Technology Innovators: Top 50

LANDesk Software
Tom Davis
Vice president of engineering
Davis oversees development of all LANDesk product lines and international engineering teams, and has extensive experience in all aspects of software engineering, management and strategic product direction. During 11 years at Intel, he served as engineering director and CTO of the software products and services division, and was instrumental in driving Intel's definition of the systems-management space.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Released the third major upgrade in two years to LANDesk's flagship product. LANDesk Management Suite Version 8.1 is a software solution that contains more than 250 million lines of code. Specific innovations include patch management, OS deployment, profile migration, software license management and auto-device discovery.
AMOUNT SPENT ON R&D: In 2003, we estimated it to be around 24%. In 2004, revenue has been growing faster than our R&D expenses, so it may be a little less.

LINSPIRE
Michael L. Robertson
CEO
Robertson founded Linspire and headed development of the Linux-style operating system that runs in Windows environments. Robertson's past ventures include being founder, CEO and chairman at MP3.com. He created MP3 technology, amassing more than 1 million downloadable MP3 files. He also served as president and CEO of Media Minds, a developer of digital-picture software.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Development of Hot Words, which is a set of features within Linspire's Internet suite that allows one-click Web searches on words on any Web page or e-mail message. Every word that appears on a Web site or in an e-mail can be clicked and then instantly searched using a pop-up menu that performs Web, shopping and news searches.
% of products less than 2 years old: 100%.

Macromedia
Kevin Lynch
Executive vice president and chief software architect
Lynch has been instrumental in shaping the Macromedia product family since joining the company in 1996. Most recently, Lynch led the MX initiative at Macromedia, which unified its tool, server and player software. In his career, Lynch defined and led the initial development of Macromedia Dreamweaver, the market-leading product among professional Web developers. Prior to joining Macromedia, he pioneered a navigational user interface for handheld communicators at General Magic.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Further exploited XML with Macromedia products to make it far easier to build rich Internet applications that blend the best of the desktop in terms of responsiveness and interactivity with the best of the Web in terms of deployment and maintainability.
% of products less than 2 years old: A plethora of new products was just introduced this past year in areas such as Macromedia Breeze and Flex.

McAfee (NetworkAssociates)
Chris Bolin
CTO and executive vice president
Bolin is responsible for the worldwide development of all Network Associates' products and has been instrumental in driving international growth. He assembled and managed a new engineering team in the United Kingdom after Network Associates' acquisition of Dr. Solomon and launched a new development office in India, now the largest development center for the company. Prior to joining Network Associates in 1998, Bolin was the engineering director of Cyber Media, where he co-developed consumer antivirus products with Trend Micro.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Developed security intrusion-prevention technology that minimized or completely eliminated the impact of viruses, malware and hacking attempts of the highest-profile security events of the year.
% of products less than 2 years old: 70%

Microsoft
Craig Mundie
CTO
Mundie works with chief software architect Bill Gates to develop a comprehensive set of technical, business and policy strategies for Microsoft. Mundie is charged with coordinating strategic technology implementations that span multiple Microsoft product groups. He focuses on Internet-scale platform architectures, and technical and policy issues around critical infrastructure protection. He joined Microsoft in 1992 after co-founding Alliant Computer Systems, a company that developed massively parallel supercomputers.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Microsoft is building more secure products as part of its Trustworthy Computing initiative. The company has identified patterns in terms of attacks, things like network attacks, e-mail attacks and buffer overruns, and has been seeking ways to vaccinate against them en masse. The 2004 release of Windows XP SP2 brings many of these features to bear, including a firewall enabled by default to mitigate network attacks, and safer handling of e-mail attachments and Web downloads.
AMOUNT SPENT ON R&D: In FY '04, Microsoft spent $7.7 billion, or 24% of revenue, on R&D.

Net Integration Technologies
Ozzy Papic
Founder, president and CEO
Papic is an expert in computer networking technologies. His track record includes managing the growth and development of several successful high-tech start-up companies. Prior to founding Net Integration Technologies, Papic co-founded HighwayOne, a wireless broadband telecommunications company that is now part of Telefonica, and Pritel Communications, a Canadian Internet company.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Delivered Nitix, an autonomic, Linux-based server operating system, as a standalone software product. Previously, Nitix was only sold as a bundled software/hardware server appliance.
% of products less than 2 years old: Nitix is continually evolving with enhancements and releases every few months.

