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At the Gartner Summit last week, I had the special pleasure of meeting Roberto Medrano, EVP of SOA Software. While he did mention that the company had received a $24.9 Million infusion of capital recently resulting from selling their services business to Zensar in India, what was even more interesting to me was the story of Roberto's life, and how he got to be drinking coffee with me at the Gartner "biosphere" in Nashville.

Long before his rise to prominence in the SOA and Web Services space at SOA Software (which owns the SOA.com domain), Roberto arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico with a pair of jeans, two t-shirts, and his guitar. He worked full time tirelessly to earn enough to go to community college. Then he finished up (with a flourish) and a bachelor of science in electrical engineering at USC. But that's not all. Packing his guitar, he went to MIT to get a Master's in electrical engineering, and then double-backed to L.A. to receive an MBA from UCLA.

He is now a recognized executive in the field of Internet security, as he helped to create the firewall, content security and security policy segments of the security market. Medrano has been an active member on President Bush’s National Security Advisory Committee, National Cyber Security Summit, and the White House National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. He also participated in President Clinton’s White House Security Summit. Medrano has extensive experience with both start-ups and large companies, having been involved at the beginning of four IT industries: EDA, Open Systems, Computer Security and now SOA.

Roberto reports that he doesn't have the jeans and t-shirts anymore, but he did keep the guitar. Read more about Robert Medrano's meteoric rise on SOA Software's bio page here.

Truly, this guy is cool. One of the ones that makes the whole Gartner biosphere worth the trip.

Posted by elizabeth in SOA and Web Services |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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