Open is Becoming the New Common Foundation across Business, Government, Science, and Industry
Interview with Shanker V Selvadurai, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Cloud and Cognitive Software for IBM Asia Pacific Could you briefly introduce yourself? I am Shanker Selvadurai and currently the Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Cloud and Cognitive Software for IBM Asia Pacific. I am based in Singapore and lead the technical organization that helps clients across Asia Pacific to explore and co-create cloud-based solutions that leverage data, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to deliver better decisions and outcomes. I joined IBM in 2006. Prior to IBM, I held key leadership positions in areas of research, development, consulting, sales and marketing with technology companies like AT&T, NCR and Fujitsu as well as start-up BlueGill Technologies. During this period I lead teams varying in size from 6 to over 1,000 while being based in North America, Europe and Asia. I have a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Business Administration. I am also an Open Group Certified Distinguished Architect. Besides having published international patents/papers, I have actively contributed to international technology standards committees that include the IFX Forum, OFX Consortium and the Microsoft Advisory Council. I was also an adjunct lecturer at the Singapore Management University, teaching courses related to Services Science and Advanced Business Technology. Tell us about your session at the FOSSASIA Summit, what will you cover? At the FOSSASIA Summit, I am participating in a panel on “Business, Government, Science – What Opportunities Does “Open” Bring to Society”. I hope to share IBM’s involvement in the open source movement, how businesses like IBM benefit from open source, as well as share thoughts about approaching open contribution and open governance in the future. Shanker V Selvadurai handing over IBM Cloud Prize for Hackathon Winners Business, Government, Science - What Opportunities Does "Open" Bring to Society from your point of view? Open is becoming the new common foundation across business, government, science, and industry today. For example, companies that still compete head-to-head in the marketplace are coming together to collaborate in open source communities. They contribute to open source software and use it in their own IT systems and applications. They gain a competitive advantage — even though they may be helping their competitors in the short run. The data demonstrates that companies with open source programs see more benefits from open source code and community participation. IBM Connecting with Open Source Community at FOSSASIA Summit International IBM Team Participating in FOSSASIA Summit What is the role of Free Open Source Software in cloud and AI solutions in IBM? Our offering portfolio, especially for our growth initiatives such as cloud and AI, is based on a solid foundation of open technologies. Most of our strategic initiatives are founded on open source projects or communities, and we work across a wide variety of internal stakeholders to ensure that that the contributions we make to the community also provide greater value to our clients. IBM Training on Open Source Cloud and AI Technologies at FOSSASIA…