Biography
Jay Visvanathan's role at Sun is to promote open architectures and Sun technologies
in higher education. Jay's special emphasis is on Sun solutions for administrative
computing infrastructures, and deployment of web-based services. He is also
responsible for positioning Sun as the platform of choice for university data centers.
Jay drives market strategy to meet the above charter, and implements this strategy
worldwide through Sun's Education field sales force and reseller organizations.
One of the important ways that Jay accomplishes mindshare and market share for
Sun in higher education is to partner with best-of-breed software vendors and systems
integrators to ensure that Sun is the most robust platform for their applications.
Jay has also established Centers of Excellence at various universities, each highlighting
Sun and partner technologies.
In addition to the above, Jay is also driving the implementation of reference architectures
for higher education. These are integrated product stacks (from Sun and partners) that are
engineered to take cost and complexity out of IT infrastructures, and speed implementation
for university customers.
Also, Jay has been working with various open source communities like JASIG and Kuali
to connect Sun's open source technologies (and resources) to the development efforts of
these communities, and promote these communities within the Sun and partner ecosystems. Further, Jay has launched the Sun Identity Special Interest Group (http://sun-idsig.org),
and plays a stewardship role in growing this community - where universities deploying
identity solutions can share best practices, etc.
Jay has over 25 years experience in information technology, and has been with Sun for
23 of those years in various roles in Finance, Customer Service and Marketing.
He has extensive experience in customer relationship management in higher education,
helping universities implement Sun solutions, and a track record in managing partners
to provide superior service to customers.
Before his tenure with Sun, Jay was a Financial Analyst with Intel Corporation for 3 years.
Jay holds a CPA, and obtained his MBA from Case Western Reserve University.
Platform Statement
JASIG is one of the first open source communities in higher education; it was founded long before
open source was cool, and in a few short years, this organization has proven itself to be a leader in
recognizing and promoting "community power".
My vision for JASIG for the next several years revolves around the belief that the time is now right
for higher education to benefit from the best aspects of "community power" and "commercial power",
as well as expand the footprint of the community itself.
Accordingly, my vision for JASIG can best be described along the following dimensions:
1) JASIG is perceived as a leader in advancing state-of-the art in community source management.
I would love to see JASIG evangelize (at other open source communities and at higher education
conferences) the importance of a well balanced governance and management model - that combines
"volunteer power" and "commercial project management" in new ways to achieve a sustained
source of innovation in education software.
2) JASIG is a prime driver in integrating community source and IT vendor business models to
ensure seamless development, implementation and support of open source systems.
I would like JASIG to drive new approaches in higher ed that would answer the following:
a) How do universities put out RFP's for open source applications?
b) What is the best method for evaluating, selecting, and purchasing
an open source based infrastructure stack?
c) Deployment, integration and support are key challenges. How will
University CIOs handle the divergent pulls between applications developed
in a community with implementation and support provided by a commercial entity?
d) How will universities integrate community source projects within the enterprise
infrastructure and with each other?
3) JASIG is a strong voice for community source in emerging markets (Brazil, Russia, India, China),
and JASIG membership in these countries grows exponentially over the next several years.
My leadership characteristics and approaches that would contribute to the success of the Board:
a) Ability to articulate a vision and rally people around it; this is demonstrated by my experience
pushing Sun to pay more attention and commit more funds to open source communities
(we are now a Kuali Commercial Affiliate).
b) Skilled at building bridges between conflicting points of view - by stressing common ground
and shared goals.
c) Effective communication and selling skills - to represent JASIG at Sun (and other commercial
entities) - in order to secure support and resources.
d) Understanding of "emerging country" cultures which will help promote JASIG in these markets.