Sun ANZ creates new chief software technologist role

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 19 August 2008 11:13

IT People - People

Sun Microsystems has promoted Gary O’Brien to the newly-created role of chief software technologist for Australia and New Zealand.

Sun says the main driver behind the creation of the new role - which will complement Angus MacDonald’s CTO role - has been the changing face of the software market. "With open source software, high-performance computing and Web 2.0 now key drivers in this space, Sun wanted someone who could focus on communicating with partners, customers and prospects in this space. O’Brien will be responsible for communicating Sun’s open source offering with partners and customers, as well as participating in, and with, open source communities across the ANZ region."
 
According to MacDonald, “Recent acquisitions of Innotek (VirtualBox desktop virtualisation) and MySQL have strengthened Sun’s stack and open source drive, but also present new challenges in delivering its overall software message and vision to the market. The appointment of O’Brien to this new role demonstrates Sun’s ongoing commitment to software and open source."

O'Brien joined Sun in 1999 he  has held a number of positions in the organisation including, most recently, that of  regional software practice manager for Sun ANZ and business development manager for software solutions for Sun APAC. Before joining Sun he was business development manager, global commerce services in Telstra.