August 19, 1996
Contact: Richard Shippee, 408-986-8840
The membership of the UniForum Association has elected two new members to the UniForum Board of Directors and re-elected two others. Joining the Board for the first time are Rob Gingell of Sun Microsystems, and Fred Luiz of Hewlett-Packard; re-elected were Jeanne Baccash of NCR and Michael Prince of Burlington Coat Factory.
Rob Gingell is a Sun Fellow and Vice President of Sun Microsystems where he serves as both SunSoft's Chief Technical Officer and more recently as its Chief Quality Officer. He is responsible for overall technical direction, engineering tools, practices and procedures, the relationships with major open systems bodies, and the development of pan-product technologies.
Gingell's stated objective upon joining the board was to help guide the organization to restore clarity in the face of industry confusion over how open systems are perceived, used and managed. UniForum, he feels, has the unique role of providing open systems education and in helping coordinate the efforts of major open systems organizations and activities.
Fred Luiz is the General Manager of the Open Systems Software Division within the Systems Technology Group at Hewlett-Packard. Prior to this position he worked within HP Labs on RISC development, and managed the operating systems and architecture labs within the Information Technology Group. He has also managed the Networked Systems Architecture function focusing on advanced technology for HP's Computer Systems Organization.
Luiz wants the industry and its customers not to lose sight of UNIX technology as the platform where continued development brings great return on investment. Luiz says that UniForum can do this by being clear in its message of UNIX and open systems values through its publications, conferences, seminars, and through its unique role of being able to bring companies and uses together to discuss ideas and chart new directions.
Jeanne Baccash is Assistant Vice President of Network and Systems Management Product Group at NCR Corporation. She spent ten years in the development of operations support systems for the telecommunications industry and ten years in the UNIX System development organization (USL) where she was responsible for the planning and definition of UNIX System V products, as well as for USL's involvement with industry groups and consortia. Jeanne led the group that created Spec 1170, and was involved in defining the transfer of the UNIX trademark to X/Open.
Baccash is also the Chair of UniForum's Technical Steering Committee and was elected by the board to be Executive Vice President and a member of the board's executive committee. Baccash states that UniForum can make sense of the emerging technology areas and players by providing information on who and what they are, where more information can be obtained, and how the new technologies can be used.
Michael Prince founded Teledata, a computer consulting firm, in 1976 which was acquired by Burlington Coat Factory in 1983. Prince is Burlington Coat's Chief Information Officer. Under Prince's leadership Burlington Coat has pursued an aggressive open systems strategy that has kept up with and facilitated the growth of the company to its present size of 242 stores and $1.8 billion in revenue. In 1993 Prince presided over the conversion from mainframe to a distributed UNIX computer network, and his company was recognized with both the UNIX Expo International Award for Excellence and the UniForum '95 Open Systems Award.
Prince, who was elected by the board as Chief Financial Officer and a member of the executive committee, is a strong believer in open systems as the preferred model for users of advanced computing technology. He sees danger ahead for UniForum if it is perceived as being strictly a UNIX organization whose mission is for the most part complete. Rather, he wants to see UniForum provide leadership by advocating openness across the enterprise to incorporate the Internet and intranets, and object technologies like Java.
About the Board of Directors:
These four directors serve two-year terms and join with five other directors who are finishing their first year on the board. They are: Michael Tilson, CIO of SCO and UniForum's president; Ronald Lackman, Chairman of Internet Dynamics; Wayne Fowler, President of Fowler Associates, Donna Van Fleet, Vice President RS/6000 Division, IBM; and Alan Fedder, Executive Director of the Washington Area UNIX Users' Group.
The UniForum board charts the strategic direction of the association and provides the UniForum staff with input and support in the development and delivery of its products and services.
About UniForum: Celebrating its fifteenth year, UniForum is one of the oldest and largest organizations dedicated to the development and use of open systems technologies in the enterprise. Its mission is to provide education to its membership of end users and vendors through the delivery of high quality publications, conferences, seminars and services. Located in Santa Clara, California, UniForum has some 4,000 members, 70 corporate sponsors, and 30 affiliates around the world.