Rajiv Gupta Biography

Achievements: Co-inventor of E-speak, owner of over 45 patents

With more than 45 patents to his credit and a distinguishing work experience in one of the world’s most prestigious organizations, Rajiv Gupta is a pioneer in web services. Currently serving as the head at Cisco Systems, Gupta is most popularly known for developing the first web services development and deployment platform. An exceptionally talented and intelligent individual, Gupta has consistently given magnificent examples of his capabilities in terms of operational efficiency, resilience, and agility with business systems. Since childhood, Rajiv Gupta aspired to do something which would have positive impact on the lives of the people. He wanted to something which could change the world for betterment.

Rajiv Gupta started fulfilling his dream of making it big in the world of information technology, ever since he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. Thereafter, he went to the United States to obtain his Master’s degree in Computer Science from the esteemed California Institute of Technology, following which he received his PhD in compiler optimization from the same institution, in less than a year. He started his career as a technical staff member on compiler optimization and processor architecture in the American multinational information technology corporation, Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 1990-91. Gradually, he raised and started managing the Advanced Architectures Group, with more focus on the HP WideWord (PA-WW) processor architecture, from 1991 to 1994, which became the basis of HP-Intel EPIC/IA64 architecture.

From 1994 through 1998, Gupta began supervising the Future Systems Department, where his work centered on technologies that would initiate the next level of internet innovation. Interestingly, this part of his work was yet again recognized by forming the basis for HP’s e-services vision and E-speak technology. In 1998, he, along with his team, developed the E-speak technology, one of the first pre-SOAP wed services platform. He served as the co-inventor and General Manager of the E-speak project. The project was undertaken to provide the infrastructure for global service interaction over the internet. However, the technology turned out to be a failure and was discontinued in 2002. Through the 11 years he spent at HP, Gupta held various posts and created more than 20 patents in processor, algorithm, and systems design.

After quitting as the General Manager of HP’s E-speak business unit, Gupta founded the Confluent Software, where he made efforts for the successful development and growth of its policy-based web-services management product. He served as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Executive Vice-President before Confluent was acquired by Oblix in 2004. Gupta then founded Securent Inc. and served as its Chief Executive Officer until the company was overtaken by Cisco Systems. Gupta works as the Vice President and General Manager of Policy Management Business unit at Cisco Systems. With over 17 years of experience in enterprise software and security, Gupta is today popularly recognized as the father of Web Services and SOA.

Gupta is an academic eccentric individual; he has a knack of working to get the desired, single mindedly. He is the inventor or co-inventor of several seminal concepts that emphasize on web services, with over 45 patents to his name. He is serving as a member of the Board of Advisors of Analytix On Demand, Inc and a member of Advisory Board of Secure64 Software Corporation. Such is his contribution and discoveries in the ever-growing field of information technology that he has been introduced into the Smithsonian National Museum, the largest museum complex in the world. He resides in Los Altos, California with this wife, Debra, and two children.