Bio: Dr. Iyer brings over 30 years of experience establishing and leading technology and business transformation organizations in both the private sector and Government. Dr. Iyer has recently returned to the tech startup world where he first began his career, now leading growth for a Silicon Valley deep tech startup. Previously he served as the first CIO of the United States Army where he established the new office of the CIO to oversee strategy, policy and execution of a $16 Billion annual IT and cyber budget supporting both Army readiness and modernization through Digital Transformation. He was also a partner at a Big 4 Management Consulting firm where he advised and supported defense and national security clients on a number of complex enterprise transformation challenges Dr. Iyer is passionate about public service and has stayed connected with the public sector for most of his professional career inside and outside the Government. He also holds a number of prestigious industry awards such as Cloud Executive of the Year, Washington 100 Award, Fedscoop 50 Award, and many others.

Membership Details

Forum: The Open Group SOSA® Consortium

Country: USA

Membership Level: Associate

Q. How long have you been involved with The Open Group?

I am new to The Open Group.

Q. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?

I have been involved in driving standards for the US Department of Defense (DOD) for over 20 years, and I am huge believer that standards and open architectures enable true interoperability and prevent vendor lock in. I represented the Army in many international standards bodies including ISO between 2002-2012 driving development and adoption of the ISO 10303 STEP standards for product data and management. As Army CIO, I led the policy and strategy for the adoption and implementation of technical standards including CMOSS. I established the Army’s first digital transformation strategy in 2021 that clearly stated objectives for standards-based interoperability across the enterprise to better integrate coalition partners and allies.

Q. Why did your organization become a Member of The Open Group SOSA® Consortium and what does/will your involvement look like?

At Tsecond, I lead the public sector business for this defense tech startup focused on delivering low SWaP edge AI infrastructure to support tactical edge deployments. Our product called the BRYCK is the first to offer 1 Petabyte of storage and AI inferencing capability built into a palm sized form factor. We have recently seen tremendous interest across the DOD for the product and have established use cases for BRYCK integration with mounted and aerial platforms. Tsecond will collaborate with the SOSA Consortium to mature these standards for data integration and interoperability to enable the ecosystem partners to seamlessly share data from the tactical edge to the enterprise, as we build out our own CMOSS aligned products to meet the demands of the customer.

Q. How has/will membership in The Open Group benefit you, your organization, and the industry at large?

Tsecond is a strong believer that the DOD benefits from an ecosystem of partners that are committed to developing and supporting modular and open architecture, consensus-based, non-proprietary standards. Such an approach offers the DOD flexibility and optionality to rapidly integrate new technologies and products in an ever-evolving threat environment. Opening the ecosystem to a broad range of vendors – large and small – can bring agility and to modernization efforts while preventing vendor lock in. 

Q. Why is it important for other organizations to join The Open Group?

The DOD and our allies are continually impeded by interoperability issues in theatre. When products don’t integrate and cannot talk to each other, it hampers the Commander’s ability to achieve decision dominance. Every organization working with the DOD must commit to following the modular open architecture principles and define open interfaces for interoperability. In return, organizations benefit from the collective knowledge of The Open Group in helping them build their own products to serve the DOD.

Q. What are your hobbies?

Gardening

Q. What book are you currently reading?

The Mission by Tim Weiner

Q. What social networks do you belong to?

LinkedIn

Q. Any last thoughts?

Implementing open standards for the DOD is not just policy but an operational imperative. Every organization supporting the DOD must support this requirement collaboratively and openly. Our Warfighters benefit from this.

Date Published: September 30, 2025