Mark Little - JBoss CTO

It looks like Mark Little is moving into the CTO role at the JBoss division in Red Hat as Sacha Labourey departs.

This is a great move. Mark is very smart, has deep experience in enterprise level software, is very collaborative and has a quiet drive for success. Plus Mark comes from Newcastle, England - which I think is a pretty close translation from Neuchatel, Switzerland where Sacha is from.

I first met Mark when Rich Friedman and I went to Newcastle to try to convince Arjuna Labs to join forces with Bluestone about 10 years ago. Mark was the genius CTO who was one of the key guys on an amazing team that had developed a Java Transaction Processing technology. Mark was one of the leading, recognized industry experts in this field. He was the one who drilled us with questions across the board - technology, people, processes, customers, culture. Mark had an understanding far beyond the details of the code and into the whole complex set of people, customers, partners and markets that make projects and companies successful. He and the team eventually agreed and he became one of the key technical thought leaders at Bluestone and then HP.

As fate would have it, Arjuna spun out of HP and in 2005 Mark and I had the opportunity to work together again as Arjuna joined forces with JBoss. Mark went on to lead the ESB and Integration space for JBoss. I know he has enjoyed working with all of the different projects in JBoss and bringing them together to solve problems in the integration space.

Anyway, I think this is a fantastic choice by JBoss/Red Hat. I am sure Mark will come up with some new twists, but stay true to the fundamentals that has made JBoss successful. Congrats Mark!

Comments

Mark Little said…
Thanks Bob. It means a lot coming from you :-)
March 31, 2009 at 10:12 AM
Unknown said…
After introducing JBoss at my last company (First Data) and being in the early stages of doing so again as CIO at ENTITLE DIRECT, I'm happy to see that JBoss customers will remain in good hands. Congratulations on your new post Mark and thanks as always for the insights Bob!
April 8, 2009 at 3:33 PM
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