Sonatype, The Maven Company, Recruits Mark de Visser as its New CEO as it Prepares for the Introduction of New Commercial Products and Services
De Visser brings extensive experience with commercial open source to Sonatype, after years as senior executive at Red Hat and Zend Technologies
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonatype, the leader in
build and release infrastructure for software development, today announced the
appointment of Mark de Visser as Chief Executive Officer. De Visser joins
forces with Sonatype founder and CTO Jason van Zyl, creator of the open source
Maven project, to help Sonatype expand the Maven ecosystem with professional
products and services. Sonatype enables companies that already use Maven to
turn their build and release infrastructure into a strategic asset -- helping
them deliver software projects faster, with fewer delays and higher quality.
"With 3.6 million annual downloads worldwide and tens of thousands of
organizations who have deployed it, including a large majority of Fortune 500
companies, Maven clearly has become one of the most successful open source
projects," said Jason Van Zyl. "Companies now look at us, the creators of
Maven, for commercial support, training, integration and further technologies.
We needed a business leader to build Sonatype into the next great open source
software company and were fortunate to find an executive of the caliber of
Mark de Visser."
De Visser joins Sonatype from Zend Technologies -- the PHP company, where
he held the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to Zend, de Visser was the
top marketing executive at Agitar -- a Java testing company, at Red Hat -- the
Linux company, and at Borland -- a developer tools company. His open source
experience with Linux and PHP, and his extensive track record of launching
successful products for software developers, make him uniquely qualified to
lead Sonatype.
"Sonatype's technical staff has done a remarkable job in creating a very
widely adopted platform for build and release engineering," said de Visser.
"In the near future we will introduce commercial products to add even more
capability to Maven. These products are already being tested by select
customers. We will also introduce training and support services for Maven. It
is very exciting to be able to join a young company that already has such a
vibrant user base to work for, and which has a clear plan for commercial
success."
"The old monolithic build and release model doesn't work anymore," said
Paul Levine, Sonatype board member and former founding CEO of Atria Software,
the company that introduced ClearCase(R) configuration management. "The future
is with agile, open source solutions like Sonatype. There is a void in the
marketplace and significant demand for a solution, and Sonatype's Fortune 500
customers validate the company's ability to fill that void."
About Sonatype
The leader in Java build and release infrastructure, Sonatype delivers
enterprise-class software, support and services that reduce development time
and complexity, encourages developer collaboration, and significantly cuts
operating costs for organizations of any size. Sonatype incorporates Java
standards to set community-wide best-practices and enable cross-vendor
integration. Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Sonatype was founded in 2007
and is privately held with investments from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
and Morgenthaler Ventures. For more information, please visit
http://www.sonatype.com.
