Markus Zirn is a Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. In this role he heads the Strategic Customer Program, where he works with Oracle's leading and most innovative middleware customers. He has been part of the Enterprise Software industry for more than 10 years, including roles as Vice President of Product Marketing and part of the founding team of QUIQ and as a Management Consultant of Booz Allen & Hamilton's Silicon Valley High Tech Practice. Markus' passion for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and BPEL stems both from practical experience designing and optimizing business processes as part of process reengineering projects and from being part of the advent of 'software as a service' before web services became mainstream. He holds a Masters of Electrical Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe and is an alumnus of the Tripartite program, a joint European degree from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, the University of Southampton, UK, and ESIEE, France.