Team
Bala Gopalan, Services – Bala has delivered on-demand and custom technology solutions to global customers – start-ups to enterprises – across multiple geographies. Prior to founding bHive Software, Bala was VP of Services at Mentorware. During his six years there, he ran its Services organization, across US and India, and headed the delivery of its on-demand solutions in Web Marketing, E-learning, and Support to Fortune 500 customers. Earlier, Bala was a Senior Technical Manager at Cambridge Technology Partners, where he led large implementation teams on custom software development projects in US and Central Europe.
Passionate about world history, travel/photography, and mechanical timepieces, Bala is a power user of social media tools and journals his experiences at www.inderstadt.net and on Flickr (inderSTADT).
Bala has a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from BITS, Pilani (India) and Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri.
Online Profiles: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Flickr
Vijay Natarajan, Product – Before founding bHive Software, Vijay was Chief Scientist at Borland working with the Deployments Product Group on industry leading middleware including Visibroker, Visibroker.NET and the Borland J2EE Application Server. He is an industry veteran holding patents and patent applications in distributed computing and server platform technologies. As Borland’s representative to Object Management Group, Vijay contributed to several core industry specifications. Vijay is the lead author for the book “Programming with VisiBroker, 2nd Edition” and teaches Java and Web Services related courses in the Bay Area from time to time.
A lover of fast cars, science fiction, and futuristic technology in general, Vijay is also too modest to admit that he is a very good cook!
Vijay has a Bachelor’s degree from BITS, Pilani (India) and holds a Master’s degree in Information Management from Syracuse University, NY.
Online Profiles: LinkedIn
David Noland, Engineering – David has over 13 years of Engineering and IT experience in Silicon Valley, building a handful of enterprise platforms for Fortune 500 companies. He has helped customers transform their business from in-house to on-demand applications that run in the cloud. Before founding bHive Software, David was VP of Engineering at Mentorware. At Mentorware, he was responsible for their flagship platform, Mentorware Enterprise Education Server (MEES), which supported more than 500,000 users in a Software as a Service (SaaS) environment. In addition to Engineering, David was responsible for all the IT and telecom infrastructure for the company.
In the earlier phase of his career, David worked at IBM Global Services and Palm Computing. He enjoys running, hiking, and snowboarding in his spare time.
David holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Online Profiles: LinkedIn
David Pinto, Marketing Strategy – Over the past decade, David has directed marketing and communications strategies at Credence Systems, KLA-Tencor, Mentor Graphics, and Numerical Technologies. At these firms, he became a satisfied – and duly impressed – user of bHive’s consulting services and technology offerings. So much so, that he joined bHive to help solve the challenges facing today’s resource-strapped marketing teams. Having literally “walked the walk”, David uses his insider knowledge of client needs to create and deliver content, SEO/SEM, social media, marketing, communications, and web presence management strategies.
Before moving to San Francisco in 1999, David was editor-in-chief of EE Times-Asia (and helped launch the www.eetasia.com website). Based out of Hong Kong, the Philippines and China, life on the road as an expat and journalist – as Asia and the internet went through rapid transformation in the 1990s – quickly helped satisfy his other passion: traveling. Some 60+ countries later, he’s still not completely cured of the travel bug! David enjoys healthy debates, good photography, decent reds, insightful writing, long hikes, team sports, and outdoor family fun in general.
David has a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Poona (India) and a Diploma in Creative Writing and Journalism from St. Xavier’s Institute of Communications, Bombay (India).
Online Profiles: LinkedIn | Twitter
Shyam Subramanyan, CEO – Shyam brings entrepreneurial and operational skills from founding and running Mentorware for over ten years. Founded as an e-learning company, Mentorware transformed under his leadership to become a marketing services provider – for conferences, webinars, channel and customer training programs – through the combination of a SaaS-based online community platform and value-added content development/delivery services.
Shyam played crucial roles in developing the technology and services offerings of Mentorware, starting with his position as the company’s first CTO. Later, as the CEO, Shyam successfully transitioned the company from being product-focused to becoming a complete solutions provider. During his tenure, he established an India Development Center and acquired many Fortune 100 customers including IBM, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Lenovo, and SAP. Shyam was also instrumental in building partnerships with web and cloud infrastructure providers such as Akamai, Limelight, and Amazon to deliver valuable integrated services to customers. Prior to Mentorware, Shyam developed solutions in Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining for Bank of America, where he was a winner of the CEO Eagle Award. He also received recognition from the IRS for the technology solutions he helped develop to track cross-border, anti money-laundering efforts.
An outdoor enthusiast, Shyam enjoys planning his next hiking trip or adventure travel. The more off the beaten path, the better. He is also an aspiring landscape and wildlife photographer (shyamster on Flickr) and enjoys playing tennis with his three boys.
Shyam has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Madras (India) and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from University of Florida.
