About the Contributing Authors

Tom Laszewski has over 20 years experience in databases, middleware, software development, management, and building strong technical partnerships. He is currently the Director of Cloud Migrations in the Oracle Platform Migrations Group. He established the initial business and technical relationships with Oracle's migration SIs and tools partners. His main responsibility is the successful completion of migration projects initiated through the Oracle partner ecosystem and Oracle Sales. These migration projects involve mainframe service enablement and integration, mainframe re-host and re-architecture, and Sybase, DB2, SQL Server, Informix, and other relational database migrations. Tom works on a daily basis with TCS, Infosys and niche migration systems integrators, customer technical architectures, CTOs and CIOs, and Oracle account managers to ensure the success of migration projects. He is the sole Oracle person responsible for third-party migration services and tools partners. He provides customer feedback, tools direction, and design feedback to Oracle product development management and executive teams regarding Oracle migration and integration tools. Tom also works with cloud service providers to assist in their migration of current non-Oracle based offerings to an Oracle based platform. This work involves solution architecture of Oracle based cloud solutions utilizing Oracle Exadata, Oracle Virtual Server, and Oracle Enterprise Linux.

Before Oracle, Tom held technical and project management positions at Sybase and EDS. He has provided strategic and technical advice to several startup companies in the Database, Blade, XML, and storage areas. Tom holds a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems from Boston University.

He has authored Oracle Modernization Solutions, Packt Publishing, and co-authored Information Systems Transformation, Morgan Kaufmann.

My two sons, Slade and Logan, are the greatest as they understood the importance of "daddy's book writing", but also kept the task from consuming my life. I would also like to thank both my co-authors, Prakash and Jason, as they have been instrumental in moving my career and life in a positive direction. A special thanks to Prakash as has been a direct contributor to my career growth while working for me this past decade. His problem solving and technical skills depth and breath are unparalleled in this ever-changing world of technology. I would also like to thank my dad, Eugene Laszewski, for teaching me the merit of hard work and integrity.

Prakash Nauduri has over 19 years of experience working with databases, middleware, development tools/technologies, software design, development and training. In his current role as Technical Director of the Oracle Platform Migrations Group, he is responsible for evaluating/evangelizing Oracle technologies that serve the customer's needs for platform migrations, consolidation, and optimization efforts. He is also responsible for assisting Oracle customers/partners in developing migration methodologies, strategies, and best practices, as well as engaging with the customers/partners in executing PoCs, Pilots, Workshops, and Migration Projects to ensure successful completion of the migration projects.

Prakash has been working with Oracle Partners for over 12 years focusing on the successful adoption of the latest Oracle technologies. He has participated in numerous competitive performance benchmarks while customers/partners evaluated Oracle as the platform of choice against competition.

Before joining Oracle, Prakash worked with automotive industries in India, namely Hero Group and Eicher Tractors Ltd as Developer/DBA/Systems Analyst. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Science from Berhampur University, Orissa, India.

I would like to thank my wife Kavita and daughter Sriya for their endless love, patience, and support; and allowing me to write this book over many late evenings and weekends. I would also like to thank Tom Laszewski and Jason Williamson for their valuable input and guidance. Many thanks to my management team, Lance Knowlton and John Gawkowski for encouraging me to pursue opportunities like this to broaden my horizons.

The authors would like to thank Estuate, Inc. for a significant contribution to Chapter 9, including two customer case studies. Estuate, Inc. is a Silicon Valley-based IT services firm founded in 2004 by two ex-Oracle executives - Prakash Balebail and Nagaraja Kini. Together they created and managed the Oracle Cooperative Applications Initiative for many years, and so have deep Oracle-based application integration experience. Since its inception, Estuate has executed 20+ application integration projects, many for ISVs who build out-of-the-box integration between their products and Oracle Applications - including Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards.

We would also like to thank another contributer, Raghu Kodali of Solix. Raghu’s work on Chapter 9 and Information Lifecycle Management brought forth some important ideas and strategies to the book. Raghu is also a former Oracle employee and works for Solix, a Silicon Valley-based company focusing on ILM solutions.