Board of Directors
Francesco Cesarini
Chief Strategy Officer
Francesco Cesarini is the founder of Erlang Solutions Ltd. He has used Erlang on a daily basis for almost 15 years, starting as an intern at Ericsson’s computer science laboratory, the birthplace of Erlang. He moved on to Ericsson’s Erlang training and consulting arm working on the first release of OTP, applying it to turnkey solutions and flagship telecom applications. In 1999, soon after Erlang was released as open source, he founded Erlang Solutions, who have become the world leaders in Erlang based consulting, contracting, training and systems development. Francesco has worked in major Erlang based projects both within and outside Ericsson, and as Technical Director, is currently leading the development and consulting teams at ETC. He is also the co-author of Erlang Programming, a book recently published by O’Reilly.
Marcus Taylor
Chief Executive Officer
Marcus has a broad experience in the IT and telecoms sector and its
application in sectors like banking, media, health and travel. He has
worked for blue chip companies and helped create companies out of
concepts. He has strong understanding of company management, project
management, product management, human factors and product/service
lifecycles. This is underpinned by constant reevaluation of the
strategic issues associated with bringing new technologies and services
to market. Over the past 20 years he has developed a strong
sense of how to build a company and service.
As the CEO he has driven ETC to become the world leader in Erlang/OTP and provider of scalable systems. He has an MBA from Boston University and a BSc (Hons) in Ergonomics from Loughborough University. He grew up in Sweden, Singapore and Italy.
Bjarne Dacker
Non-executive Director
Bjarne Däcker joined Ericsson in 1966 as programmer and systems analyst. In 1984 he set up the Computer Science Lab together with Mike Williams to explore, develop and introduce new software technology in Ericsson often in collaboration with university research. The CSLab pioneered things like Unix, A.I., Lisp, Prolog and workstations in Ericsson. Erlang was created at the CSLab by an initial team of Joe Armstrong, Mike Williams and Robert Virding. Bjarne organised the first Erlang User Conference in 1994. He has had various external committments such as chairman of the steering committee of the Swedish national research programme in Computer Science 1987-1992 and member of the Evaluation Committee of European Union's ICT-Prize. The CSLab was closed in 2002 in the IT crash. Bjarne holds a Technology Licentiate degree of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and was promoted to an Honorary Doctorate of Technology at Linköping University in 1993. He is also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of the Engineering Sciences.
Jennifer Stapleton
Non-executive Director
Jennifer Stapleton FBCS CITP has a career in software development spanning
four decades. She has worked mostly for software developers and integrators
with a brief foray into academia as a Lecturer in Software Engineering at
the University of Reading. She is internationally recognised as an expert in
agile project and programme management. She was instrumental in formalising
the software development processes used by Erlang Solutions as
the company moved from being a start-up to a successful enterprise.
Shomit Basu
Finance Director
Shomit Basu is an entrepreneur, management consultant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He started his career within a firm of London based Chartered Accountants and before moving into Commerce and Industry within Finance Director and Operations Director roles.
Shomit has a wide range of management experience including considerable experience in assisting new businesses in logistics and change management to profit optimisation and cost control. Having gained key financial experience during his tenure as a Chartered Accountant, he serves as senior commercial advisor to a number of clients and partner companies.
Always willing to challenge the status quo he is an excellent problem solver and team leader and has key financial control skills and strategic vision.
Stuart Whitfield
Commercial Director
Stuart joined the Erlang Solutions board in October 2009 as Commercial Director, working on its commercialisation, contractual and IPR strategies. Stuart has worked as a lawyer specialising in corporate and project finance and commercial contracts, particularly those involving complex outsourcing arrangements. For the last 6 years he was CEO and Senior Partner of a major UK law firm.
Stuart has a law degree from Exeter University. He chairs the Confederation of British Industry's South West Region. He is also a director of North Somerset Housing (social housing provider) and Listechnology Limited (superplastic forming of metal using lasers).
