Executive Management Team & Board of Directors
Rod Johnson, Chief Executive Officer
Rod Johnson has served as CEO of SpringSource since the company's inception and has more than 12 years of technology and management experience.
Rod conceived of and initiated the development of Spring. The Spring Portfolio of open source projects was based on the code published with Rod's best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development (2002). This book was one of the most influential books ever published on J2EE and the sequel, J2EE without EJB (July 2004, with Juergen Hoeller), has proven almost equally significant, establishing a comprehensive vision for lightweight, post-EJB J2EE development.
Rod is one of the world's leading authorities on Java and J2EE development. He is a thought leader on open source, as well as a popular speaker at conferences and symposia around the world. Rod founded SpringSource and continues to be actively involved in guiding the direction of Spring.
Rod has specialized in server-side Java since 1996 across a wide range of industries. Rod’s hands-on experience has led him to see problems from a client's perspective as well as a technology perspective, and has driven his influential criticism of bloated, inefficient, orthodox approaches to J2EE architecture.
Rod is a member of the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee (EC). EC members guide the evolution of the Java technologies by approving and voting on all technology proposals. They are also responsible for defining the JCP's rules of governance and the legal agreement between members and the organization.
Rod holds a BA with Honors in Computer Science, Mathematics and Musicology as well as a Phd from the University of Sydney.
Rob Bearden, President and Chief Operating Officer
Rob Bearden is President and Chief Operating Officer of SpringSource. Rob has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, with a track record for building strong, global sales organizations and operations.
Before joining SpringSource, Bearden served as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital, a leading venture capital firm based in the Silicon Valley. He was also chief operating officer for OpenSpan, a desktop integration software provider, responsible for global sales, marketing, business development and administration.
Most notably, Bearden previously served as chief operating officer for JBoss, an open source middleware company, where he helped architect and execute the company’s business model and managed its worldwide operations.
Prior to JBoss/Red Hat, Bearden was president of the Americas at i2 Technologies, a supply chain software provider, overseeing operations in the United States, Canada, Latin America and Mexico. He also served as senior vice president of worldwide sales for Manhattan Associates and spent six years at Oracle Corporation in various executive positions.
Adrian Colyer, Chief Technology Officer
Adrian Colyer is the CTO of SpringSource and has more than a dozen years of experience leading teams in Java and enterprise middleware.
Adrian Colyer is the leader of the AspectJ open source project and a well-known industry expert on the topic of aspect-oriented programming (AOP). He is a co-author of the book "Eclipse AspectJ : Aspect-Oriented Programming in Eclipse with AspectJ and AJDT," and has also published numerous book chapters, articles and published papers. His short essay, "AOP without the buzzwords" has been described as "the best explanation of AOP, ever."
In 2004, Adrian was recognized as one of the top 100 young innovators in the world by MIT Technology Review for his contributions to the development and adoption of aspect-oriented programming in industry.
Adrian founded the AspectJ Development Tools project (AJDT) on Eclipse.org in 2003, a project that continues to lead the world in providing IDE support for AOP. As leader of the AspectJ project, Adrian has overseen several releases of the compiler and designed and implemented many of the AspectJ 5 language extensions to support Java 5 features.
Prior to joining SpringSource, Adrian gained over a decade of experience in building enterprise middleware at IBM. Whilst there he oversaw the introduction of aspect-oriented programming to many IBM development teams.
Adrian holds a BSc, Computer Science from University of Southampton.
Javier Soltero, Chief Technology Officer, Management Products
Javier Soltero is Chief Technology Officer for Management Products for SpringSource.
Previously, Javier was the co-founder and CEO of Hyperic, the leader in multi-platform, open source IT management, which SpringSource acquired in May 2009. Prior to co-founding Hyperic, he was chief architect at Covalent Technologies, where he led the design and implementation of multiple enterprise products, including the configuration management product for Apache and the Covalent Application Manager (CAM)—now Hyperic's flagship product Hyperic HQ.
Prior to Covalent, Soltero was a senior software engineer at Backflip, where he met Hyperic co-founders Charles Lee and Doug MacEachern. At Backflip, he was actively involved in the design, implementation, and operational aspects of the site.
Soltero also held senior engineering positions at Netscape, where he participated in the design development of e-commerce and Internet infrastructure suites. Over the last 10 years, Soltero has been actively involved in various open source communities as both user and contributor to projects like JBoss and Apache Tomcat.
