Laurent Gharda is a veteran of the software industry, bringing a unique blend of business and technical skills to the QW advisory board. Laurent is Chief Operating Officer at Open Country, a node management software company, where he oversees engineering and marketing. Laurent also served as COO of eCode, VP of marketing of Phoenix Technologies (NASDAQ: PTEC), VP of marketing of Award Software, President and founder of QualSoft (a provider of software development and testing tools), VP of Sales of Veritas Software (NASDAQ: VRTS) and spent ten successful years at Hewlett-Packard in a variety of business development and marketing positions. Laurent earned a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a French National Baccalaureate in philosophy and modern languages. Laurent is the sole inventor of US Patent 6,009,520 covering the management of application and system software in embedded devices. He also serves on the board of directors of CodeWeavers, a provider of Windows compatibility software for Linux.