NBCUniversal today announced the launch of the NBCUniversal Technology Center, a state-of-the-art technology center located in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, which will be the new center for the company's core technology team, as well as the home of the new Media Labs operation.
The creation of the 63,000 square foot Technology Center represents an investment of approximately $17 million in the company's New Jersey operations, and serves as a complement to NBCUniversal's previously announced investments in the infrastructure of its New York operations.
The NBCUniversal Technology Center features an open design with state-of-the-art collaboration technologies to facilitate and accelerate co-creation amongst the company's offices around the globe; a "Technology Show Lab" fully equipped with the latest mobile, virtualization, big data platforms and industry-leading emerging technologies such as Comcast's "xfinity" platform which gives employees, start-ups, and industry technology partners a rich environment to experiment with the latest technologies and business models in the content ecosystem.
"The NBCUniversal Technology Center is the perfect home for our technology team," commented John Wallace, President, Operations and Technical Services, NBCUniversal. "It's been designed to foster real creativity and collaboration, and we think it will quickly become a key center for innovation at NBCUniversal."
As part of the announcement the company also named Sanjay Macwan to the post of Senior
Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Media Labs. In this role Mr. Macwan will lead Media Labs, a newly formed organization within NBCUniversal that will be dedicated to working with academic research groups, start-up companies, and the global venture capital community to accelerate technology innovations and to help develop new business models for the company's content delivery businesses. Media Labs will be staffed with top technology professionals from the worlds of application strategy, mobile development, virtualization, video, and consumer-experience technologies. Mr. Macwan will be based at the NBCUniversal Technology Center, and will report to Andrew Jordan, Senior
Vice President, International Operations & Technology, NBCUniversal.
"Sanjay brings to this new role an entrepreneurial approach to the business, and a proven track record of successfully spotting and harnessing emerging trends in technology in a wide range of areas," commented John Wallace. "That combination makes him a perfect fit for Media Labs, which will serve as an in-house incubator for new technology concepts relating to our core businesses. I look forward to working closely with him as we partner with the company's various divisions to both anticipate technology-driven disruptions to the business, and identify technologies that can help drive business growth."
Mr. Macwan joins NBCUniversal from AT&T, where he served as
Vice President, AT&T Chief Technology Office and headed the CTO Technology Council which incubated highly successful programs such as AT&T Foundry, a series of innovation centers that collaborate with global technology start-ups and the VC community; The Innovation Pipeline (TIP), an industry leading innovation platform; and the team that was responsible for strategic analysis of key ecosystems of web, ad/search, communications, social networks, and content.
During his career with AT&T, Mr. Macwan held a number of technology and innovation roles spanning areas of mobility, cloud, multimedia, Internet Architecture, and large scale Application Development. Most recently he led a team of 400 engineers and technologists focused on mobility, cloud, enterprise, emerging services, and security.
He first joined AT&T Labs in 1992 as a software developer and subsequently held positions of increasing responsibilities including Group Manager of a large software development team, and lead Internet Architect for AT&T's WorldNet ISP where his team architected the then industry first email service on mobile phones called PocketNet. From 2009 to 2012 he was Assistant
Vice President, Technology Innovations, and from 2008 to 2009 he was Assistant
Vice President, Multimedia, Mobility, and Security R&D Center.
Mr. Macwan is on a Technology Advisory Council of KPCB, a top global VC firm based in Silicon Valley, and on an Industry Advisory Board with Ericsson. He has also served on the advisory boards of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO), and successful startups such as Arcturus and Mu Dynamics (acquired by Spirent).
Mr. Macwan holds 14 patents, and has an additional 25 patent applications in process.
He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering, and an MS in Computer
Science from Polytechnic University in NY. He is also a graduate of the ASIS/Security Executive Development Program from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and has earned an MBA PowerPak from Northeastern University.
ABOUT NBCUNIVERSAL
NBCUniversal is one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, world-renowned theme parks, and a suite of leading Internet-based businesses. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.
