Special Activities: BrainShare® 2008

Alexander Danoyan

Alexander Danoyan: From Big Water, Utah to Data Center Automation

Alexander Danoyan is almost certainly the only person on earth who has ever graduated Summa Cum Laude from National Aviation University in Kiev, Ukraine and lived and worked in Big Water, Utah (population 417). Fortunately for Novell, this unusual career path somehow led Alex to Novell’s International Development group in 1992.

Early on, I was working with a friend on software to process earthquake data for the United States Geological Survey in Big Water, and the only problem was that I wasn’t getting paid,” Danoyan said. At some point, I decided money would be nice, so I worked on my immigration status and eventually ended up as an engineer at Novell.”

Since those early days, Alex has made significant engineering contributions in many different areas of the company. He worked on the very first PCI-based LAN drivers for Novell, he helped develop Novell’s award-winning clustering product and Native File Access Protocols for NetWare, he was the key contributor for Novell Branch Office Appliance product, and he has been instrumental in moving core NetWare services over to the Linux platform. Today, he is one of the architects driving Novell’s data center automation and virtual machine management efforts.

Alex has strong opinions about many things, and BrainShare is one of them. I still love the thrill of working all night on new code to get it ready for a big demo,” he said. For me, BrainShare is a time to collect my thoughts and come up with something really cool to show people, and I think attendees can feel that energy and excitement.”

This year, Alex is especially excited about the launch of Novell’s new unified technical vision at BrainShare, which he helped develop, and the special Monday evening gathering with 350 BrainShare attendees and all 14 Novell Distinguished Engineers. Alexander Danoyan will be on hand to talk about the cutting-edge work he’s doing in data center automation. And if you’re lucky, he might even share some stories about the nightlife in Big Water.

Tammy Green

Tammy Green: Serious about Security

If you’re looking to corner an engineer at BrainShare 2008 who can answer your toughest security questions, make sure you put Tammy Green at the top of your list. Since she joined Novell in 1995, Tammy has been a driving force behind many of Novell’s most important security initiatives – from her early pioneering work in PKI certificates and graded authentication in the mid-nineties to her current role as the head of Novell’s Security Review Board, which is responsible for improving security across all of Novell’s product lines.

As one of Novell’s most passionate and experienced security experts, Tammy welcomes the opportunity to share her expertise every year in Salt Lake City. BrainShare is by far the best place for customers to make their voices heard,” she said. It’s really the only venue where any attendee can stop the CTO or a Distinguished Engineer in the hallway and give them face-to-face feedback. And of course, it’s the best place to learn about new products and the direction of the company.”

So what is one of Novell’s most accomplished security advocates looking forward to most at this year’s conference? Attendees will notice a much bigger focus on security than ever before,” she said. We’ll be talking a lot about our recent efforts to integrate physical security and logical security through our partnership with Honeywell. And we’ll be laying out a more complete and detailed technical vision than ever before.”

The bottom line? If you’re interested in security, don’t miss BrainShare 2008. And don’t miss the opportunity to speak with and learn from Tammy Green.

Dale Olds

Dale Olds: Architecting Identity since 1987

Dale Olds began his career at Novell the same year most Novell engineers were busy perfecting NetWare 2.1—and well before BrainShare was even called BrainShare. In the 21 years since, Dale has distinguished himself as one of the leading minds behind Novell’s directory and identity services technology. He spent 10 years on the Novell Directory Services (NDS) team, including a number of years as the product’s lead architect and implementer.

Dale counts his early days on the NDS team as some of his best and most rewarding at Novell. From a technology sense, Novell’s directory was amazing,” he said. It goes to show what a small team of 5-8 talented developers can accomplish together.”

Today, Dale is heavily involved in Novell’s efforts to evolve and expand Novell’s technology vision for identity. A lot of what we tried to do with identity in the nineties is emerging as an industry-wide movement,” he said. All of the major identity players are finally working to break out of isolated, proprietary identity silos. Identity is becoming a universal service that’s available across the Internet, and user-centric identity systems are changing the way businesses approach the web.”

