Jeri Edwards is the Vice President of Strategy and Product Planning for BEA Systems, the industry's leading middleware company. She has over 15 years of experience directing the development of mission-critical client/server, distributed object, and OLTP systems software. In addition to this practical, hands-on experience with client/server, she is a leading industry spokesperson. She has published over 30 technical articles in leading journals and is a popular keynote speaker at conferences. She is the co-author of three of three books with Mr. Orfali — including The Essential Client/Server Survival Guide, The Distributed Object Survival Guide, and Instant CORBA.