Network Appliance
Dave Hitz
Founder and executive vice president of engineering
>Hitz is responsible for the future technology strategy and direction of Network Appliance, which he co-founded in 1992 with James Lau to simplify storage the way Cisco simplified networking. They did this by building dedicated devices called appliances. Prior to this, Hitz worked as a senior engineer at Auspex, an enterprise storage solution provider, where he was responsible for file systems and microkernel design.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Built enterprise-class storage system with technologies like RAID-DP that are capable of running a variety of data applications out of inexpensive disk drives. The company focused on three things: making cheap drives safe, making them manageable and identifying applications that best work in this model.

Novell
Alan Nugent
CTO
Nugent's role at Novell includes responsibility for promoting Novell's open-standards, cross-platform technologies and evangelizing Novell's security, provisioning and networking solutions. An industry veteran whose work in open standards is widely regarded, Nugent previously was managing partner for technology at Palladian Partners services firm, as well as having posts at Vectant, Xerox and others.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Design and development of Novell's "identity driven" enterprise approach, whereby the company repurposes existing systems based on the composite digital identity of the person or service.
% of products less than 2 years old: Approximately 40%. Much of the rest of the technology also has been migrated to Linux.

Oracle
Thomas Kurian
Senior vice president of development
Kurian is steward of Oracle's middleware platform products, including Oracle Application Server and the company's development tools. He is responsible for shaping all technological aspects of the products' development, release process, management and business development. He has worked at Oracle since 1996 and played a key role in transforming Oracle into an e-business. Previous posts include one as a consultant with McKinsey and Co.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Delivering on a vision to increase the flexibility and efficiency of IT via a single middleware platform that combines service-oriented architectures and grid computing.
% of products less than 2 years old: About 60%.

OSDL
Linus Torvalds
OSDL Fellow
Torvalds is the legendary creator of Linux and owns the Linux trademark. He published the first Linux kernel in 1991 as a university student in Helsinki. With the support of OSDL, Torvalds works full time on future development of the kernel. Prior to OSDL, he worked for Transmeta.
Top technology innovation in 2004: The Linux 2.6 kernel was released in December 2003 and continues to be improved upon. It provides significant performance, reliability and scalability boosts in a wide range of computing uses for Linux, from embedded to desktop to data center and telecommunications applications.
% of products less than 2 years old: Linux is continually improved; the Linux 2.6 kernel was released in December 2003.

Palm One
Jeff Hawkins
CTO
Hawkins brings nearly 20 years of technical expertise to his role as Palm One's chief technology officer. He co-founded Handspring with Donna Dubinsky in July 1998. Five years prior, he had founded Palm Computing, where, in 1994, he invented the original PalmPilot products. Hawkins, who holds nine patents for handheld devices and features, is often credited as the designer who reinvented that market.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Palm One introduced several important technologies in 2004, not the least of which was changing the way data was stored in the Treo 650 smartphone by switching to a nonvolatile memory model. For the first time, it is nearly impossible to lose data, even if the battery is permanently removed from the device.
% of products less than 2 years old: 100% of currently shipping handhelds and smartphones.

Research in Motion (RIM)
Mike Lazaridis
Co-CEO and President
Lazaridis founded RIM while a student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. At RIM, he is responsible for product strategy, R&D, product development and manufacturing. Known in the wireless industry as a visionary, he holds a raft of patents from the flagship Blackberry to DigiSync, a film key code reader used in motion picture labs.
Top technology innovation in 2004: To reach the more "phone-centric" population of users, RIM introduced SureType technology on its BlackBerry 7100 wireless handhelds. Integrating a keyboard and software system, SureType combines a traditional phone keypad and a familiar QWERTY keyboard to create an efficient and familiar dialing and typing experience.
% of products less than 2 years old: Many of the current BlackBerry Wireless Handheld products are less than 2 years old.

