ORANO's Board of Directors recently welcomed its newest member: Brian Down, Chief Technologist and Principal Engineer with Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc.

Brian has held Chief Architect positions in both Sun's Global and Americas Data Center Practices over the past nine years, focusing on Enterprise migration and legacy transformation. Working with Sun's largest clients around the globe he has developed best practices that allow business and government to rationalize their application portfolio and, in a phased approach, virtualize, redeploy and manage the new environment on a modern, cost effective hardware platform.

Brian is a published author, a recognized expert on migration to the Solaris operating system and currently holds the title of Principal Engineer within Sun's global technology organization. He has a Masters of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Toronto and Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree in computer science from Memorial University. Brian recently served as a member of the research board for the Nortel Network Institute at the University of Waterloo and serves as the Chair for the Board of Directors for the Consortium for Software Engineering Research (CSER).

"We are very pleased that Brian has joined our board," said Board Chair, Maxim Jean-Louis, President and CEO of Contact North/Contact Nord. "He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience and he will make a significant contribution to the network and to our organization."

"Brian has an exceptional understanding of the rapidly evolving technology environment that is transforming the way we collaborate, conduct research, teach and learn," said Phil Baker, President and CEO of ORANO. "That will be invaluable to us as we focus on providing the critical infrastructure and services we need to support research and innovation in Ontario."

Brian joins other ORANO board members, including Anne Sado, President of George Brown College in Toronto, and Vice Chair of the ORANO board; Lisa de Wilde, CEO of TVOntario; Sara Diamond, President of the Ontario College of Art and Design; Dr. Alan George, Associate Provost, Information Systems and Technology and interim Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Waterloo; Dr. Khaled El Emam, Canada Research Chair, Electronic Health Information Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa; Terry Mosey, Past Executive Vice-President, Bell Canada; Robert J. Kennedy, National Education Consultant, Galileo Educational Network and Field Development Consultant, Canadian Education Association; and Patrick Spence, VP, Cingular Wireless & Rogers Wireless Business Unit, Research In Motion (RIM).

Read the news release.