At last week’s Microsoft Build conference, one of the major attractions was the opening up of Bing, Microsoft’s answer to Google search, to the developers as a platform so they can build great apps. Showing off those capabilities, teasing new features and generally stealing the show was Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President Gurdeep Singh Pall. Pall, who has the distinction of being one of the few people in Silicon Valley to go from an ordinary software engineer to a vice president of a mega company, has an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and a master’s in the same discipline from the University of Oregon. Since joining Microsoft in 1990 as a software design engineer, Pall has worked on some breakthrough products and has been instrumental in making Microsoft a leader in disciplines like video telecommunications. He has the distinction of working on many major Windows releases, right from Windows NT to Windows XP.
As the General Manager of Windows Networking, Pall has designed some important technologies like routing and WiFi. In 1996, he received the prestigious Innovation of the Year award from PC magazine for co-authoring the first VPN (Virtual Private Network) protocol. As the Vice President of Office Lync & Speech Group, he has worked on the Microsoft Lync family of products which led to the creation of Microsoft Office Live Meeting. While he has more than 20 patents in networking to his name, one of his major triumphs has been the seamless integration of Skype into Microsoft.