The way technology has penetrated our lives has changed almost everything for us. Furthermore, these changes are occurring at a staggering pace. From shopping online to communicating worldwide, technological advancements have been incorporated into all aspects of our existence. Whether it is silicon chips, personal computers, mobile phones, cloud computing, social networks, artificial intelligence (AI) or anything else – we have created a new technological dimension that is integrated into our working and personal spaces.
The marvels of technological innovations are the brainchildren of brilliant individuals who have worked ceaselessly to build the famous products for leading companies such as Microsoft and Apple. Krishna C. Mukherjee is a distinguished professional from Microsoft. As an information technologist and a business leader, he has made highly significant contributions to the creation of advanced technologies that are used around the world every day.
Passion for technology from a young age
Born in India, Krishna C. Mukherjee has had a keen interest in technology from a young age. He completed his high school education from Don Bosco School in Kolkata. He then attended the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). He earned his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, and his Master of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur. Mukherjee’s education at the IITs helped him develop a vision for the future of technology. He specialized in AI and robotics. He wrote his master’s thesis on AI and published papers in AI conferences.
Mukherjee’s accomplishments attracted the attention of global technology companies. In late 1987 and early 1988, he received prestigious offers even before he completed his master’s degree. He accepted Microsoft’s offer to build mission-critical products for the company. He graduated at the top of his class in February 1988. Soon afterwards, he relocated to the USA and joined Microsoft at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, USA.
Bringing computing to offices and homes
Krishna C. Mukherjee functioned as a Chief Software Architect and Engineer for Microsoft. He played a pivotal role in the architecture, design, development and promotion of the flagship products: Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Visual Studio. As a visionary, Mukherjee introduced AI at Microsoft. He oversaw the creation of the AI-based features AutoCorrect, AutoFormat and Office Assistant for Microsoft Office. He designed IntelliSense for Visual Studio.
Subsequently, Mukherjee created elegant AI-based architectures to dynamically generate graphical user interfaces from high-level, natural language like descriptions specified by the domain experts. These AI-enabled user interfaces have the ability to understand the users’ interactions and present them with the best possible predictions based on the available data.
Under Mukherjee’s leadership, Microsoft adopted domain-driven design principles and created the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) technologies that foster collaboration between the user experience (UX) designers and the software developers. Microsoft Blend is a design tool that is used for creating the user interfaces of desktop and web applications. The UX designers work with Blend to create the user interfaces and generate the XAML markup files. After that, the software developers import the XAML files into Visual Studio and hook up the user interfaces to the business logic components written in computer languages such as Visual Basic and C#. The WPF and XAML technologies are used to develop high-performant applications that implement rich user interfaces with minimum code complexity.
Improving efficiency of organizations worldwide
In 1996, Krishna C. Mukherjee started working with the global information services and publishing company Wolters Kluwer. He created an adaptive Question and Answer (Q&A) system that presents the steps of a complex workflow in an interactive and user-friendly manner. Mukherjee named his AI invention as “Intelligent Filing Manager” (INTELLIFM) because it allows multi-jurisdictional filings across the fifty states of the USA and Washington DC to be performed in record time. Domain experts create the knowledge bases for these automated filing systems. With this invention, Mukherjee greatly improved business processes in organizations across the world. He introduced agile software development by enabling a high degree of collaboration among cross-functional teams. He ushered in the era of workflow automation.
As the Chief Information Officer of Wolters Kluwer, Mukherjee transitioned the company from paper-based to automated systems. He helped Wolters Kluwer to emerge as a leading provider of information services. In the 2000s, Mukherjee essentially used AI to pave the way for performing business transactions on the Internet or the “cloud.” He popularized cloud computing and established the “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model. Mukherjee’s distributed architectures were used for building the award-winning SaaS applications: CTAdvantage.com, hCue.com, MediRegs.com and LienSolutions.com. Mukherjee selected Microsoft server side technologies to build these applications. He formed strategic partnerships among Microsoft, Wolters Kluwer and other companies. Thus, he helped Microsoft gain recognition in AI and the enterprise software market. Cloud computing and SaaS gained rapid popularity throughout the world. In 2010, Microsoft released the cloud computing service Windows Azure that is presently known as Microsoft Azure. In the following year, Microsoft launched its major SaaS product Office 365.
Making the finance industry reliable
In 2004, Krishna C. Mukherjee started to work with the finance industry. He served in senior leadership capacities at the global finance companies Citadel, Bloomberg and UBS. He gave these companies a strategic direction by infusing advanced technology in their financial systems. He built financial software using both Microsoft and open source technology stacks.
During this time, Mukherjee created the SaaS product called “Bloomberg Valuation Service” (BVAL) and launched it in 2008. BVAL harnesses scalable architecture, quantitative algorithms and AI to generate evaluated prices for millions of financial instruments across asset classes and liquidity spectrum. BVAL is one of Mukherjee’s most important contributions to financial technology (FinTech). It provides the finance industry with rigorous, transparent and defensible valuations. Mukherjee helped the finance industry to become objective and reliable.
Creating AutoPay
As we know, our data is being increasingly stored on the cloud. Consequently, large volumes of data have become available for analysis. E-commerce has become a necessity for business enterprises, particularly in retail, to survive in a highly-competitive market. After his success in the finance industry, Krishna C. Mukherjee focused on transforming the retail and parking industries. He served as the Head of Software Development for Icon Parking Systems (Icon) that operates more than three hundred locations in Manhattan and the surrounding areas. More than forty thousand cars are parked daily at the company’s locations.
Mukherjee transitioned Icon’s business from VAX mainframe to the cloud. He directed the developments of the customer facing e-commerce application IconParkingSystems.com and Icon’s internal web-based accounting system. These two systems enable individuals and organizations to reserve premium parking spaces. Mukherjee created this hybrid cloud architecture for Icon and thus set a new precedence in cloud architecture.
In 2012, Mukherjee created the AutoPay platform to provide a secure, reliable and fast method for making and receiving payments. AutoPay allows customers to set up periodic payments with a simple command, pay their bills on time and avoid paying late fees. Thereby, AutoPay increases on-time payments for businesses. Icon’s customers switched to AutoPay for paying their bills with electronic checks (ACH), debit cards and credit cards. Icon was able to reduce the manual handling of cash and paper checks. The company became highly efficient and profitable. AutoPay gained immense popularity within a few months. At present, it is used all over the world.
Continuing with AI innovations
Since 2016, Krishna C. Mukherjee has been working on enabling omni-channel retailing with advanced technology. He has directed the development of mobile applications that implement contactless digital wallets, such as Apple Pay, for enhanced security and privacy.
Mukherjee is continuing with his innovations in AI. He has been designing interactive voice response (IVR) and chatbot systems that use natural language processing and machine learning. Organizations use these intelligent systems to deliver superior experience to their customers and minimize their operating costs. Additionally, Mukherjee has been incorporating AI-based recommendation engines into omni-channel retailing applications. His goal has been to offer personalized ensembles of products to optimize shopping experiences of the customers and also meet the business objectives of the retailers.
Recognitions for outstanding contributions
Krishna C. Mukherjee is a distinguished alumnus of the IITs. He received many academic honors. During his professional career, spanning more than thirty-two years, he has transformed the world of business and technology. He contributed talent, energy and time to help Microsoft become an industry leader. He received awards and recognitions from Microsoft. Moreover, he received the “Highest Achievement Award” from Wolters Kluwer. Recently, he was presented with the “Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award” by the premier publishing company Marquis Who’s Who. Mukherjee’s vision, knowledge, commitment and leadership have created the very foundation of modern technology.