Soltero is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico and received his BS in Information Systems and Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Nick White, Chief Financial Officer
Nick White is the SpringSource CFO. Nick has more than 25 years of experience managing finance for high-growth technology companies.
Nick has a strong track record of commercial success in multi-national companies. Prior to joining SpringSource, Nick was Chief Financial Officer at Transitive, best known for providing Rosetta to Apple. Nick joined Transitive in 2002 and led the company through its subsequent financing rounds and legal negotiations for its OEM relationships with Apple, IBM, Intel, Fujitsu-Siemens, and Red Hat.
Previously, Nick was also Chief Financial Officer at Pulse Entertainment, a start up providing 3D animation software for the web, and Law Cypress, a $100M high technology distribution company. He also served in financial management roles at NeXT Computer and California Energy. Earlier in his career, he was a senior audit manager at Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers) serving high technology clients in Silicon Valley, California.
Mark Brewer, Senior Vice President and GM of Enterprise Delivery
Mark Brewer is Senior Vice President and GM of Enterprise Delivery at SpringSource. Brewer is a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of experience within the technology and software industry. Mark was previously CEO of Covalent Technologies, which SpringSource acquired in early 2008. Mark joined Covalent Technologies, the leading provider of support and services for Apache Software Foundation (ASF) open source projects, in late 2001 as Vice President of Field Operations and took over as CEO in early 2004. In this position, Mark was responsible for the day-to-day management of the company, including overseeing worldwide sales, engineering, marketing and business development initiatives.
Prior to Covalent, Mark served as Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development for Banter Technologies where he built successful business models for selling eCRM solutions to large financial institutions and enabling technologies to CRM software vendors.
Previously, Mark was Vice President of Sales at Andromedia helping to define and build the sales model and partner strategies for the leading provider of enterprise web site analysis and personalization solutions provider. Mark was instrumental in the successful merger between Andromedia and Macromedia (now Adobe) in late 1999.
Before Andromedia, Mark held a variety of sales management and executive positions with Powersoft (PWRS), which was acquired by Sybase (SYBS) in 1995, during the company's rapid growth phase in the early and mid 1990s.
Mark holds a B.S. in Biology with minors in Chemistry and Computer Science from Western Washington University.
Shaun Connolly, Vice President of Product Management
Shaun Connolly is Vice President of Product Management at SpringSource and is responsible for overall product strategy, definition and promotion of SpringSource products. Shaun has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, with a track record of building early stage and midsize software companies into successful market leaders.
Shaun was previously Vice President of Product Management responsible for the JBoss Enterprise Middleware line of products at Red Hat and JBoss. Prior to JBoss/Red Hat, Shaun served in Vice President and Director level Product Management and Product Development positions at Princeton Softech, Hewlett-Packard, Bluestone Software, and Primavera Systems.
Shaun holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University.
Peter Cooper-Ellis, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Product Management
Peter Cooper-Ellis is Senior Vice President of Engineering and Product Management for SpringSource with more than 25 years of experience managing enterprise software product development teams including transaction processing systems, messaging systems, Web application servers, Java Virtual Machine (JVM), customer support and security products.
Prior to SpringSource, Peter served as Executive Vice President and General Manager for the WebLogic Server product line at BEA Systems, Inc. (acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2008). While at BEA, he was recognized for growing the WebLogic Server Unit business from its inception to the creation of BEA’s flagship product, BEA WebLogic Server, the world’s leading Java application server.
Besides being a driving force behind the WebLogic Application Server since 1999, Peter had management responsibility for more than a dozen acquisitions for BEA and was influential in product strategy for a variety of BEA’s industry-leading Java products. Peter was also responsible for setting up offshore development labs for BEA in India and China.
Before joining BEA, Peter spent 10 years at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he managed the transaction processing engineering team, and six years at National Semiconductor as a software development engineer.
Peter is a member of the OSGi Alliance Board of Directors. The OSGi Alliance is a worldwide consortium of technology innovators that advances a proven and mature process to assure interoperability of applications and services based on its OSGi component integration platform.
Peter holds a B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Herb Cunitz, Vice President of Worldwide Sales
Herb Cunitz is Vice President of Worldwide Sales for SpringSource. Herb brings more than 20 years of experience building sales and sales management teams for enterprise software companies.
