BCS Open Source Specialist Group - Speaker Proposal: Proposed webinar (45–60 minutes, including Q&A)
Speaker
Harikrishnan Mutthuktishnan
Synopsis
Enterprise low-code platforms are often perceived as proprietary walled gardens - the very opposite of open source. Look beneath the visual modelling layer, however, and the picture inverts: nearly everything a modern enterprise low-code platform stands on is open source, and that foundation has quietly transformed over the past decade.
This talk traces that transformation through the lens of a mission-critical group health insurance sales platform at a large, Fortune-ranked US health insurer - a Java-based enterprise low-code platform supporting millions of members.
Ten years ago, the platform ran on proprietary Unix systems and commercial databases. Step by step, open source took over every layer of the stack: the migration from Unix to Linux; the move from proprietary databases to PostgreSQL; the adoption of open-source AI and machine-learning tooling; and, most recently, a completed SaaS migration onto a cloud platform running open-source Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, and an open-source observability and monitoring stack. Healthcare is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, so this is not just a technology story; it is a governance story.
The session examines how a regulated enterprise adopts open source responsibly: security by design, license and software supply chain governance, patching and CVE management, supportability, and the compliance evidence that regulators and auditors expect.
What attendees will take away:
- Why open source is the invisible backbone of enterprise low-code platforms - and where the boundary between proprietary and open layers really sits.
- Lessons from real migrations at scale: Unix to Linux, proprietary databases to PostgreSQL, and virtual machines to Kubernetes-based SaaS.
- A governance model for open-source adoption in regulated healthcare: security, licensing, supply chain, and compliance.
- How open-source AI/ML and observability tooling are shaping the next generation of regulated enterprise platforms.
About the speaker
Harikrishnan Muthukrishnan is a Principal IT Developer and enterprise platform architect at a leading US health insurance company, where he has architected and leads a mission-critical group health insurance sales platform.
He has over 22 years of experience in enterprise application platform architecture, engineering, and secure digital transformation across large, regulated healthcare and retail organisations in the US, UK, and India.
Harikrishnan serves as Vice Chair of the BCS Open-Source Specialist Group and is a Fellow of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. He is an IEEE Senior Member, a member of the Forbes Technology Council, and has authored peer-reviewed papers presented at IEEE conferences, including SoutheastCon, Cloud Summit, and CyberSciTech, as well as a Springer book chapter.
He has served on the technical program committees of more than 11 IEEE conferences and is a frequent invited speaker on low-code platforms, cloud modernisation, and healthcare IT.
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This event is brought to you by: Open Source Specialist Group
