Oleg Vishnepolsky

Author of IBM's S2 Spreadsheet and of TCP/IP stacks for OS/2 and IBM POS terminals, Vishnepolsky is one of the early Internet technologists, with a 20-plus year track record of technological advancements, including pioneering work on Internet technologies in the early 1980s at IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center, and continuing at other companies including AOL, DoubleClick, and 24/7 Real Media.

While employed at IBM, he created a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible program, S2, in 1984 at about the same time that Lotus was developing 1-2-3. S2 became popular within IBM and was distributed worldwide to 50,000 users. It matched 1-2-3 feature by feature and had a similar user interface. Additionally, S2 had an ability to connect to IBM mainframes via TCP/IP and pull data from IBM databases such as IBM DB2 and IBM SQL/DS. It also had features that allowed for easy visual connection between formulas and their dependencies — those features were later adopted by Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel.

In 1986, S2 caused a major controversy because of legal concerns stemming from the fact that Lotus had filed and won lawsuits against two other companies for infringing on the Lotus 1-2-3 copyright. Additionally, IBM at the time was negotiating a major marketing deal with Lotus to market 1-2-3 under IBM's name. A reporter from PC Week obtained an S2 program and ran an article speculating that the rumored deal between IBM and Lotus was coming apart, which caused an uproar in the executive circle of IBM. Upon further investigation, and given the fact that S2 was already in the hands of 50,000 people, the decision was not to withdraw S2 from circulation, and they allowed Vishnepolsky to continue development of S2.

However, he grew disheartened by the deal between IBM and Lotus and lost interest in continuing S2 development. He moved to another project and went on to develop TCP/IP for OS/2 and IBM POS terminals. Active in Internet protocols development and specifically in TCP/IP, he worked in the group of Barry Appelman, a significant Internet notable and the inventor of instant messaging. Appelman's group as a whole proved critical in IBM's early embrace of the Internet despite the company having a competing family of protocols in IBM Systems Network Architecture. Vishnepolsky authored TCP/IP for OS/2 in 1986 and for IBM POS terminals in 1990.

According to an SEC filing of 2007, he has served as Chief Technology Officer of 24/7 Real Media, in charge of global technology development. He focused on the enhancement of the existing technology product suite as well as the development and innovation for new products and platforms. Prior to this position, Vishnepolsky worked at DoubleClick, AOL, and Prodigy (online service) in executive positions. He has also served as CTO of Inforocket/Liveadvice, an expert site.

During his time at AOL, as the Vice President of Publishing and Search, he was primarily responsible for setting up agile processes and global teams to ensure rapid and interactive software development. According to IT Management Conference, he launched the first website in the financial industry for Prudential Securities. He received an Outstanding Technical Achievement award from John Akers, the CEO of IBM. Vishnepolsky holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Pace University, a Bachelor of Arts degree from NYU, and an equivalent of a Master's in Nuclear Physics from MIFI. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has served as CTO of Xaxis and subsequently as CTO of MailOnline.

Vishnepolsky is also known as an aphorist — a person who crafts short phrases that express a true or wise idea. Some of his more famous quotes include: "With the help of a computer we can make millions of mistakes a second"; "No gain is a pain"; "It is ok to put your head in the sand if you keep your mouth shut"; "Advice is best taken like Russian vodka: in small doses but large quantities"; "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you create an environmental problem"; "We live for the moments to die for"; "Small actions beat big intentions"; and "What does not kill me, makes me consume alcohol."