Thomas Erl is a best-selling IT author and founder of SOASchool.com^® and CloudSchool.com™. Thomas has been the world's top-selling SOA author for over five years and is the series editor of the Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl (www.soabooks.com), as well as the editor of the Service Technology Magazine (www.servicetechmag.com). With over 140,000 copies in print world-wide, his seven published books have become international bestsellers and have been formally endorsed by senior members of major IT organizations, such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Accenture, IEEE, HL7, MITRE, SAP, CISCO, HP, and others.

Three of his books, SOA Design Patterns, SOA Principles of Service Design, and SOA Governance, were authored in collaboration with the IT community and have contributed to the definition of the service-oriented architectural model and service-orientation as a distinct paradigm. Thomas is currently working with over 20 authors on several new books dedicated to topic areas such as cloud computing, modern service technologies, and service-orientation.

As CEO of Arcitura Education Inc. and SOA Systems Inc. and in cooperation with SOASchool.com^® and CloudSchool.com™, Thomas has led the development of curricula for the internationally recognized SOA Certified Professional (SOACP) and Cloud Certified Professional (CCP) accreditation programs, which have established a series of formal, vendor-neutral industry certifications.

Thomas is the founding member of the SOA Manifesto Working Group and author of the Annotated SOA Manifesto (www.soa-manifesto.com). He is a member of the APQC Service-Orientation Maturity Model (SOMM) Advisory Council, co-chair of the SOA Education Committee, and he further oversees the SOAPatterns.org and CloudPatterns.org initiatives, which are dedicated to the on-going development of master pattern catalogs for service-oriented computing and cloud computing.

Thomas has toured over 20 countries as a speaker and instructor for public and private events, and regularly participates in international conferences, including SOA + Cloud Symposium and Gartner events. Over 100 articles and interviews by Thomas have been published in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal and CIO Magazine.