Michael Herman: Bio

Copyright © 2026 Michael Herman (Bindloss, Alberta, Canada) – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License

Michael Herman | Chief Digital Architect | Hyperonomy Digital Identity Lab | Web
7.0 Foundation

Michael Herman is a pioneering software architect and systems thinker with over five decades of experience designing foundational
computing platforms during moments of major technological transition. His career spans enterprise software, developer ecosystems, and distributed infrastructure, with senior roles at Microsoft, IBM, Alias/Wavefront, Optical Recording Corporation, and Star Data Systems. Across these environments, Herman helped shape the evolution of operating systems and enterprise platforms from early client-server architectures to networked and distributed systems.

At Microsoft, Herman served as a lead enterprise consultant on complex infrastructure engagements for major financial institutions, utilities, and public-sector organizations. He also worked within the
Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint Portal Server product groups, leading developer technical readiness programs for both internal field teams and global partners. Earlier, in senior product development roles at ORC, Alias/Wavefront, and Star Data Systems, he led the creation of Windows-based platforms for enterprise document management, advanced graphics, and financial systems.

In a 1991 Windows World keynote, Bill Gates cited Alias Upfront for Windows, one of Herman’s projects, as the most innovative new graphics product for Microsoft Windows. In recent years, Herman’s work has focused on the architectural foundations of digital trust and decentralized identity. He is a named
contributor to the W3C Decentralized Identifier (DID) specification and has contributed to initiatives within the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) and Trust over IP (ToIP). Through the Web 7.0 Foundation and the Trusted Digital Web (TDW ), he advances first principles approaches to agentic systems, verifiable identity, and trust-native internet infrastructure – examining how autonomy, accountability, and cryptographic assurance must be embedded at
the protocol level of future digital systems.

Grounded in deep technical rigor, Herman holds Bachelor’s and Master of Mathematics degrees in Computer Science (Computer Graphics) from the
University of Waterloo, where he also served as the founding lab manager of the Computer Graphics Laboratory. Known for his ability to translate emerging paradigms into coherent system architectures, he continues to advise advanced software initiatives on the long-term implications of decentralized systems, digital identity, and trust.