Blake Ramsdell
Profile
- Chronic entrepreneur with a history of successful company acquisitions and integrations.
- Extensive small company and software project management experience.
- Significant experience in executive level technical and operational management.
- Extensive startup experience.
- Extensive enterprise messaging experience.
- Extensive C programming experience.
- Extensive Java programming experience.
- Extensive programming experience on Windows platforms.
- Extensive Internet protocol design and implementation experience.
- Extensive experience in design and deployment of encryption protocols and systems.
Work Experience
Sendmail, Inc. (December 2003 to present)
Principal Engineer, Mailstream Manager
- Productized Brute Squad Labs technology as Mailstream Manager, an email security and scanning
product
with antivirus and antispam capabilities.
- Participated in corporate and business development and general company strategy.
- Selected and integrated key third-party technologies including Cloudmark Authority, McAfee Olympus, Frisk F-Prot, and eleven eXpurgate. Served as main technical contact
for third-party vendors.
- Served as IETF S/MIME working group chair.
- Completed S/MIME 3.1 RFCs (RFC 3850 and RFC 3851).
- Primary editor of the Open Group SMG S/MIME gateway protocol
specification.
- Maintained various open source projects including sendmail-jilter (a Java implementation of the sendmail milter
protocol) and NTRawrite (a utility for making boot
floppies).
- Implemented Sender ID
and DomainKeys support. Participated in protocol design
discussions.
Brute Squad Labs (October 2001 to December 2003)
Acquired December 2003 by Sendmail, Inc.
Founder
- Formed new business venture with an emphasis on cross-platform scalable security products.
- Developed extensive technology asset for applying business logic to corporate data. Technology included mail
servers, a web server, document text extraction, and a general-purpose business logic programming language.
- Evaluated exit options, and helped close acquisition by Sendmail.
Chief Cryptographer
Chief Architect, MMS
General Manager, Redmond Division
- Led architecture and implementation for SQL Server-based Messaging Management System product.
- Served on Architecture and Technology Planning team with the CTO to plan future strategic technical direction.
Worldtalk Corporation (November 1996 to February 2000)
Acquired February 2000 by Tumbleweed Communications Corporation (NASDAQ "TMWD")
Chief Technical Officer
General Manager, Deming Division
- Responsible for strategic technical direction for publicly traded software company with $12MM+ in annual revenue.
- Managed strategic development division in Redmond, WA.
- Designed future WorldSecure/Mail plans for PKI integration, super-scalability and remote administration. Solicited feedback from customers,
documented direction, oversaw implementation.
- Evaluated exit options, and helped close acquisition by Tumbleweed.
Chief Cryptographer
- Acted as industry evangelist for S/MIME secure email protocol, speaking at industry events such as the Electronic
Messaging Association and the RSA Data Security Conference and
Expo.
- Co-authored IETF drafts for S/MIME v2. Edited IETF drafts for S/MIME v3.
- Served as one of the key vendors of S/MIME products, offering technical guidance to other implementers.
- Served on the operations council for the Internet Mail Consortium.
- Responsible for technical relationships with certification authorities, other S/MIME vendors, customers and strategic partners.
- Implemented and maintained server-based S/MIME implementation in WorldSecure Server.
- Responsible for FIPS 140-1 compliance certification.
Deming Software, Inc. (December 1995 to November 1996)
Acquired November 1996 by Worldtalk Corporation (NASDAQ "WTLK")
Founder and Vice President of Technology
- Formed a new business venture with an emphasis on messaging technology and cryptography.
- Chief architect and implementor for Secure Messenger Toolkit, acquired by RSA Data Security, Inc. and marketed as RSA BSAFE S/MIME-C. Responsible for technical relationships with key technology
partners including RSA and VeriSign.
- Wrote Eudora S/MIME plugin.
- Worked on messageMCI product under contract for MCI. Implemented new features in database maintenance utility, created database backup utility,
and served as all-purpose engineer.
- Evaluated exit options, and helped close acquisition by Worldtalk.
ConnectSoft, Inc. (February 1995 to November 1995)
Project Lead
- Chief architect and implementor for S/MIME security component of E-Mail Connection.
- Maintained Internet e-mail portions of E-Mail Connection and messageMCI.
- Worked extensively with ODBC database implementation for E-Mail Connection.
- Designed and implemented extensions in E-Mail Connection to support DEC's Mobile Communications Manager.
- Served as a senior engineer on the E-Mail Connection and messageMCI teams, implementing new features and fixing bugs on an as-needed basis.
Served as general all-purpose engineer, working on all aspects of the product and general advisor for team members.
GlobalStream Corporation (1992-1995)
Senior Engineer and Project Lead
- Project lead and chief architect for TeamSync, a desktop conferencing groupware product.
- Worked with Microsoft on Windows for Workgroups rollout in New York, and at Fall Comdex by demonstrating TeamSync product.
- Participated in early MAPI design meetings at Microsoft.
- Responsible for technology relationships with Microsoft, Funk Software, Power Up! Software.
Pinpoint Publishing (1979-1992)
Engineer
- Helped port Micro Cookbook product to IBM PC and Apple //c platforms.
- Wrote parts of the Pinpoint Desktop Accessories for the Apple II platform. Wrote conversion programs to convert AppleWorks files to Microsoft
Works files.
- Wrote all printing, typeface, and graphic primitive code for Express Publisher, a DOS-based desktop publishing product marketed by Power Up!
Software. Served as project lead in later versions of product, managing a team of four engineers and serving as liaison between Power Up! and
Pinpoint.
Experience and Knowledge
- Twenty four years IBM PC programming experience.
- Sixteen years C programming experience.
- Fourteen years C++ programming experience.
- Fourteen years Microsoft Windows programming experience.
- Fourteen years project management experience.
- Nine years Win32 programming experience.
- Eight years MFC programming experience.
- Six years Java programming experience.
- Extensive knowledge of cryptographic protocols, toolkits, key management issues, algorithms, and politics. Co-designer of S/MIME v2 and v3
specification, and co-author and editor of S/MIME messaging drafts. Part of all S/MIME specification discussions and meetings, and have served as
the lead vendor for S/MIME products at ConnectSoft, Deming, Worldtalk and Tumbleweed. Have worked extensively with the S/MIME, MOSS, PKCS, PGP,
PEM, and SSL/TLS specifications as well as the RSA BSAFE Crypto-C and RSA TIPEM toolkits.
- Extensive knowledge of Java technologies including JDBC, JNDI, SAX, DOM, JCE, JSSE, networking, NIO, JNI and
threading.
- Extensive knowledge of Internet protocols and standards including MIME, NNTP, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4. Received editorial mention in MIME RFC 2049 for porting reference implementation to MS-DOS.
- Extensive Internet administrator experience. Responsible for FTP, WWW, DNS, DHCP and email maintenance at
Deming and Brute Squad Labs.
- Extensive experience with 2D graphics transformations, image dithering and halftoning.
- Extensive PostScript experience.
- Extensive typographic experience. Worked closely with Agfa CompuGraphic on Intellifont technology used in HP LaserJet III and for Bullet
real-time rendering system used in Express Publisher.
- Moderate experience with: MAPI, ODBC / DAO, Sweeper, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Windows NT administration.
- Moderate experience with Linux platform software development and GNU tools.
- Moderate experience with Solaris platform software development.
Education
- Studied drama and political science (1990-1991).
- Studied computer science (1986-1988). Member of Computer Science House.