Murugan Palaniappan (1966-October 30, 2012) popularly known as Murugan Pal was a serial entrepreneur based in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

, Bay Area, USA. Murugan was the co-founder & President of

CK-12 Foundation The CK-12 Foundation is a California-based non-profit organization which aims to increase access to low-cost K-12 education in the United States and abroad. CK-12 provides free and customizable K-12 open educational resources aligned to state c ...

, a non-profit organization launched in 2006 that aims to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the

K-12 K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993, well known worldwide mainly for its heavyweight division fights and Grand Prix tournaments. In January 2012, K-1 Global Holdings Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, acquired ...

market both in the US and worldwide. Before founding the CK-12 Foundation, Murugan was an EIR with

Foundation Capital Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and in 2012 managed more than $2.4 billion in investment capital. History Foundation Capital was founded in 1995. The firm raised its sevent ...

. Previously, Murugan was the founder and CTO of SpikeSource. Before founding SpikeSource, Pal was an entrepreneur-in-residence with venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Previously, he was a Founding Engineer of e-business software company Asera, Inc. Before Asera, Pal was a principal developer at

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

in the Application Server division and was part of the company's early XML initiatives. Prior to Oracle, he was one of the lead developers of

Versant Corporation Versant Object Database (VOD) is an object database software product developed by Versant Corporation. The Versant Object Database enables developers using object oriented languages to transactionally store their information by allowing the re ...

's Object Database. Pal worked on real-time enterprise technologies, composite applications,

service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...

runtimes, relational databases, object databases, and robotics and manufacturing automation. Pal held a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from

Thiagarajar College of Engineering Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE) is a Government-aided institution located in Thiruparankundram, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is affiliated to Anna University, Madurai. History Thiagarajar College of Engineering is one of several edu ...

, affiliated to Madurai University in India, a Master's in Industrial Engineering from

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...

, a Master's in Computer Science from Arizona State University, and was a Doctoral Candidate in Industrial Engineering at

. In 2010, Pal was diagnosed with

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most comm ...

or ALS. He died on October 30, 2012.

References

External links

White Paper on Real Time Enterprises
by

Vinod Khosla Vinod Khosla (born 28 January 1955) is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such ...

& Murugan Pal {{DEFAULTSORT:Pal, Murugan Indian emigrants to the United States Tamil businesspeople American Hindus Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering alumni 1966 births 2012 deaths American people of Indian descent American chief technology officers