Norbert Bieberstein works for IBM’s SOA Advanced Technologies organization supporting worldwide publication and communication of SOA-related topics. He gained firsthand experiences from customer projects in various industries striving to migrate to SOA-based solutions. Norbert published several articles on SOA-related topics, coordinated the IBM Systems Journal issue 44-4 on SOA, and was the lead author of Service-Oriented Architecture Compass (IBM Press, 2005). In 2007, the book SOA for Profit was published, for which Norbert acted as one of the three lead authors. He also co-authored two IBM Redbooks: Introduction to Grid Computing with Globus and Enabling Applications for Grid Computing with Globus. In 1993, he published his first book, CASE-Tools. Norbert joined IBM software development labs as a software engineering consultant in 1989. In total, he has more than 27 years of experience in information technology and computer sciences. In his career, he worked as an application developer at a smaller software vendor and as a scientific programmer at Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), where he received his Master’s degree in Mathematics and Geography. In 2006, he graduated from a corporate MBA program at Henley Management College in Henley, United Kingdom.

Robert G. Laird is an IT Architect with IBM in the SOA Advanced Technologies group, performing worldwide consulting for IBM customers in the area of SOA governance and SOA architecture since May 2006. He is a member of the industry TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) SOA Governance working group. Robert has more than 20 years experience in the telecom industry at MCI and Verizon Business. He was the MCI chief architect, leading the enterprise architecture group and working across the entire order-to-cash suite of applications. He led the development of the SOA-based single-stack strategy to simplify the multiple network and applications silos. Bob has driven the strategy, planning, and execution of MCI’s product development in the area of contact centers, IP/VPN, VoIP, IMS¿, and managed services. For OSS, he has led successful implementations to automate network provisioning, network restoration, and network management. Before joining MCI, Robert worked as a consultant for American Management Systems (AMS) and Ideation, Inc. He has a Master’s degree and a Bachelor degree in Computer Science from Purdue University and has been granted two patents in the area of telephony. He has spoken at various industry forums, written for the SOA Magazine, and been quoted in CIO Insight, Telecommunications, InfoWorld, and Computerworld.

Dr. Keith Jones is currently an executive IT architect with IBM in the SOA Advanced Technologies team where he focuses on the definition and implementation of service oriented architectures with leading-edge customers. He has 30 years experience in the IT industry as a systems engineer, software architect, strategist, and author of many middleware publications. Keith’s professional interests center on building transactional, message oriented and service-oriented middleware infrastructures in support of business processes in a wide range of enterprise environments. Most recently, these have included infrastructures at major financial services, retail services, automotive manufacturing, online media, and auction enterprises. Keith has a PhD in Chemistry and lives with his family in Boulder, Colorado, United States.

Tilak Mitra is a Certified Executive IT Architect with IBM Global Business Services, performing global consulting for IBM in the areas of enterprise architecture, helping clients realize their adoption of SOA from its vision through its design and implementation. Tilak has more than 10 years of industry experience in retail, banking, media and entertainment, health-care, and transportation industries, wherein he has worked in various leadership capacities, ranging from business to IT transformations, leading into solution implementation and delivery. Tilak works closely with the IBM SOA Center of Excellence, in which capacity he contributes to the development of various IBM SOA offerings and authors white papers and technique papers on IBM SOA assets. His current focus is on building assets and techniques that foster a radical simplification of the development of SOA based composite applications that are executable on various vendor platforms (for example, IBM WebSphere and SAP NetWeaver). Tilak has a Master of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Presidency College, India. He is a contributing editor of the Java Developers Journal (JDJ) and is a frequent author in IBM developerWorks and in JDJ and WebSphere Developer’s Journal (both from SYS-CON Publications). He also speaks at various U.S. universities on topics that cover the gamut of SOA.