www.fridu.net

I have over twenty years experience in the Information Systems industry. My experience ranges from general management of software development and projects to research activities. My career has always been driven by my desire to work on the leading edge of technology, management, and business development. I am motivated by a wish to achieve a smooth balance between customer engagements, technical leadership, business development, and management. I can summarise my professional experience under three main headings.

• 1980/89 Education and Research for the French Department of Defense.
• 1989/99 Business Startup and Wind River R&D Director
• From 1999 Sun Microsystems Global Software Practice's Chief Technology Officer

Education and Research for French Department of Defense (1980/89)

I hold a masters degree in computer science from the French Military School (ESAT Paris). I started my career as a research engineer and worked for 10 years on distributed technologies for the French DoD, focusing on embedded operating systems. This is where I discovered the power of open systems, and during this period I implemented the first French military simulators based on an open distributed TCP/IP architecture.

Business Startup and Wind River R&D Director (1989/99)

I resigned from being a government employee just before reaching the age of 30 and created a startup business dedicated to distributed embedded systems. After some visible success in developing TCP/IP driven technology for customers such as Altom “French TVG” and Matra “Ariane Aerospace”, I sold my company to Wind Rivers Systems. I then built their 1st European R&D center and became director of R&D for Wind River Europe. During this period I led a team of 20 people and promoted our technology within Europe, helping customers to migrate from proprietary operating systems and hardware to open systems, and moving them from monolithic architectures to TCP/IP distributed architectures.

I left Wind River in 1992 and pursued two paths. On one hand I went back to research and took a position as associate professor at South Brittany University were I taught internal Web server design, Java, and embedded technology, and also took a position as a technical director for a local consulting company specialising in advanced technologies. During this last period I also consulted on JavaOS technology, and this is how I encountered Sun Microsystems.

Sun Global Software Practice's Chief Technology Officer (Sun Microsystems from 1999)

I joined Sun during the “Internet bubble” period, and between the time I signed and actually joined the company, the group I was originally recruited to work with disappeared. In the void left by the departure of the complete group, I took on a manager role and started the European Advanced Internet Practice group for Sun Professional Services. The group helped major Internet service providers , wireless operators and banks to move their infrastructure from a few hundred thousand users to tens of millions. During that period my team was just under 20 people led Internet infrastructure projects for Orange, Vodafone, T-Systems and others.

Following a reorganization at Sun in 2002 , my team of architects was split in between local geographies and I became Chief Technology Officer of Sun’s Global Software Practice. This is my current role and I focus on large scale identity problems at a world wide level. I represent Sun software customer service group inside Liberty Technology Expert Group standardization committee and work as lead architect for major identity projects at a global level. As an expert in large-scale, Internet and identity system architectures, my specialization covers system and infrastructure design, network management, security, normalization and technology lobbying of large enterprises and governments.

I was nominated Sun's Principal Engineer in 2004 (see nomination package for a complete profile).

Others

Non profit volunteer work: As well as working for Sun I also manage basic Internet facilities for Breton community schools and local non profit organization in my own time. I currently manage ~150 email accounts, ~20 Linux/MacOs desktop, a few Joomla portals, a video streaming server and a SIP Asterisk PBX.

Personal Interests: Music, especially Baroque, Breton and Celtic. Enjoy spending time with my family, going on the sea, fishing, sailing, taking photographies.