Portrait: Brian Aker, database strategist

"I'm not interested in the more academic aspects of computing," says Brian Aker, director of architecture at MySQL. "I'm interested in solving problems." This approach has taken Aker from being a teenage hacker to today, when he spends an increasing amount of time thinking about where IT in general and databases specifically are heading.

Aker's interest in computing began when he was 13 and uploading programs for a Commodore 64 to bulletin boards around Lexington, Kentucky, and inviting others to use them. "I would say that I got interested in open source before I even knew what it was," Aker says.

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