Sacha Retiring from Red Hat - JBoss


Sacha Labourey announced today that he is moving on from Red Hat - JBoss.

There were a ton of great people who helped make JBoss successful. Of course Marc Fleury, the smart and dynamic founder. Scott Stark who made JBoss a real product with excellent stability. Fantastic technical project leads like Bill Burke, Adrian Brock, Gavin King, Bela Ban, Ivelin Ivanov, Rich Friedman and so many more. And great business people like Tom Leonard, Rob Bearden, Joe McGonnell, Brad Murdoch, Shaun Connolly and of course the original JBoss Sales-Guy Ben Sabrin.

But I would say Sacha Labourey had as much impact as anyone over the years at JBoss.

Sacha started like all early people with JBoss – as a contributor. He wrote the first implementation of clustering with JBoss. That capability is what moved JBoss from a simple developer tool and low end app server to something that could seriously compete with WebLogic and WebSphere.

That early work established his technical smarts, but it also was the kick-off to demonstrating his ability to attract some of the best and brightest to JBoss. Sacha lives in Neuchatel, Switzerland – not exactly the hub of middleware technology. Yet his personality and technical leadership made it the hub of JBoss Europe with top flight talent moving from places like the US, England, and Russia to live in Neuchatel, as well as coordinate all the developers in Europe (which is where most of them lived).

Sacha also made the transition to running JBoss Europe from a business perspective. He established key customers and partnerships thru his unique technical and personal abilities. Large companies put a tremendous amount of trust in JBoss because Sacha was the person saying he would stand behind it. And these customers and partners knew that he would.

As JBoss grew, Sacha became Marc’s real trusted counselor. Perhaps it was that they both spoke French. But Sacha had the Swiss gift of diplomacy. Sacha could communicate with Marc in a unique way – and was always someone Marc could trust to give honest, non-biased feedback. Sacha provided a steady hand in the background as JBoss grew from 6 to 200 people in less than 3 years.

Sacha was always incredibly loyal to JBoss the open source project and JBoss the business. He brought balance and a long term perspective. While many people (like me) left after the Red Hat acquisition, Sacha saw the transition all the way to its’ successful completion. There were certainly many problems with the integration – but again Sacha had the patience and skills to guide JBoss forward. Much credit goes to Sacha for continuing on with great projects and getting resources for new projects. He was incredibly valuable in providing stability to the technology and had the skills to make sure the business worked well over time.

The true measure of how good Sacha was for JBoss is the good shape he has left it in. He has grown the business to the point where he is no longer needed.

I was in Europe two weeks ago and spent a day with Sacha exploring Switzerland. He was looking forward to having some more time in his life for Sophie and Eva. He was also looking forward to spending some time getting in shape (hint, hint Sacha). And I could tell he was already starting to think of new endeavors that would take him in new, fun directions. As always, Sacha had a very good plan of what would happen and how the transition would work. I don't know what is public, but I can say that the plan is great. It gives some very good people a well deserved chance to advance and contribute in new ways.

Certainly he will be missed, but I think Sacha leaves feeling he has done his job and JBoss will continue to be successful in the long term.

I certainly thank Sacha for his friendship, his guidance and all he has given to JBoss.

Onward, my friend!

Comments

Shaun Connolly said…
Great post Bob...and a job well done Sacha!
March 30, 2009 at 1:40 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ringside Winding Down

A year ago, a group of us met in a pizza parlor to discuss how we could bring the social web to every website and business. In January, we launched Ringside Networks with seed funding from Matrix Partners, one of the best VC firms in the country. By the end of March we released into open source an initial beta of our Social Application Server – a very ambitious project. We got some very positive reviews on our approach, our implementation and the need in the marketplace for every website to become social. We were ready for our Series A round of funding, and in late May we received a number of term sheet offers from the very best VC firms. As we were about to finalize our funding, one of the biggest non-evil Internet companies asked if we would have interest in being acquired instead. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided that the larger company would enable us to get our technology to market sooner and with more impact. The story sounds almost too good to be true. And it w
Read more

Capitalism vs. the Three Legged Stool

Image
Wikipedia defines: " Capitalism  is an  economic system  in which trade, industry and the  means of production  are controlled by private owners with the goal of making  profits  in a  market economy ." This definition has always bothered me. I prefer a different model where there is equal recognition of the three primary drivers behind the success of a company: Owners Employees Customers I like to think of it as a three legged stool, where each leg is as important as the other.  One gets too large or small and the stool tips over. The free market is supposed to take care of Employees and Customers.  Employees because the Owners will create so many jobs that due to supply and demand, employees will receive competitive pay.  Customers because if the owners are not building the right thing, then they can go elsewhere. As someone who has helped to build about 10 startup companies now, I have seen the power in making these three stakeholders equal partners.
Read more

Marrakech

Image
I just returned from a great trip to see Allison since she is doing a semester in Toulouse, France her Junior year. It is really cool to see your daughter grow up so well. We did a long weekend adventure to Marrakech. Allison has done a lot of studies about the French colonization of Northern Africa and some of the modern implications of that with immigrants to France. She was also supposed to be taking a course in Arabic, but alas the French are on strike so that class has met rarely. We stayed in a Marrakech Riad - Riad Dar Najat. This is a picture of Allison relaxing on their open lounge area on the top floor. Getting a good Riad is pretty important. Riad's are the equivalent of American Bed & Breakfasts. The streets in Marrakech are lined with walls typically without many windows. It is kind of hot and dirty. You open the door to the Riad and it is like an oasis! Open courtyard to the sky and typically three floors with a couple of bedrooms on each floor and an
Read more