As CEO of Conformative Systems, John is dedicated to driving the adoption of Web Services using XML and building industry-leading solutions that allow enterprises to drive down the cost of implementing high-performance XML-based applications.John’s most recent venture was as founder and CEO of Chicory Systems, a semiconductor IP startup. Chicory received $5.3M in venture funding and exited for approximately $50M in cash and stock within 18 months of being started. Previously, John held a number of senior engineering positions at IBM where he developed servers, server chipsets and processors. John has been issued 19 patents in various fields including data processing, processor architecture, and systems optimization. He has a similar number that have been filed and are under review. However, his real skills are in identifying enterprise needs in emerging technologies, and building and managing teams and solutions to fulfill those needs. John holds a BSEE from Iowa State University and has performed focused graduate studies at ISU, FAU, NTU (UMass-Amherst, UC-Berkeley) and other sources. Areas of study included hardware technology, software technology, project management, and analysis .