About the Authors

Olaf Zimmermann Olaf Zimmermann is a senior IT architect with 18 years of IT industry experience. He now holds a Research Staff Member position in the IBM Zurich Research Lab and is an external PhD student at the Institute for the Architecture of Architecture of Application Systems (IAAS) at the University of Stuttgart. His research focuses on meet-in-the-middle service modeling techniques and the role of architectural decisions and model transformations during Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) construction. Previously, Olaf was a solution architect, helping IBM clients designing enterprise-scale SOA/Web services and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) solutions on numerous services projects. He also educated practitioners around the world on emerging middleware technologies. In the beginning of his career, Olaf worked as a scientific consultant in the IBM European Networking Center (ENC) in Heidelberg, Germany, focusing on industry-specific middleware frameworks for systems and network management. Olaf is a regular conference speaker and an author of the Springer text book Perspectives on Web Services. He contributed to several IBM Redbooks such as Web Services Wizardry with WebSphere Studio Application Developer. Olaf holds a "Diplom-Informatiker" (graduate) degree in Computer Science from the Technical University in Braunschweig, Germany (awarded "with honors").

Mark Tomlinson is an IBM Consulting IT Specialist and is based in London, UK. Since joining the company in 1995, he has worked for the IBM Insurance Business, IBM Global Services, IBM Global Network and has finally found his home in the IBM Software Group. Mark has been working with various Java and XML technologies for the past five years, including WebSphere since its very first release. He is the champion for IBM’s application development software in Northern Europe and a founder member of the region’s Web services evangelism team. Mark is an author of the IBM ITSO Redbook Web Services Wizardry with WebSphere Studio Application Developer and holds a degree in Physics from the University of Warwick, UK.

Stefan Peuser, based in Herrenberg, Germany, is a Consulting IT Architect for IBM Global Services, e-business Innovation and Integration Services. Having joined IBM in 1992, his areas of expertise include methodical approaches for building IT solutions, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Web services and Enterprise Application Development (EAD). Stefan is a member of the IBM Technical Expert Council (TEC) for the EMEA central region. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Stuttgart, Germany. Over the last few years, Stefan has been the lead architect in a number of e-business development projects and participated in consulting engagements mainly in the finance and telecommunications industries. He also has a background as instructor of several formal, world-wide IBM training classes on middleware technology and tools.