Michael Islek
President and CEO, Founder

Mr. Islek is a successful engineer and IT systems executive, specializing in the internet and telecommunications industries. Since 1989, Mr. Islek has been the founder and CEO of Forward Technologies Inc. (FTi) a research and development Software Company specializing in turnkey solutions. As an entrepreneur of 20 years, Mr. Islek has built and sold many companies including: Inabox, acquired by Register.com in 2000, BERN Associates, Inc., sold to Prime Cellular in 1996.

As a Chief Software Architect at Register.com, Mr. Islek was responsible for re-architecting Register.com online web retail system, customer support systems, billing and accounting systems that generated over $110M of revenue a year. The 5 years at Register.com, also leveraged Mr. Islek’s expertise in Technical Evaluations of all M&A as well as Strategic Product, and Enterprise planning for Register.com.

Mr. Islek has been instrumental in development of cutting edge technologies. During his tenure in Inabox, WebSiteNOW™ was co-invented by Mr. Islek. A cutting edge technology at the time of its creation in 1997 it is one of the leading web-based on line website creation and publication tools that is being used by leading ISPs, ASPs and hosting companies such as Earthlink, Register.com, KPN Telephone, Prodigy, etc. with over 2+ Million users.

Mr Islek has been a leading pioneer in the design and development of telecommunications equipment.  In 1985 while at Protocom Devices Inc., he led  the development of Packet Assemblers /Disassemblers (PADS) that supported various synchronous and asynchronous binary protocols. Mr. Islek has been among a small group of experts in the world specializing in IBM’s SNA/SDLC protocols. In addition he has built advanced protocol devices for every generation in the evolution of  PADS into Frame Relay and ATM technologies . Case Communications, Cray Communications, Dowty, Telematics, Netrix were among the many companies for which Mr. Islek had developed various telecommunication devices such as PADs, Frame Relay Access Devices, Switches and Routers.

Mr. Islek is a graduate of Cooper Union School of Engineering and holds an Electrical Engineering degree with specialization in Computer Engineering.