Dale can’t wait to demonstrate how Novell's Bandit project is pushing this new identity model forward at BrainShare 2008. People often ask me how open source and identity fit together,” he said. I tell them that open source is the foundational piece that makes real interoperability possible and identity is the organizational principle companies use to run their organizations. At BrainShare, we’re going to show people how a mixed source environment and standards-driven identity solutions can work perfectly together and break down the old barriers between identity systems.”

Steve Carter

Steve Carter: Novell’s Jolly Good Fellow

According to Steve Carter, the only downside to being named a Novell Fellow is having to endure the endless “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” jokes from friends and co-workers. The jolly part may be debatable, but there is no question Steve deserves this important recognition.

Steve joined Novell as part of the WordPerfect acquisition in the early ‘90s, and he was quickly promoted to CTO of the Collaboration Division. In the late ‘90s, he joined the Novell Internet Caching System (ICS) team and later, after ICS spun off to become Volera, he became the lead architect of all Volera Products. After two years, Steve returned to become the chief architect for Novell’s Secure Identity Management business unit, and he’s currently responsible for driving the architecture of Novell’s new generation of secure identity and access management solutions. He’s also a member of the Novell Inventions Committee, he holds 31 patents and he’s heavily involved with the Novell patent program.

Despite these many responsibilities, BrainShare is a standard part of Steve’s yearly routine, and he’s attended every conference since 1994. “BrainShare is unique, because it puts the whole Novell mind trust in the same place at the same time,” he said. “Our customers get the chance to meet and interact with the engineers who have actually written the code they use. That means you can get a lot of answers and a lot of great insights into where things are going in a relatively short period of time.”

And where are things going? From Steve’s perspective, it’s an especially gratifying time to be a Novell engineer. “There are more computing resources available to us today than there ever have been before, with new 4-,8- and 16- core systems, high-density disk systems, 10GB networks and the list goes on,” he said. “At Novell, we’re constantly thinking about what all this new technology means for our customers, and we’re excited by the possibilities.” If you’re interested in hearing more details, Steve will be in Salt Lake City this March, and he’ll be ready to talk to anyone who will listen. In the meantime, you can also check out Steve’s blog at CarterThoughts.com.

Lloyd Burch

Lloyd Burch: Making Identity Universal

Over his 15-year career with Novell, Lloyd Burch has worked in two related areas that are still vitally important to the company’s success—Collaboration and Identity. He joined Novell through the WordPerfect merger as a GroupWise engineer. Lloyd has fond memories of his work as lead developer on the very first GroupWise Web access client in the early nineties. “Back then, people wondered why on earth we’d ever want to develop a zero-byte client,” he said. “No one else was doing it, and it was a lot of fun exploring areas where no one had been before. There were no wrong answers. We only had our customers to guide us.”

Later, Lloyd joined the eDirectory team, where he played a key role in developing iChain and helped bring XML standards to the directory. Today, he’s working on a new a new Access Manager architecture that will transform the product into a web service security infrastructure. “I see Novell becoming an identity broker in the same way we’ve been a network broker in the past,” he said. “Identity has always been tied to individual networks. Now we’re working to open it up and move it to the web.”

After 15 years of attending BrainShare, Lloyd has plenty of great stories. “I’ll never forget the year we did a provisioning demo in one of the keynotes,” he said. “Part of the demo was provisioning and de-provisioning a Segway Personal Transporter. As one of our engineers was zipping around the keynote hall, we learned the hard way that de-provisioning a Segway shuts it down immediately. Everyone laughed except for the person riding it.”

This year, Lloyd is especially looking forward to talking about the movement toward standards-based identity services at BrainShare. “For the first time in many years, all the major players share and see the value of providing common identity services across platforms and vendors,” he said. “We’ve made some tremendous progress, and I’m excited to share what we’ve learned with our customers.”

