Raymond E. Ozzie

Raymond E. Ozzie is an independent software entrepreneur and pioneer in social productivity, an area widely known in the field as computer-supported cooperative work. Through late 2010, he was Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, the company's most senior technical strategy and architecture role previously held by Bill Gates.

Ozzie came to Microsoft in 2005 through the acquisition of Groove Networks, a company he founded in 1997 to focus on software and services for small-team dynamic collaboration. Prior to Groove, in 1984 Ozzie founded and led Iris Associates, the creator and developer of Lotus Notes. A decade later, Iris was acquired by Lotus and then by IBM. Under his leadership during that period, Lotus Notes grew to be used for communication and social productivity by hundreds of millions at most major enterprises worldwide. Before creating Notes, he worked on 1-2-3 and Symphony at Lotus, on VisiCalc and TK!Solver at Software Arts, and on operating systems at Data General.

Ozzie studied computer science and engineering at the University of Illinois. While earning his degree, he also worked as a systems developer on the seminal PLATO project. He credits that work with helping him to understand the significance of online community and social interactive systems.

Honored as one of seven Windows Pioneers by Microsoft, Ozzie was named "Person of the Year" in 1995 by PC Magazine, and he has been inducted in to the Computer Museum Industry Hall of Fame. He was selected for an Engineering at Illinois Alumni Award for Distinguished Service in 1997. He received the 2000 Institute for Electrial and Electronics Engineers Computer Society's W. Wallace McDowell Award and the 2005 SDForum Visionary Award. In 2001, he was honored as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last year.

Ozzie has served as a member of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and he was a member of the NRC committee that produced the landmark CRISIS report on the societal impact of cryptography.

Degrees

BS, Computer Science, 1979