RSA Security
Joe Uniejewski
CTO and senior vice president of corporate development
Uniejewski plays a key role in driving RSA's technical direction and is responsible for managing strategy and key business relationships. Most recently, he served as senior vice president for Web access management products, where he spearheaded development of RSA's ClearTrust solutions. He came to RSA in 1998 with more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry.
Top technology innovation in 2004: The ability to redesign and redefine strong two-factor authentication, and a series of product launches, including RSA SecurID for Microsoft Windows and RSA Federated Identity Manager.
% of products less than 2 years old: 50%.

Salesforce.com
Dave Moellenhoff
CTO and co-founder
Moellenhoff co-founded Salesforce.com in 1999 with the goal of revolutionizing the concept of enterprise software. As CTO, he is responsible for the architecture and design of the salesforce.com systems, pushing the vision of software as a utility as opposed to a licensed CD. Prior to Salesforce.com, he was president of Left Coast Software, a San Francisco-based Java consulting firm he co-founded.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Custom Objects have been the drivers to customizing the salesforce.com CRM offering and are something new for a hosted service.
% of products less than 2 years old: Virtually all.

Samsung Electronics America
Seoggi Kim
vice president of research and development, Monitor Group
Kim has 14 years of experience in the field of CRT display tube and LCD monitor R&D, and is acknowledged as one of the world's top technical experts in the display industry. He is currently directing efforts to differentiate Samsung's display products through the development of new scalers, color-enhancement chips, asset management and Pivot software.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Development of Samsung's fourth-generation line of multifunction monitors (5-in-1 with TV, composite video, S-video, component HD video, PC), which vastly improved picture performance, enabled use of a single universal worldwide tuner and incorporated new scaling technology.
% of products less than 2 years old: Virtually all current display products.

SAP
Shai Agassi
Executive Board Member
Agassi is responsible for SAP's overall technology strategy and execution, overseeing the development of the integration and application platform, SAP NetWeaver and SAP xApps. Agassi also co-leads the Suite Architecture team at SAP, which aligns all of SAP's software on one foundation. Prior to SAP, Agassi founded Top Tier Software, which SAP acquired in 2001.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Introduction of SAP's Enterprise Services Architecture, which provides a blueprint for services-based, enterprise-scale business solutions and flexible IT infrastructures. SAP NetWeaver is the technology platform that enables the architecture, which leverages Web services and other open standards and allows for componentization of existing systems.

StorageTek
Pierre Cousin
Corporate vice president of research, development and engineering
Cousin aligns the company's engineering functions into a centralized research, development and engineering organization. This group oversees the work on design and development programs that support the Automated Tape Solutions and the Information Lifecycle Management Solutions business units. He joined StorageTek in 1997 and previously spent eight years at Bull.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Launched new SL8500 and SL500 storage libraries with larger footprints, capacity, higher availability and modularity, and new open virtual tape offering.
% of products less than 2 years old: 90%.

Sun Microsystems
Greg Papadopoulos
CTO
Papadopoulos, a 20-year industry veteran, is responsible for managing Sun's technology and architecture, standards, the Science Office, global engineering architecture and associated advanced development programs. He also provides leadership and consistency for hardware and software architectures across Sun. Prior to joining Sun in 1994, he was senior architect and director of product strategy for Thinking Machines, and was an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, where he conducted research in scalable systems, multithreaded/ dataflow processor architecture, functional and declarative languages, and fault-tolerant computing.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Innovations to Sun's Solaris operating system. Solaris 10 OS is the cornerstone of Sun's high-performance network computing offerings. Installations of the product as part of Sun's Software Express for Solaris program have now reached more than half a million. % of products less than 2 years old: About 80%.

Sybase
Raj Nathan
Senior vice president and general manager of R&D
Nathan leads Sybase's technology research and product development. In this role, he has become widely known for pioneering new technology, remaining close to customers and for his breadth of technology expertise. Nathan's work experience has taken him around the globe, including stints at Unisys and Siemens Pyramid. Before entering private industry, Nathan spent many years in academia as a professor of engineering.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Introduced more new products in 2004 than any other time in the company's history. Began building out the architecture underlying a strategy, called Unwired Enterprise, and launched a new line of "unwired" products that rapidly mobilize and extend enterprise data and applications to mobile users.
Amount spent on R&D: In the first half of 2004, Sybase spent 15.4% of revenue on direct product development.

