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XenSource picks new CEO
And rethinks strategy...

By Stephen Shankland

Published: Wednesday 15 February 2006

XenSource, a start-up trying to commercialise software that lets several versions of Linux run on the same computer, has chosen a new chief executive and altered its business strategy.

Peter Levine has replaced co-founder Nick Gault as CEO, the start-up plans to announce on Wednesday. Levine most recently spent three years as a managing director at the Mayfield Fund venture capital firm. Before that, he led marketing, product development and business development at storage-software maker Veritas for 11 years.

Although Xen's influence has been spreading, making a business out of the software is a different challenge. Although HP, IBM and other industry allies are helping XenSource to improve the Xen foundation, they become potential competitors when it comes to selling management tools such as XenSource's XenOptimizer. The Xen foundation this year is becoming a standard part of Linux versions from the two leading sellers of the open source operating system, Novell and Red Hat.

XenSource's updated strategy is geared to ensure these potential rivals remain allies. Levine said the company's goal is to have its software incorporated into products sold by other technology companies - deals called original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partnerships.

Levine said in an interview: "We believe that there's a great deal of fantastic innovation that will occur above the embedded layer and below the system management layer. There's a lot of really interesting enterprise-class operating system work we believe will be appealing to OEM customers."

And the company said its updated approach will be more judicious. Levine said: "The company tried to do too much too quickly. What I think it needs to do is focus around key assets it has."

There are other executive changes at the company as well. Simon Crosby, a co-founder who was vice president of corporate development, is now chief technology officer, replacing co-founder Moshe Bar, who left in October. And two weeks ago, the company hired a vice president of marketing, John Bara, formerly senior vice president of marketing at content-management software maker Interwoven.

Gault's departure was the result of XenSource's growth plan, Bara said. "This is a change warranted to scale the company," he said.

More executive appointments are expected to be announced next week, he added. And Ian Pratt, technical leader of the project and another XenSource co-founder, remains on board.

The company has about 50 employees, a company representative said, an increase from 45 last August.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com

p>XenSource, a start-up trying to commercialise software that lets several versions of