SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Oct. 6, 2009) – In response to growing demand in North America, eXo Platform today opened its first U.S. office and announced a Board of Advisors stacked with software industry luminaries. This move comes on the heels of a partnership with Red Hat enabling eXo to deliver its open source collaboration software to the North American market. Developed in partnership with many of Europe’s largest companies — including Generali, Société Générale and Orange — eXo’s software is designed, built and proven in large production deployments for Global 2000 enterprise companies. Enterprises in North America can now extend the value and cost savings of their open source infrastructure to applications and content services with eXo.
eXo founder and CEO Benjamin Mestrallet has relocated from France to run operations from the firm’s new San Francisco office. Mestrallet will have on hand a team of experienced advisors who have proven track records in managing growth, shaping strong leadership and building valuation for young companies. From the Board of Advisors:
- Bob Bickel, co-founder of Bluestone Software, former head of Hewlett-Packard Middleware and, most recently, head of strategy at JBoss and board advisor to Hyperic (acquired by SpringSource), JasperSoft and Funambol, among others;
“eXo has the proven technology, talent and market potential that I look for when considering which companies I’d like be involved with at a strategic level,” noted Bickel. “While enterprise companies have benefited from a wide range of open source options at the operating system and middleware level and with development tools, choices in applications and content services have been limited. This is the next significant opportunity for driving out costs in the enterprise. Given its pioneering history and its successes with large European customers, eXo is primed to lead this charge in North America. I look forward to working with Benjamin and his team to make this happen.”
- Edwin Khodabakchian, co-founder of Feedly.org, and former Oracle vice president of product development and CTO of eCommerce at AOL;
“Benjamin is a smart, dynamic leader who has built up a lean but global company the old fashioned way — with solid technology, hard work and a disciplined eye on the bottom line,” said Khodabakchian. “I believe eXo has a bright future ahead of it and I am honored to have a part in shaping this.”
- Sacha Labourey, most recently co-GM of Red Hat’s JBoss Middleware business and former CTO and European GM of JBoss, Inc.
Labourey, who participated in negotiations on the eXo/Red Hat partnership before stepping down as JBoss co-GM, commented: “eXo is proof that a strong focus on engineering excellence can result in superior products. In the last year, I have come to know firsthand what eXo brings to the market and am consistently impressed by the breadth of its vision and the team’s ability to execute.”
In 2002, eXo delivered the industry’s first Java portlet container, which set in motion a leveling of the playing field in the portal market. This also attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Defense, who went on to help fund the development of the eXo Portal, which is now merged into the new JBoss GateIn portal project. eXo continues to sell a broad portfolio of open source collaborative software that has been developed through R&D investment from its customers, which rank among the largest enterprises and savviest government agencies in the world.
One of Mestrallet’s first stops in the U.S. will be at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, Calif., where he will share some of the innovations eXo Platform is experimenting with in its labs
