Sun's Zander Rises at Netezza
By Clint Boulton
Netezza Corporation, a
Framingham, Mass.-based startup that makes fast-working business
intelligence software, has won the hand of outgoing Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW)
president and COO Ed Zander for its board of directors.
In Netezza, Zander, who announced two weeks ago that he was
resigning after 15 years with Sun, will be having a say in a
business whose flagship platform makes large, tera-scale queries in
a fraction of the time of existing applications.
"Netezza has a world-class management team, top-tier venture
funding and a powerful value proposition for companies that want to
get more business value out of the data they are collecting," said
Zander. "I'm looking forward to helping Jit and his team capitalize
on a growing need for real-time information and build a
market-leading organization."
While Zander is best known for time spent working with the
mercurial Scott McNealy at the Palo Alto, Calif. networking
giant, he has also held posts at such major computing concerns as
Data General and Apollo. Zander joins David Schantz, of
Matrix Partners; Ted Dintersmith, of Charles River Ventures;
and Ollie Curme, of Battery Ventures, as well as Netezza
co-founders Jit Saxena and Foster Hinshaw, on the
board.
While funding for startups in 2001 was nearly nonexistent,
analysts and financial experts have indicated venture capital
funding, like most aspects of the high-tech economy, could be in
greater supply in 2002. Netezza said in March that it completed
a $20 million financing round, led by Battery Ventures. The
series B round included initial investors Matrix Partners and
Charles River Ventures and brought the outfit's total funding to
more than $28 million. The series A round, to the tune of $8
million, was banked in 2000.
Netezza co-founder and CEO Jit Saxena explained why his firm
would be a viable business option: "For decades, companies have been
deploying generic servers, storage and databases to hold growing
amounts of information and handle large volumes of transactions.
This infrastructure wasn't designed for the timely analysis of
terabytes of data."
Editor's note: Boulton writes for internetnews.com, an
internet.com site.
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