William "Billy" Newport (born 1968) is an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 software engineer

Software engineer

A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...

 working for IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 since 2001. Newport holds the title of IBM Distinguished Engineer

IBM Distinguished Engineer

IBM Distinguished Engineers are executive-level technical leadership positions and are appointed for outstanding technical contributions and leadership. IBM Distinguished Engineers are corporate appointments....

. He is one of the main engineers of IBM WebSphere

IBM WebSphere

IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create applications and integrate applications with other applications...

 Software. Newport currently leads the design of the IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale

IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale

IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale is the IBM in-memory datagrid product. It can be described as a fully elastic memory based storage grid. It virtualized the free memory of a potentially large number of Java virtual machines and makes them behave like a single key addressable storage pool for application...

 product as well as various aspects of the WebSphere Application Server product. Newport currently has filed for over 52 US patents.

Career

Newport is currently the Chief Architect of IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale

IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale

IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale is the IBM in-memory datagrid product. It can be described as a fully elastic memory based storage grid. It virtualized the free memory of a potentially large number of Java virtual machines and makes them behave like a single key addressable storage pool for application...

 in IBM Software Group.

Newport designed most of the clustering and high availability components of the IBM WebSphere Application Server product as well as the commonj APIs which evolved in to the JSR 236/237 threading APIs for JavaEE.

Education

Newport starting programming at the age of 11 and worked at Emerald Software writing video games for 8 bit and 16 bit home computers. He obtained a Degree in Industrial Computing with First Class Honors in 1989 from Waterford Institute of Technology

Waterford Institute of Technology

Waterford Institute of Technology is a state funded third-level educational institution situated in the city of Waterford, Ireland. The Institute has six Schools and 16 Departments....

 in Waterford, Ireland. He graduated on his 21st birthday.

Speaking experience

Newport has spoken at many IBM events and third party events. He spoke at the SpringOne conference in Florida in 2008, at QCon San Francisco 2009, JAOO 2009, and StrangeLoop 2010.

Interviews and Presentations

• Interview about virtualization from 2008
• Presentation about Key/Value stores and NoSQL from QCon San Francisco 2009
• Interview about Parallel Programming in Java from QCon San Francisco 2009

Professional Quote

Life is too short to do something mediocre. Do it well or not at all.

Professional Recognition

• Newport was announced as an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2006
• TheServerSide.com recognized Newport as one of the top 50 innovators in Enterprise Java in 2004

Family and personal life

When not at IBM, Newport can be found home with his wife and 2 children. Newport enjoys racing Porsche race cars in his spare time.

External links

• Newport's blog
• Newports motorsports web site
• http://www.youtube.com/ibmextremescaleNewports podcast for IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale
  IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale
  IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale is the IBM in-memory datagrid product. It can be described as a fully elastic memory based storage grid. It virtualized the free memory of a potentially large number of Java virtual machines and makes them behave like a single key addressable storage pool for application...
  
  ]
• Interview with Billy Newport at JAOO 2009