Panelist: Andras Szakal
IBM Distinguished Engineer, and Chief Architect, IBM's Federal Software business unit

Andras Szakal is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect of IBM's Federal Software business unit. He is also an IBM Senior Certified Software IT certArchitect and an IBM Certified SOA Solution Designer. His responsibilities include developing e-Government software architectures using IBM middleware and leading the IBM federal government software IT architect team. Mr. Szakal holds undergraduate degrees in Biology and Computer Science and a Masters Degree in Computer Science from James Madison University.

Mr. Szakal has been a driving force behind IBM's adoption of government IT standards and is a member of the IBM Software Group Strategy Team. The team he leads has been responsible for helping the federal government move e-Government into the On-Demand era through the application of SOA. His team has been directly involved with multiple, high-profile, successful government software and services engagements based on open standards and open source.

Mr. Szakal represents IBM SWG on the Board of Directors of The Open Group. He currently holds the Chair of the IT Architect Profession Certification Standard (ITAC) within the Open Group.