Short Bio
Career Highlights
Toni Sormunen
Toni implemented his first commercially sold computer application at the age 15. After high school and military service he applied and was accepted to Tampere University of Technology with near maximum points to study at Computer Sciences department.
During his first year at the university he demonstrated significant security vulnerabilities at the university network and was hired to fix them. At university payroll he defined, established, and taught the first ever C++ programming course at university level in Finland. As part of his research on parallel object oriented programming he defined super-parallel computing architecture based on university computing network (similar that was later established in SETI@Home). At the same time he was maintaining and coordinating the only Internet connection to Finland (funet.fi).
From university he was headhunted to Nokia Telecommunications in 1992 to help bring the significantly delayed product to the market. After massive development effort of four months the product was delivered successfully to the customer, and on time. He was requested to define and institutionalize software development methods and processes at Nokia Telecommunications. This led to his MSc Thesis work on Software Design Patterns and some research papers on the topic.
From Nokia Telecommunications he was headhunted in 1995 to Nokia Mobile Phones to build
a team and develop Internet connectivity to world’s first smartphone the Nokia 9000 Communicator. When the product was introduced it was selected as the “Best of CeBit”. During the first ever Java conference (Java One) he introduced the Communicator to inventor of Java (James Gosling) and brought Java to Nokia phones (industry first). After the Communicator project he concentrated on leading the development of wireless data products for GSM and CDMA networks having development teams in Finland for GSM/GPRS, USA for CDMA (Dallas, San Diego), and Japan for TDMA (Tokio).
He lead the work integrating mobile data to Microsoft Windows platform and brought several revolutionary products to the market during the following three years. One of the revolutionary innovations was Wireless Application Protocol aka. WAP where he was the first point of contact in establishing the WAP Forum. He wrote and proposed the Nokia WAP strategy that was implemented. He was also instrumental in establishing the World Wide Web consortium in Europe working closely with later W3C chairman Jean-Francois Abramatic. He was invited to
W3C advisory committee where he served three years followed by his recruit Ora Lassila (inventor of semantic Web).
In 1997 he was creating a new software strategy to Nokia Mobile
Phones. (This work the baseline was for founding Symbian in 1998.)
In late 1997 a group of mobile data leaders saw an opportunity to establish a totally new business in high speed low range networks. The world at that time was confused between HomeRF and many non-interoperable Wireless LAN standards. A new business unit
was established, Toni leading the Wireless Client side of the business. He was nominated as Vice President. He travelled around the world negotiating with companies in
forming an interoperability forum. This work led to creation of Wi-Fi alliance and Wi-Fi logo, as we now know them. The Nokia participation was directly supported by him. Several Nokia
Wi-Fi products were brought to the marketon coming years. Unfortunately, Nokia management
decided to pull out from the market just a year before the business skyrocketed. However, dozens of essential patents and technology competence still remain with the company.
Year 2000 plays a major role in Toni’s work history. It was transition from consumer business to corporate market. Again, it was Internet centric. High speed routing, VPN security, corporate services and mobile devices targeted to corporate customers were in the center of his work. He proposed and started a new business for integrating corporate access (VPN), email, calendar, and messaging to mobile devices. He built a development team, defined and established a partner program, found several developing partners, this product never shipped. After two years of development he was requested to develop and propose a big impact corporate strategy for Enterprise Business move for Nokia.
During the following year he teamed with Mr. Mikko Kosonen (SVP strategy, leading the strategy workgroup), Mr.Pekka Ala-Pietilä (president of Nokia as sponsor), and Mr. Elie Habib from MtView California (high speed routing) to define a strategy for Nokia to enter into corporate markets.
This strategy work was put in execution in 2004 and Nokia Enterprise Solutions business was established. Toni was nominated the CTO and board member of the newly founded business group “Enterprise Solutions”. In his new role he was reporting to the head of the business group Mrs. Mary McDowell in New York. He was also nominated to corporate level IPR board, corporate Security Board, and Technology Board where he served three years. He
participated in evaluation, planning and execution of acquisitions at Enterprise Solutions.
With the support of Mrs. McDowell in 2007 he proposed and established a new business in the area of Smart Home. These types of systems are now known as Internet of Things (IoT) where his team was ahead of time developing such concepts and technologies. Smart Home was a composition of secure Internet based controller, mesh networked wireless sensors and actuators. His team developed and launched Nokia Home Control Center (HCC) product with a developer program and more than 500 international companies registered to program to be interoperable with Nokia platform. All major European white goods manufacturer where participating in the program (including such brand names as Siemens, Bosch, Whirlpool, and AEG). In the aftermath of the year 2009 economic crisis the Nokia CEO Kallasvuo
requested Toni to spin-off the Smart Home outside the Nokia.
Under his leadership the Smart Home management team established a new company There Corporation, negotiated the technology cross license agreement with Nokia, negotiated and established funding with Venture Capitalists, and spun off the business to new independent entity.
In 2009 There Corporation was founded Toni as one of the founders. He became the Executive Board member and Chief Development Officer for There Corporation. Due to constrained financial resources they decided to target the Smart Home concept to energy sector, smart grids, and solutions bringing immediate return on investment to homeowners. The technology base stayed the same, with the same development partners and component providers, but with a narrower focus. A year later There Corporation brought the first product to the market with the leading energy company Fortum as the main partner. The product was targeted for independent homes with an electrical boiler as the source for heating. A product for oil-heated houses followed a year later and finally a solution for solar panels. Most major energy utility companies are now customers of There Corporation. However the sales have been disappointing. (www.there.fi).
In 2015 Huawei headhunted Toni to lead a research and development team focusing on secure operating system, IoT, graphics and web technologies. Since 2015 the team has delivered software technologies and products to more than 500+ million customers worldwide.
Currently Toni is Director of software technologies laboratory in Huawei Technologies, Finland Research Center leading the international team of experts.
Notable career highlights:
• Founded consumer Internet provider sci.fi which was acquired by Elisa to become the largest
Internet consumer provider both mobile and fixed broadband.
• Served 8 years as a member at Nokia patent evaluation boards.
• 20+ patents with name as the sole or a co-inventor.
• Have managed teams and projects creating 100+ patent portfolios.
• Nokia Mobile Phones software strategy contributor and innovation accelerator on several years.
• Frequent contributor to corporate strategy.
• Proposed the strategy and a roadmap to move from Symbian to Linux three years before Android was introduced.
• Throughout the career a frequent internal consultant to Nokia senior management.
• Essential patents:
o Inventor of Nokia Symbian security architecture (similar to current ARM SoC and
TrustZone)
o Inventor of mobile phone based authentication method, used by banks and websites around the world.
• After leaving Nokia was hired as IPR consultant to fight battle against Apple.
• High competence in International business negotiations in Europe, Asia, and U.S.
• Dozens of presentations and panel discussions in International forums.
• Consultant to senior management in several acquisitions.
• Consultant and mentor to startups.