Jim Nicolet

Jim Nicolet: A NetWare Expert to the Core

When you ask Jim Nicolet to reminisce about his 24-year career at Novell, there’s a good chance he’ll start by describing his work on the first version of NetWare built to run on the Motorola 68000 chip. “There was a huge technology leap from the old 68000 chip, to the Intel 8088 chip, and then to the Intel 386 chip that really made the modern version of NetWare possible,” he said. “Back then, I had no idea of the huge impact NetWare would have. I just knew there were a lot of very talented people involved, and that it was a whole lot of fun to work on.”

Since those early days, Jim’s career at Novell has been defined by his work on the heart and soul of NetWare. This includes playing a major role in the development of the NetWare Core Protocol (NCP), LAN Drivers, the OS/2 redirector, various versions of the NetWare File Systems and iSCSI clients. Today, Jim is focusing his NetWare expertise on moving NCP and other core NetWare services to Linux, as well as bringing Dynamic Storage Technology to other platforms.

As you’d expect, Jim has plenty of thoughts on BrainShare, since he’s attended nearly every conference for more than 20 years. “BrainShare gives Novell customers a really unique opportunity to express their views and have direct contact with everyone who matters,” he said. “BrainShare is like a big caucus meeting. Everyone comes together to represent their interests face-to-face. If you don’t show up, you don’t get to vote.”

This long-time veteran also had some good pre-BrainShare advice. “Start sending us your questions and comments now,” he said. “That’s how we know who to send and what kind of content to prepare. If you don’t come, you’re missing out on an amazing opportunity to be in the know and make your voice heard.”

Troy Rovig

Troy Rovig: Perfecting the Art of Debugging

Over the past eighteen years, Troy Rovig has examined countless server core dumps, written more than 1,000 patches, and saved high-profile Novell customers millions of dollars in downtime-related costs. “I’m the guy they call when server problems have to get fixed now,” he explained. “If I’m doing my job right, I never have to fix the same problem twice. Every issue I deal with is new and unfamiliar. It’s the perfect job for people with Attention Deficit Disorder.”

Troy claims that his job hasn’t changed all that much over the past 18 years. “I used to travel to customer sites a lot more to work on issues, but today we do mostly remote debugging,” he said. “And of course, Linux has introduced a whole new dynamic. But really, my job has always been about using the best debuggers on the planet to get in and fix problems in the least possible amount of time. That part hasn’t changed at all over the years.”

Because Troy is so focused on critical problem resolution, it’s often difficult for him to sneak away to attend BrainShare. “I’ve only been involved with a handful of BrainShare conferences over the years,” he said. “For the last couple of years, I’ve made it a point to attend Meet the Experts night. I’ve met some wonderful people there and fixed a lot of bugs as a direct result of those conversations.”

This year, Troy plans to continue that tradition. “Novell customers are amazing,” he said. “Of course, I get a lot of great information at Meet the Experts that helps me do my job better. But I also just really enjoy the chance to rub shoulders with such a great group of people.”

K.Y. Srinivasan

K.Y. Srinivasan: Making Linux the World’s Best Virtualization Platform

K.Y. Srinivasan first started exploring the potential of hosting multiple virtual workloads on a single physical server more than a decade ago many years before the current virtualization craze started. “I was working as the chief architect on Modesto, Novell’s next-generation 64-bit version of NetWare,” K.Y. explained. “Way back in the late 1990’s, we were successfully hosting Linux and Java virtual machines on Modesto. I think the technology was just a bit ahead of its time, and virtualization on the NetWare platform never really took off.”

Fortunately, a few years later K.Y. was able to translate that hard-won experience to the Linux platform. “By the time Novell started shifting its focus to Linux, virtualization was really starting to take hold in the industry,” he said. “It quickly became clear that strong virtualization capabilities were going to be key, so we evaluated the work we’d done on Modesto for usable ideas. In about 2004, we decided to pick up XEN and run with it.” Today, XEN is an integral part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, and a recent agreement with Microsoft has made SUSE Linux the preferred platform for hosting a wide range of virtualized Microsoft workloads.

