Ahmed Ilyas has a BENG degree from Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he majored in software development. He has 15 years of professional experience in software development.

After leaving Microsoft, he has ventured into setting up his consultancy company offering the best possible solutions for a magnitude of industries and providing real world answers to those problems, and only uses the Microsoft stack to build these technologies and be able to bring in the best practices, patterns, and software to his client base to enable long-term stability and compliance in the ever-changing software industry. He has also tried to improve software developers around the globe, pushing the limits in technology.

This went on to being awarded three times the MVP in C# by Microsoft for “providing excellence and independent real world solutions to problems that developers face.”

With the breadth and depth of the knowledge he has obtained not only from his research, but also with the valuable wealth of information and research at Microsoft, the motivation and inspirations come from this, with 90 percent of the world using at least one form of Microsoft technology.

Ahmed Ilyas has worked for a number of clients and employers. With the great reputation that he has, this has resulted in having a large client base for his consultancy company, Sandler Ltd (UK) which includes clients from different industries, from media to medical and beyond. Some clients have included him on their “approved contractors/consultants” list which include ICS Solution Ltd and has been placed on their “DreamTeam” portal and also CODE Consulting/EPS Software (www.codemag.com) (based in USA).

Ahmed Ilyas has also been involved in the past in reviewing books for Packt Publishing and wish to thank them for the great opportunity once again.

Ken Tucker is a Microsoft MVP from 2003-2013. He has also worked for Seaworld Parks and Entertainment.

Carlos Hulot has been working in the IT area for more than 20 years in different capabilities, from software development, project management to IT marketing, product development and management. Carlos has worked for multinational companies such as Royal Philips Electronics, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Microsoft. Currently Carlos is working as an independent IT consultant. Carlos is a Computer Science lecturer in two Brazilian universities. Carlos holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Electronics from the University of Southampton, UK, and a B.Sc. in Physics from University of São Paulo, Brazil.

Kalyan Bandarupalli is currently working in Oxford University, UK. His professional career started as a software engineer and then senior software developer and software architect. He is a senior consultant, who uses Microsoft technologies to develop applications. Since 2003, he has been working as a Microsoft technology developer.

He was far more concerned about the technical implementation of software, but in the past few years focus has changed to more architectural implementation of software. He recently (June 2008) started a blog (www.techbubbles.com), because he wanted to share his learning experience to help other people learn about new technologies in Microsoft software. This blog helps IT professionals and developers around the world to develop applications using Microsoft technologies.