Ashok Thareja founded A&T Systems in 1984. A&T Systems provides mission critical IT and telecom infrastructure support services.During the last 30 years he has led the company’s development through both internal growth and acquisitions. He enabled the acquisitions of VCampus, Inotech, and Tominy. In 1997 A&T incubated and funded Snare Networks. Dr. Thareja guided its product marketing and financial strategy. In September 1999, Computer Associates acquired Snare Networks.In April 1999, he founded Orblynx and led the company as its Chairman and CEO for two years. Through Orblynx, he experienced the great telecom roller coaster ride from incubating the company through personal assets, getting the company funded with $50 million of venture money, launching a highly valued global content distribution business, and dissolving the company as the capital markets shut down for the telecom sector.He currently serves on the Board of Visitors for the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park.Prior to being at A&T Systems, as a research faculty member, Dr. Thareja led research at the Laboratory for Parallel Computation at the University of Maryland. There he directed research and development efforts in parallel processing. He also conducted research in performance monitoring and modeling of UNIX systems. Prior to that he was at BGS Systems. As an R&D Manager at BGS Systems, he developed the modeling tool BEST/1-SNA for IBM’s SNA networks. Dr. Thareja received his Ph.D. in Computer Science, in the area of performance modeling of computer networks such as ARPANET, at the University of Maryland.