Symantec
Robert A. Clyde
CTO
Clyde sets technology vision and strategy for Symantec. Under his direction, he founded specialized teams at the company, including Symantec Research Labs and Symantec Security Response. With 25 years of experience, he is considered a pioneer in the development of intrusion-detection and policy-compliance products. Prior to Symantec, he co-founded Axent Technologies.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Helped create generic exploit blocking, a new technology designed to stop threats before they emerge and to protect vulnerable software against future attack. It has been integrated into Symantec products and will enable security experts to examine software vulnerabilities and identify the specific stream of data that must be sent over the network to exploit a vulnerability. They can then produce a signature that detects and blocks any attack that meets the exploit criteria.

3COM
Sudhakar Ramakrishna
VP of Product Line Management
Ramakrishna is responsible for introducing leading-edge converged networking products for 3Com. He joined 3Com in 1996, serving as vice president of product-line management for CommWorks, a wholly owned subsidiary of 3Com, providing IP-based networks for large telecom service providers. Prior to 3Com, he was technical lead for Lachman Technologies, a network stack equipment provider, where he developed protocol stacks for TCP/IP, network file systems and remote-access technologies.
Top technology innovation in 2004: The most innovative product from 3Com in 2004 is the 3Com Convergence Applications Suite, a new category of product designed to take advantage of network convergence through an open standards-based technology. It delivers enhanced messaging, conferencing and contact-center applications.
% of products less than 2 years old: 60% to 70%.

VeriSign
Judy Lin
Executive vice president
Lin manages the worldwide development activities for several major lines of business, including authentication services, Web trust and payment services, and managed security services. She joined VeriSign in 1996 and was instrumental in building the company's market-leading Internet- and enterprise-managed PKI services. Prior to joining VeriSign, Lin held posts at Taligent, Apple and HP.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Introduction of the VeriSign Unified Authentication solution. This new security solution comprises a comprehensive software and services platform coupled with VeriSign's new family of multipurpose authentication tokens, including One Time Password, PKI and smart-card functionality.
% of products less than 2 years old: 25%.

VERITAS Software
Mark Bregman
CTO
Bregman oversees the engineering and product management departments at Veritas to ensure integrated product delivery. He is responsible for expanding the company's portfolio of storage software solutions. Prior to Veritas, Bregman was CEO of Airmedia, a wireless Internet firm. He also spent 16 years at IBM, where he managed the RS/6000 and Pervasive Computing divisions, IBM Research and IBM Japan. He was also technical assistant to then-IBM CEO Lou Gerstner. Top technology innovation in 2004: Unveiled the CommandCentral family of service-level management products to enable IT organizations to more efficiently provide infrastructure services that are measurable, accountable and precisely integrated with business objectives, thereby enabling higher service levels while lowering IT costs. CommandCentral software enables IT to move toward a utility-computing model.
% of products less than 2 years old: All leading Veritas products have seen significant revision in the past 12 to 18 months.

Wyse Technology
Curt Schwebke
Vice president and CTO
Schwebke is responsible for the company's technology road map, working closing with industry partners and cross-functional departments to evaluate opportunities for investment and new business. Prior to Wyse, he worked for Mindset, a start-up, as well as Calma-G.E. and Intel Memory Systems.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Chosen as a strategic partner by Intel to create the industry's first video client based on Wyse's thin client embedded management technology. Created a reference design platform that spans both Commercial Digital Signage and Video Kiosk applications, as well as Consumer Advanced Set-Top box via broadband applications.
Amount spent on R&D: Consistently invest more than 8% of revenue in R&D.

Xerox
Sophie V. Vandebroek
Chief engineer and vice president
Vandebroek's organization is responsible for Xerox's platform-planning and product-delivery effectiveness. Her group provides the tools and processes to develop global products and solutions, strengthens the Xerox engineering capabilities and prioritizes the $1 billion annual R&D investments. Before re-joining Xerox in 2002 (where she had worked for a decade previous), Vandebroek was CTO at Carrier.
Top technology innovation in 2004: Launched the platforms that power the solid-ink Phaser 8400 multifunction device and the new line of black and white Nuvera 100/120 light volume production printers, also based on a new product platform. In addition, began implementing more remote smart diagnostics and extending the use of synthetic toner in a wide variety of machines.
% of products less than 2 years old: More than half of Xerox's revenue last year came from offerings that were introduced in the past two years.