Team Lead for the Bangla OO.o project and Leader for the bn-IN team for Mozilla L10n. He has been dabbling in FOSS for over 6 years and writes about various issues in magazines like LinuxForYou, Linux-Magazine etc. He also runs a mailing list called FLOSSToday and leads the Regional Marketing list for Gnome. His blog can be found at Planet FLOSS India.

Ashit is currently working with Onward Novell software (I) Pvt Ltd as National Manager- Alliance and Marketing and is celebrating his 14th year with Onward Novell. In his current role he is responsible for strategic marketing and positioning Novell as a leading provider of information solutions in the country. He works closely with Industry partners and customers for deploying Novell's Solutions for solving their business challenges. He is a frequent speaker at Industry and Novell Events.

Shrikant Patil is Director of the Solutions Group, South Asia. The Solutions group is responsible for enabling applications and solutions on Intel platforms covering desktops, notebooks, server and handhelds. Shrikant has been with Intel since 1991 and worked in various capacities including software development, IC design of Microprocessors and Chipsets, Tools and Platform Marketing. He has extensive international experience with stints starting from U.S., Israel, India and Hong Kong. His interest includes usage models for technology consumption both on the business and consumer side. In his current role, primary focus is to drive the IT adoption leading to the modernization of industries in India, with special focus on Government, Telecom, FSI and Manufacturing. Shrikant holds a Bachelor in Computer Engineering and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado.

Dr. Deepak Phatak is Nilekani Chair Professor of the School of Information Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Dr. Phatak's vision is to see a resurgent India catching up with the world using Information Technology as the spring board. He hopes to make Linux and Open Source work for millions of Indians.

Louis Suarez-Potts has been the Community Manager of OpenOffice.org since its inception, Louis holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently working on an in-depth examination of the difference corporate-sponsored open source projects have made to the logic and practice of open source.

S. Ramakrishnan is currently Director General, C-DAC, Pune, Senior Director and Head of Software Development Division in R&D in IT Group of Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India. In his current capacity, he promotes IT industry, IT applications and associated R&D for domestic and export markets. He also heads two projects, e-readiness assessment and India Country Gateway funded by World Bank.

Prior to his current appointment as Executive Director, C-DAC also handled the additional responsibility of Group coordinator of Convergence, Communications and Broad Band Technologies. He is also member of Steering Committee of C-DOT. Ramakrishnan was Founder Project Director of ERNET, the National Academic and Research Network, a collaborative effort of five IITs, IISc, former NCST and DIT (former DOE). ERNET brought Internetworking into the country during 1986-96 and pioneered many milestones in the field of computer networking. Over 800 institutions and 100,000 users were connected by 1996 before the initiative led to a society, ERNET India in 1998. It was rated as one of the most successful UNDP projects in the world.

Prior to his current assignments, he has had various assignments as Director of National Centre for Software Technology, Founder Director of Media Lab Asia and Head, Education, Research & Technology. During 1998-2000, he was National Y2K Coordinator.

He handled a variety of development, coordination and promotional portfolios in telecommunications during 1976-1985 in the Department of Electronics. He was earlier a Design Engineer in Avionics Design Bureau, Hyderabad, for three years.

Shiva Ramani is the Founder and CEO of SlashSupport. Before setting up SlashSupport, he co-founded Cybernet Software Systems (CSS), a leading Lotus Notes application provider. SlashSupport is a leading Provider of Technical Support creating knowledge centric total support solutions. SlashSupport has rich experience in supporting multiple technology platforms. SlashSupport launched a Open Standards Support platform in partnership with IBM to support Open Standards Solutions.

Dr. S. Sadagopan is Director of IIIT Bangalore. Dr. Sadagopan is one of India's foremost thinkers, and the founder and Director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. Professor Sadagopan got his Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Madras University in 1973, and his Master's and Doctoral degree at Purdue University before returning to India to teach at IIT, Kanpur. He writes extensively on IT and its impact on society.

J.S. Sandha was introduced to IT way back in 1979 while pursuing M.Tech that required mathematical simulation for optimisation of Machinery design. He has since traversed the whole domain of IT, including implementation of many commercial and technical projects. He has been working on development of sustainable model of IT for the rural areas since about 2000 through a well recognised model named Jagriti e-Sewa. The model not only has understood and deployed IT as required by the rural masses, but also has been able to establish a self-sustaining system in order to have stability. Jagriti has recognised the importance of Linux for the developing countries such as India and encompasses a number of innovative concepts such as 'd'-commerce or Desi Commerce, an Indian hybrid version of the much hyped e-commerce. The proposed paper traces the importance of Local content for IT and also proposes a National Initiative on develpment of all scheduled languages of India within next 2 years.

Satya started with Tata Unisys Mumbai and later Bangalore and was one of the first Java geeks to run the Java and Internet tide from 1994/95. He was the head of "e-business Center" of CGI (Formerly IMRGlobal) in Florida and was instrumental in transitioning IMRGlobal from a Y2K company to modernization and an e-Business consulting firm which made him interviewed on CNN-FN in November 1999. He later became the Head of Architecture in National Division of Nielsen Media Research, the pioneers of Media and TV ratings in the US. Here he had taken the company to use Open Source products which resulted in a saving of $500K per year on J2EE application Server licenses only. As the Head of Architecture, he has addressed several audiences on Enterprise Architecture, Open Source Software, Data Warehousing both internal and to other VNU companies. Satya one of the early customers of JBoss from 2001 onwards, became their mouth piece customer and finally decided to plunge into the Open Source arena as the Director of Asia Pacific operations, JBoss Inc. Satya is presently setting up Asia Pacific operations of JBoss from Bangalore.

Prof. Shah is a localization enthusiast and Marathi and Gujarati initiator on free software. He is a working group member of FSFIndia and Senior Software Specialist at C-DAC Mumbai on "Janabhaaratii" project. He is a graduate with two degrees from IIT Mumbai. He has taught at VJTI for 24 years and recently joined C-DAC, (formerly NCST) on invitation and on deputation. He has led the development of the voter-list search engine for the Election Commission in September 2004 VidhanSabha elections in Maharshtra. Prof. Shah is an Expert Committee Member for computerisation in the Maharashtra government.

Ms Alolita Sharma is co-founder and CEO of Technetra, a Silicon Valley software company which implements and deploys large-scale software projects specializing in Open Source solutions. Ms. Sharma has over 14 years of experience in the Information Technology industry having engineered and led services groups at IBM Corp., MCIWorldcom, Intelsat Corp., SWIFT. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D program in Computer Science at the George Washington University, Washington DC from where she received a MS in Computer Science. Ms Sharma has published in many technology magazines and journals including Linux Journal, Linux Gazette, and is a monthly columnist for India's only Open Source magazine - Linux For You. She is a champion of Linux and Open Source software in India.

Matthew Szulik has been leading early-stage technology companies, such as Interleaf, MapInfo, and Red Hat, into global, publicly traded firms for more than 20 years. In 1998, Szulik and Red Hat founder Bob Young developed a shared vision that the collaborative approach of open source and a great brand could redistribute the economics of the technology industry from vendor to customer.

Szulik is passionate about improving the educational opportunities for students worldwide through open source, and he is a spokesperson to industry, government, and education leaders on open source computing. Szulik is the Chairman of the Science and Technology Board for State of North Carolina's Economic Development Board. He is past Chairman and an Executive Director of the North Carolina Electronics and Information Technologies Association.

Szulik was recently recognized by CIO Magazine with its 20/20 Vision Award.