Radha Ratnaparkhi has over 25 years of experience in the software industry. Currently, Radha is the Vice President for Software Defined Environments at IBM Research. In this role she leads a global Research team towards creating differentiated IBM offerings to meet the needs of Hybrid Cloud deployments. Prior to her current role, Radha was the Vice President of IT and Wireless Convergence at IBM Research. Radha led a global research team towards creating new IBM offerings which resulted in research innovation, influenced product and service creations in the areas of wireless infrastructure, edge analytics, smarter planet appliances, and exploratory research in the area of sensor networks. Radha is also responsible for influencing IBM strategy in this emerging market opportunity. Radha is currently located at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights, New York.
 
Earlier, Radha was the Director of Commercial Systems in the Systems Research branch of IBM Research. Her team was responsible for innovation in the areas of the differentiated enterprise Systems p and Systems z, and enabling System x. Radha lead the research initiative in the area of Cloud Computing which was a cross-strategy, cross-lab global initiative encompassing the areas of infrastructure, platform and services enablement. In addition, Radha was the Area Strategist for System Software and had a worldwide team across the global Research Labs in Yorktown, Hawthorne, Haifa, Tokyo and Beijing. The System Software strategy covers Compilers & Firmware, end-to-end performance, Operating Systems & Hypervisors, Virtualization & Integrated Management, and Networking (with a focus on Wireless Networking and Cloud enablement).
 
Radha has previously led and managed the commercialization efforts of a high-end text analytics solution – WebFountain, at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. WebFountain was an emerging business opportunity for IBM and Radha was responsible for shaping the future of the WebFountain technology, and bringing it to the mainstream business sector from its research roots.
 
Radha’s experience at IBM also includes her development leadership effort for IBM’s flagship database product DB2 on the mainframe (z/OS). DB2 z/OS is a billion dollar revenue generator for IBM’s Information Management group. In March 2004, Radha led a team of 150 to deliver the largest release ever of DB2 on the mainframe for IBM. In addition to leading DB2 development, Radha was also the Management Advocate for Fortune 100 customers like MBNA. Her leadership role on the DB2 team involved interfacing with key customers such as Wal-mart, MBNA, Danske Bank, Banco do Brasil, and Morgan Stanley.
 
Prior to IBM, Radha was leading and managing the Java products development team at Informix Software (Informix was acquired by IBM in April 2001). At Informix, Radha led and managed global teams at Informix, Menlo Park, California as well as Informix, India. She was responsible for the releases of several database server and connectivity products. Radha also spent 3 years at Informix’s India Development Center at Mumbai, India where she was part of the executive leadership team that grew the center from 35 to 150 engineers. In her early days at Informix, Radha worked on Informix’s first Microsoft-Windows tools product, Informix NewEra. While working on NewEra and early in her career at Informix, Radha was promoted to a leadership position. Since then, for the past 18 years Radha has led numerous engineering teams.
 
She started her career in Mumbai, India with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – India’s premier services consulting firm, after completing her Masters of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. During her 5 years at TCS, Radha worked at Tata’s research lab in Pune, India and also at Tandem Computers in Cupertino, California.