November 11, 2002
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Microsoft's Mr TechnologyBhupesh Bhandari Indian geeks have left an indelible impression on US infotech. They were called the "Indian Internet Mafia," remember? Even Bill "Microsoft" Gates turns to an Indian when he needs sound advice on technology - and 30-something Anoop Gupta is his sole personal advisor on matters technological.
What is more, Gupta is the only member of the core Microsoft team to accompany Gates during his three-day sojourn to India. But Gupta decided to arrive in Delhi two days ahead of his boss, who will wing his way to India from Seattle in his private jet today. After all, Gupta is a Delhi boy. He studied in a government school here before passing out of IIT Delhi with the President's Gold Medal in 1982 - and that was just the beginning of an illustrious academic career. Gupta was a hard-core academician before he became a high-profile corporate executive. In his current assignment, Gupta reports to Gates, the world's richest man, working with him on a wide range of technology strategies and next-generation product initiatives. Before his current role, he led the Collaboration and Multimedia group at Microsoft Research, working on a range of topics that make computers more useful for communications and collaboration. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was an associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University (1987-1998) where he worked in the areas of computer architecture, operating systems, programming languages, simulation and performance debugging tools and parallel applications. Along with John Hennessy, he co-led the design and construction of the Stanford DASH multiprocessor exploring scalable shared-memory architectures. The technology developed in the DASH project is now becoming widely available in commercial products. Subsequently, Gupta worked on the Stanford FLASH Project, a sequel to DASH. At Stanford, he also led the Virtual Classroom project, exploring video compression and networking issues in transmission of video over the Internet. The seeds of the technology developed in that project led to the formation of VXtreme Inc, a company that was acquired by Microsoft in 1997. A father of three, Gupta has published over 100 papers in major conferences and journals, including several award-winning papers. Along with David Culler and Jaswinder Pal Singh, he co-authored the book Parallel Computer Architecture: A Hardware-Software Approach published by Morgan Kaufmann in 1998. Prior to joining Stanford in 1987, he was on the research faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1986. He has received several awards for his research papers. In spite of his accomplishments, Gupta is not too well known in the Indian infotech sector. Microsoft India officials had little information on the man except that he is brilliant, very powerful in the organisation and trusted absolutely by Gates. Still, it is another example of how talented Indians have made it to the sanctum sanctorum of the centres of power in the US. And now, as Gates starts his round of high-powered meetings in the country, it will be Gupta by his side giving him key inputs on next-generation technology. For the thin, tall (he's well over six feet) and bespecatcled Gupta, this is will be his first official visit to India after joining Microsoft four years ago. He does, however, regularly visit India on vacation, the last one being in June this year. Despite living in the US, he is a cricket fan and he manages to keep himself abreast of the latest happening in the game. Powered by ALSO READ:
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Gupta is one of the eight key people who interact with Gates ever since he took over the role of the chief software architect at Microsoft two-and-a-half years ago, leaving the business operations for Steve Balmer to run.
