In his role as Chief Technology Officer at IONA, Eric is responsible for IONA's technology and product strategy and participation in standards bodies.

Eric joined IONA in November 1999, after nearly 16 years at Digital/Compaq, as the company's transaction processing architect, and also served as IONA's Vice President of Engineering, Web Services Integration Products.

Eric has contributed to many transaction processing, middleware, and Web services standardization and product development activities. He is currently a member of the Eclipse and OSGi Boards, and co-chair of the OSGi Enterprise Expert Group. He is well known for his expertise in SOA, Web services, and transaction processing.

Eric is the author of Understanding Web Services (published in May 2002 by Addison-Wesley), co-author with Phil Bernstein of Principles of Transaction Processing (published in January 1997 by Morgan Kaufman), and co-author with Greg Lomow of Understanding SOA with Web Services, published by Addison Wesley in December 2004.

Paul Lipton is a Senior Architect in the CA Intellectual Property and Industry Standards Group where he plays a leadership role in industry standards, open source, and emerging technology. Paul has been an architect and developer of enterprise systems for over 20 years and has also focused on SOA, Web services, virtualization, social computing, and innovation. He has participated in many standards organizations such as OASIS and the W3C, is a founding member of the CA Council for Technical Excellence, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, and a Sun Java Champion. He is a highly sought-after author and speaker, and has shared his knowledge with appreciative audiences around the world covering such topics as Enterprise Architecture, SOA, Web services, management/security, governance, Java,.NET, EAI, and emerging technologies .