Songnian received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987, and subsequently took a faculty position at the University of Toronto as a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Songnian's Ph.D. thesis established the field of distributed resource management, which provides a foundation for grid and cloud computing, hailed by industry experts as the next evolution of IT.

This research was the catalyst for the creation of Platform Computing, which he co-founded. Under Songnian's leadership, Platform has grown from a company of three employees to 500 strong, with 15 offices around the globe.

Songnian has been recognized for his excellence in leadership and innovation with the Ernst & Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2002. In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and received the Innovation Award for Leadership in Product Development from the Information Technology Research Centre (ITRC) of Ontario for Platform LSF in 1995.

John Egan
Director

John is a member of one of the founding families of EMC and he currently serves on the board of directors of EMC and VMware.  John was EVP of Sales & Marketing and then EVP of Products at EMC, where he directed the development of EMC’s sales force, market positioning, and product strategies.  During his tenure he grew the company from $3 million to nearly $3 billion in annual sales.  As a Managing Partner at Egan-Managed Capital, John plays an active role in technology startups and supports the growth and recruiting activities for the firm’s portfolio companies. He also serves on the board of directors of NetScout Systems, HighRoads, EPiCON, CenterStone Software, HighGround Systems, Lineo, Monetrics, Novera Software, and Caldera Systems.

John holds degrees in marketing and computer science from Boston College.

Ram Gupta
Director

Ram brings over 20 years of strategic marketing and management expertise at global technology companies to Platform Computing’s board of directors.  He previously served as Executive Vice President at PeopleSoft responsible for strategy, marketing, development, customer support, alliances, mergers and acquisitions and was instrumental in transforming PeopleSoft from an HR applications vendor in the U.S., to the second largest vendor of application suites worldwide. Currently serving as executive chairman of the board of directors at Cast Iron Systems – where he was previously the president and CEO – Ram also serves on the board of directors at Progress Software, S1 Corporation, SourceForge Inc., Persistent Software, Yodlee Inc., and Accruent Inc.

Ram holds an MS degree in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and graduated with Honors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, India.

.

Jingwen Wang
Director

Jingwen is a co-founder of Platform Computing. As Vice President, Products, Jingwen was responsible for converting the distributed systems research he had conducted with Songnian Zhou at the University of Toronto into a leading commercial product. Since then, Jingwen has built and managed Platform's engineering organization developing industry-leading technologies and products for grid and cloud computing.

Jingwen has a Ph.D.  in Computer Science from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China. He was also a post-doctorate fellow at Purdue University's Department of Computer Science.