K.Y. is anxious to show off the latest virtualization technology at BrainShare 2008. “Over the past couple of years, BrainShare has become a place where a lot of open source innovation takes place,” he said. “Last year, I talked to people who came to BrainShare specifically looking for an open source alternative to VMWare, and we had some great answers for them.”

This year, K.Y. claims there will be even more to talk about. “We’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible with virtualization,” he said. “I know it’s a bold statement, but I think virtualization could eventually bring about the death of big, general purpose operating systems. In a world where most applications run on top of hypervisors, operating system platforms will become leaner, more customized and more tightly coupled with applications.”

Carolyn McClain

Carolyn McClain: Taking Access to the Next Level

Carolyn McClain has enjoyed a remarkably diverse and varied engineering career. Since the mid 1980's she has worked as a software systems analyst, developed PerfectPrint technology for WordPerfect’s Office Suite, and engineered content distribution systems and content filtering with Novell’s Internet caching technology. If you had to pick one word to define Carolyn’s career at Novell, that word would be Access.

“In the late 1990's, I started working with the Advanced Development Group on our Internet Caching System (ICS) project,” Carolyn explained. “I found myself working with a remarkably motivated and talented group of engineers who produced the code which became the basis for BorderManager, ICS, iChain, and the current Access Manager product. During the time I worked on ICS, I was heavily involved with policy-based access management and I’ve been working in that area ever since.” Today, Carolyn leads the Novell Access Manager Policy Team and she is the driving force behind policy-associated patents, Novell's extensible Policy Markup Language, and Access Manager’s policy evaluation engine.

Like most Novell Distinguished Engineers, Carolyn makes BrainShare a top priority every year. “I’m convinced that as engineers we get as much out of BrainShare as the attendees,” she said. “It’s incredibly valuable for us to talk to people and really explore the challenges they face. Every year after BrainShare my engineering team meets to talk through all the feedback we’ve received. That feedback always has a big impact on the products we release.”

This year, Carolyn is looking forward to the unveiling of a new identity and access management platform at BrainShare. “With this new platform it is possible to create a policy-based access and identity management workflow that seamlessly integrates our current identity and access management products,” she said. “We are excited to meet with customers at BrainShare and explore the new possibilities that this integration provides.”

Scott Isaacson

Scott Isaacson: Mixing It Up with Mixed Source

Scott Isaacson has spent a good part of his career exploring the relationship between proprietary software and the open source world, so it’s no surprise that he has some strong opinions on the subject. “Today, the conversation should never be about open source vs. closed source,” he explained. “It should always be about finding the right source the right mix.”

Scott would know, since few people in the industry have more “right source” software engineering experience. Scott started his Novell career in 1992 working on core proprietary NetWare services, including Novell Distributed Print Services (NDPS), iPrint, Native File Access Protocols (NFAP) for NetWare and more. In 2003, Scott became the architect for Novell Open Enterprise Server, where he worked tirelessly to open up many of those same proven, robust core services and move them over to the Linux platform. Most recently, he has shifted his focus to company-wide mixed source architectures and strategies.

Scott has attended every BrainShare conference since 1992, and he has first-hand proof that the unique atmosphere at BrainShare can lead to big opportunities. “In 1997, I gave a presentation at BrainShare on Novell Internet Distributed Print Services, which was the new open version of NDPS,” he explained. “After the presentation, a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), who I had never met, walked up to me and asked me to participate in the printing workgroup. I eventually became the leader of that workgroup, and the result was the open standard now called Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). That face-to-face encounter at BrainShare, opened up a whole new opportunity that really shaped the industry.”

