Sree's got a brand new bag

In all the activities and goings-on around here at AOL, I forgot to mention that I have a new job (sort of).

More than a year ago now, AOL reorganzied itself into 4 Business Units (BUs): Access, Audience, Digital Services, and AOLE (Europe - the other three are US focused). The big reason for that move was to enable focus and prioritization on value drivers that were/are fundamentally different (getting online, advertising , digital commerce, etc.). As a part of that, we've also been working to move the front-end application development teams into the BUs to be integrated parts of the respective businessses.

We (finally) finished that some weeks ago, and I'm proud to say I now run what we've christened the "Open Services" group at AOL, reporting to the CTO. While the application front-ends are in the BUs - focused on the next releases of those applications and the BU immediate priorities, my team is respnsible for the enabling technologies and infrastructure development that powers the entire business, today and (more importantly) into the future.

Included in my group are: Desktop Client infrastructure (OCP), Host infrastructure (SOA), Instant Messaging and Realtime communications, Publishing systems, Search development, Mail Host infrastructure, and the new Billing and Business Systems.

That "Open" part of the group is very important to our future strategy, and you'll be hearing more about that shortly.