Mr. Oleg Vishnepolsky

The author of IBM's S2 Spreadsheet; he also authored TCP/IP stacks for OS/2 and IBM POS terminals. One of the early Internet technologists, he has a 20-plus year track record of technological advancements including his pioneering work on Internet technologies in the early 80?s at IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center, and continuing at other companies including AOL, DoubleClick and 24/7 Real Media. While employed at IBM he created a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible program S2 in 1984 at about the same time that Lotus was developing 1-2-3. S2 became popular within IBM and was distributed worldwide to 50,000 users. S2 matched 1-2-3 feature by feature, and had a similar user interface. Additionally, S2 had an ability to connect to IBM mainframes via TCP/IP and pull data from IBM databases such as IBM DB2 and IBM SQL/DS. It also had features that allowed for easy visual connection between formulas and their dependencies - those features were later adopted by Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel. In 1986, S2 caused a major controversy because of the legal concerns stemming from the fact that Lotus had filed and won lawsuits against 2 other companies for infringing on the Lotus 1-2-3 copyright. Additionally, IBM at the time was negotiating a major marketing deal with Lotus to market 1-2-3 under IBM's name. A reporter from PC Week obtained an S2 program and ran an article speculating that the rumored deal between IBM and Lotus was coming apart which caused an uproar in the executive circle of IBM. Upon further investigation, and given the fact that S2 was already in the hands of 50,000 people, the decision was not to withdraw S2 from circulation and they allowed him to continue development of S2. However, he got disheartened by the deal between IBM and Lotus and lost interest in continuing S2 development. He moved to another project and went on to develop TCP/IP for OS2 and IBM POS terminals. Active in Internet protocols development and specifically in TCP/IP, he worked in the group of Barry Appelman, a significant Internet notable and the inventor of instant messaging. Appelman's group as a whole proved critical in IBM's early embrace of the Internet despite having a competing family of protocols IBM Systems Network Architecture. He authored TCP/IP for OS/2 in 1986 and for IBM POS terminals in 1990. According to an SEC filing of 2007, he was Chief Technology Officer of 24/7 Real Media, in charge of global technology development. He focused on the enhancement of the existing technology product suite as well as the development and innovation for new products and platforms. Prior to this position, he worked at Doubleclick, AOL, and Prodigy_(online_service) in executive positions. He was also CTO of Inforocket/Liveadvice, an expert site. During his time at AOL, as the Vice President of publishing and search, he was primarily responsible for setting up agile processes and global teams to ensure rapid and interactive software development. He holds a Master?s degree in Computer Science from Pace University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from NYU, as well as an Equivalent of Masters in Nuclear Physics, from MIFI. He received an Outstanding Technical Achievement award from John Akers, the CEO of IBM. According to IT Management Conference, he launched first in the financial industry website for Prudential Securities. According to his Linkedin Profile he served as CTO of Xaxis and currently is CTO of MailOnline. He is also known as an aphorist; a person who crafts short phrases that express a true or wise idea. Some of his more famous quotes are: "With the help of a computer we can make millions of mistakes a second."; "No gain is a pain."; "It is ok to put your head in the sand if you keep your mouth shut."; "Advice is best taken like Russian vodka: in small doses but large quantities."; "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you create an environmental problem."; "We live for the moments to die for."; "Small actions beat big intentions."; and "What does not kill me, makes me consume alcohol."