This year, Scott is looking forward to sharing his thoughts on “right source” software with BrainShare attendees. “This whole area is getting really exciting,” he said. “By using the XEN virtualization platform as an open source hosting environment, businesses can choose to run any combination of open and closed source operating systems and workloads. It’s complete operating system freedom. And it really creates the ultimate mixed-source environment.”

Michael Meeks

Michael Meeks: Making Desktop Linux Business Ready

If you’re a fan of desktop Linux, you should probably track down Michael Meeks at BrainShare this year and buy him a drink. “I’ve been working on desktop Linux software since I was a student,” Michael explained. “I started out working on an early open source spreadsheet called Gnumeric. I met [Ximian co-founder] Miguel de Icaza on that project, joined his development team at Ximian, and we’ve been working to improve the Linux desktop experience ever since.”

Michael’s work has included efforts to make OpenOffice a viable alternative for businesses, develop CORBA-based desktop components for GNU/Linux, and improve the interoperability of Linux desktop applications. “Joining forces with Novell has actually enabled us make a lot of progress over the past few years,” he said. “We’ve been able to stop looking over our shoulders, tap into new resources and get a lot more strategic in our thinking. That stability has really made a difference.”

So how does Michael view the near-term future of desktop Linux desktop operating systems and applications? “Linux desktop applications have a very low barrier to entry, and we’re really starting to make a dent,” he said. “Today, there are around 100 million OpenOffice users, which is very encouraging. And of course, Evolution is proving to be a very compelling new product with tremendous potential.”

This year, Michael will be attending BrainShare in Salt Lake City for the very first time. “I always enjoyed the big, terrifically scary demos they attempted on the final day at BrainShare Europe,” he said. “From what I’ve heard, the Friday demos at BrainShare in Salt Lake City are even bigger and more terrifying, so that should be fun.” And what should attendees pay special attention to this year? “Novell Teaming and Conferencing is a great example of how Novell is using open source desktop technology to address some really interesting problems,” Michael said. “I hope everyone at BrainShare will take the time to check it out.”

Robert Wipfel

Robert Wipfel: Parallel Processing for the 21st Century

Robert has spent most of his technical life exploring and expanding the potential of parallel processing. Over the years, he has worked to create machine vision controlled robots, developed microkernel-based operating systems for parallel multi-computers, and helped Oracle scale-out parallel SQL on an Intel/Unisys created 64-node cluster. “There will soon be more CPU parallelism and serial comms bandwidth inside my desktop PC,” he joked.

Robert joined Novell in the mid-1990’s to lead another parallel processing project–Novell Cluster Services. In the process, he invented the Virtual NCP Server, an abstraction that simplified cluster failover and provided what Robert calls service-oriented mobility. “It was a brilliant time to join Novell,” he explained. “I introduced virtual synchrony protocols to Novell, experimented with high-speed RDMA interconnects, and developed Novell’s product support for fibre channel and iSCSI Storage Area Networks. I’m especially proud of the engineering we’ve done on OES, including a rolling cluster upgrade from NetWare to Linux that maintains online access to services running on either kernel.”

Today, Robert is convinced that Novell is in a unique position to innovate. “Virtual machines are the missing link,” he said. “I call this a proper separation of concerns. By wrapping a traditional network application inside a quality-of-service controlled virtual machine, our software can dynamically provision the performance and availability of that service from the underlying physical infrastructure. This creates a situation where the model for service configuration and the code itself follow the service. With resource management software that orchestrates the combination of application and data the moment the service is deployed, services gain the agility required for business optimized IT.” For more details on Robert's ideas and the work he’s been doing recently, visit his blog at http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?author=28.

With his long history at Novell, it’s no surprise that Robert has plenty of BrainShare experience. "BrainShare is where the Novell community expects to hear about our technology vision, and this year no one will be disappointed,” he said. “We’ve got some especially interesting sneak peek demos planned for this year’s Friday keynote, so anyone who leaves early will definitely be missing out.”