Ex-Red Hat Exec Finds the Right rPath

By Jason Campbell (@jemorycampbell) Jan 20, 2009

When it came time to find an Executive Chairman for up-and-coming cloud computing vendor rPath, founder and CTO Erik Troan only had to look back in time — and his LinkedIn connections — to find the right candidate.

Before Ubuntu became the hottest name in the Linux space, there was Red Hat .

From humble beginnings as just another Linux distribution, Red Hat developed a viable commercial offering of software and support which continues to thrive today. The man largely credited with Red Hat's growth and expansion into a global corporation is the former COO — Tim Buckley.

What a Long, Strange Trip

Before his success at Red Hat, Tim Buckley was already a household name in the highly competitive world of software product development. After guiding Approach from launch to acquisition by Lotus Development Corporation, Mr. Buckley spent time at Aldus working on PageMaker before eventually making his way to Visio Corporation.

After building the worldwide sales capabilities of Visio, the company garnered the attention of another Seattle-area company — Microsoft. A US $1.5 Billion acquisition later, and Mr. Buckley is the COO of Red Hat.

Who is rPath?

You know all those really cool SaaS applications that we love to use from our browsers and mobile phones? Well, those apps are not made available by magic. Web-based applications require extensive infrastructure that promises scalability and availability. rPath provides said infrastructure by providing virtual applicances to enable cloud computing.

In other words, rPath provides services similar to Amazon's Web Services (AWS) offering but without nearly the marketing budget.

In this economy, everyone is trying to save money and trim budgets. IT is feeling the pressure as much as every other department and IT managers around the world are looking for ways to conserve funds.

One area of consideration is infrastructure. rPath has a compelling offering when compared with the idea of managing racks and racks of servers — not to mention the accompanying power bill.

Why rPath?

When you have a track record like Tim Buckley's, you can go wherever you want. So why choose rPath? Why don't we let Mr. Buckley answer that question for himself:

"rPath has the perfect combination of team, technology, and market timing to be a major force in changing the way organizations think about enterprise application deployment and management. The importance of reducing the cost and complexity of application delivery is high on the minds of every CIO, who see this as an important step to increasing business responsiveness, reducing operating costs, and finding ways to do more with less. I am very enthusiastic about the rPath vision, and I'm looking forward to playing an active role in the company's ongoing growth and success."

CMSWire would like to offer congratulations both to rPath for adding a seasoned executive to its leadership team and to Tim Buckley for taking on the challenge of leading a start-up through a tough economic climate.