Mike Sheridan joined Novell in 1998 to lead the development of new product initiatives and business opportunities based on the industry-leading Novell Directory Services (NDS) and Novell’s Intelligent Caching System. Reporting directly to Novell Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, he works with Novell’s business development and product teams to identify market opportunities for Novell technologies and realize that potential in new products, partnerships, and lines of business. Most recently, he has spearheaded Novell’s much-noted digitalme initiative to utilize NDS in a new generation of applications that support personalized e-commerce services and give users personal control of the "digital identity" that defines their relationship to the Internet.

Prior to joining Novell, Sheridan worked at Sun Microsystems, Inc., where along with James Gosling and Patrick Naughton, he founded the "Green Project" in 1990 that conceived and developed the Java programming language. In addition, while at Sun Sheridan worked on Java strategy and business development at Sun with Eric Schmidt, at the time Sun’s Chief Technology Officer.

Mr. Sheridan graduated from Claremont College with a degree in economics and Russian history and studied film at American University.