WSO2 appoints prominent industry professionals to key senior leadership roles

Vice President and Deputy CTO - Cloud Afkham Azeez

Vice President and Deputy CTO - API Management and Integration Nuwan Dias

Senior Vice President - Finance and Operations Padmika Dissanaike

Vice President and Deputy CTO - Security Prabath Siriwardena

• Move as part of readying itself for further global expansion

WSO2, the open source API-first integration company, yesterday announced a series of high profile appointments within its senior leadership team as the company looks towards further growth in key global markets, particularly North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. 

Padmika Dissanaike has been appointed as the Senior Vice President – Finance and Operations. Padmika has been heading the global finance function at WSO2 since 2009 and in her new role, she will also oversee the HR, administration, and legal operations of the organisation. 

Over the course of her career, Padmika has held leadership roles in the US and Europe, working in dynamic and high growth companies. Before she joined WSO2, Padmika was the Head of Finance for the European Pricing and Reimbursement business of IMS Health, a US Fortune 1000 company which is now IQVIA. Prior to that, she was the UK Financial Reporting Controller of UUNET Technologies, a subsidiary of MCI, a US Fortune 500 company which is now part of Verizon Communications. 

She is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA, London), and has successfully completed the Emerging CFO program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Strategic Analysis for Business Evaluation program at Harvard Business School.

WSO2 also appointed three Deputy CTOs.

Nuwan Dias is Vice President and Deputy CTO – API Management and Integration. As a Deputy CTO, Nuwan is WSO2’s spokesperson for all API management and integration related matters. Nuwan provides leadership to the API management team at WSO2, driving the development of WSO2 API Manager, an open source hybrid API management platform recognised by industry analysts. Recently, Forrester Research, Inc. named WSO2 as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020 report. 

Nuwan leads the product vision and roadmap; and he is also part of the architecture team overlooking product engineering. As a WSO2 technology evangelist, Nuwan is a frequent conference presenter on API strategies and architecture and conducts workshops/meetups globally. He is the co-author of the book titled Microservices Security in Action.

Prabath Siriwardena is Vice President and Deputy CTO – Security. As a Deputy CTO, Prabath is WSO2’s spokesperson for all security related matters. Prabath provides leadership to the identity and access management (IAM) team at WSO2, a team that he’s been a part of for 13 years, developing the open source WSO2 Identity Server. This product is used by hundreds of global organisations today, enabling them to build agile, extensible customer IAM solutions and create seamless user experiences for customers. 

Prabath is a frequent conference presenter and travels the world conducting workshops/meetups evangelising WSO2 technology. He is the co-author of seven books, the latest titled ‘Microservices Security in Action’. 

Afkham Azeez is Vice President and Deputy CTO – Cloud. As a Deputy CTO, Azeez is WSO2’s spokesperson for all cloud related matters. Azeez drives efforts focused on the development and enhancement of WSO2 middleware. He is an elected member of the Apache Software Foundation and a Project Management Committee member and long-time committer for a number of projects. He specialises in cloud-native technologies including Kubernetes, distributed computing, highly available and scalable applications, and service oriented architecture. 

Azeez has presented in numerous global conferences and workshops. He is the author of the book titled ‘Clustering Implementation for Apache Axis2’ and a co-author of the book titled ‘Axis2 Web Services’.

Commenting on the latest appointments and the company’s growth plans, WSO2 Founder and CEO Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana said: “As we grow our global presence further, we will significantly increase our team, improve our product strategy, add more industry verticals, build more business partnerships, and expand our partner network. I’m delighted that Padmika, Prabath, Azeez, and Nuwan will be playing a greater role in these plans, bringing their vast experience and knowledge to the company’s corporate vision. WSO2 has experienced great successes over the past 15 years and we look forward to more victories with our market-leading API management, integration, and identity management products and industry solutions.”

At present, WSO2 has 500 customers in over 70 countries, works with more than 100 software implementation partners globally, and over 650 employees in their offices worldwide.