Herb has brought two enterprise software companies through IPOs and both of these companies were within the top 15 IPO’s of their respective years. Most recently, Herb was SVP of Worldwide Sales and Operations for Savvion where he successfully grew the bookings to a $25M run rate. Previously, Herb was VP of Worldwide Sales for Bang Networks and VP of Sales for Vitria Technology. While at Vitria, Herb grew the sales organization from $0 to more than $80M per year in revenue.
Prior to Vitria Technology, Herb was Vice President for Sales at Viasoft Corporation. Herb also spent 10 years at IBM in NY in various positions, including Account Executive, Marketing Manager and US Marketing Executive for Desktop Operating Systems.
Herb has an MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in New York.
Mitch Ferguson, Vice President of Business Development
Mitch Ferguson serves as Vice President of Business Development for SpringSource and has over 20 years of sales and business development management experience.
Mitch has helped establish and execute global business development and channel strategies with enterprise software companies from early-stage through IPO, including Arbor Software and Vitria Technology. Mitch served as Vice President, Asia Pacific Operations, and Global Alliances at Vitria Technology and Director, Channels and Asia Pacific Business Development at Arbor Software. Previously, Mitch held executive sales and business development positions with 3VR Security, Composite Software, and Wang Laboratories.
Mitch holds an MBA from the University of Maryland, and a B.S. from the University of South Carolina.
Steven Schuurman, Senior Vice President of Service Delivery
Steven Schuurman serves as Senior Vice President of Service Delivery for SpringSource. In this capacity Steven provides leadership to SpringSource's Regional Directors as they manage their divisions and support the corporate departments in regional execution. Steven is responsible for developing the company's Services portfolio, consisting of Training and Professional Services. Furthermore, he is also actively involved in expanding SpringSource's global reach.
Steven is a Java industry veteran, with nearly 10 years of consulting, management and entrepreneurial experience in the Enterprise Java space alone. Before co-founding SpringSource with the Spring core team, Steven served as a Director of internationally renowned Dutch Enterprise Java software-house JTeam, where he is still a board member and owner, and he also served as a managing partner in a leading Dutch software development and consulting company.
Matt Stodolnic, Vice President of Marketing
Matt Stodolnic is Vice President of Marketing for SpringSource. He is responsible for corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation.
Previously, Matt was Vice President of Marketing for Hyperic, the leader in multi-platform, open source IT management, which SpringSource acquired in May 2009.
Stodolnic brings more than 15 years of marketing experience at start-ups and Fortune 1000 companies to SpringSource. He has contributed to the success of early stage technology companies in the enterprise software and Software as a Service (SaaS) industries. Before joining Hyperic, Matt spent the last seven years at cloud computing pioneer salesforce.com as vice president of interactive marketing and creative services. As a member of salesforce.com’s management team he was responsible for online demand generation, community, global Web strategy, advertising, and branding. Prior to joining salesforce.com, Stodolnic was vice president of product marketing and product development at Conscium Inc, a pioneer in Internet collaboration technology where he led product marketing and product development. The company was acquired by NYSE-listed Bowne & Co., Inc in 2001.
Stodolnic holds a BA in Economics from University of Colorado, Boulder.
Board of Directors
Neelan Choksi, Board Member
Neelan Choksi serves on the Board of Directors for SpringSource and is the former COO of the company. Neelan has extensive technology management experience, having served most recently as the founder and CEO at SolarMetric, a leading object relational mapping provider, which was acquired by BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS) in 2005. At BEA, Choksi was instrumental in the open sourcing of the acclaimed object/relational mapping tool Kodo as OpenJPA.
Prior to SolarMetric, Neelan worked for Andersen Consulting Strategic Services (NYSE: ACN) and Exxon Research & Engineering (NYSE: XOM).
Neelan is a graduate of MIT (and was part of the often-publicized MIT Blackjack team) and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Kevin Efusy, Board Member
Kevin is a member of the Board of Directors of SpringSource. He joined Accel Partners in 2003. His background is primarily as an entrepreneur and operating executive. He served two stints as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers where he started Corio, an ASP/SaaS pioneer which went public on Nasdaq and was acquired by IBM in 2005. Later he served as the first CEO of IronPlanet, an online marketplace for heavy equipment with current annual gross sales over $200M. Prior to KPCB, Kevin served as a product manager at Zip2 and a consultant at Bain & Company.
Kevin focuses primarily on two areas for investment: consumer internet services and saas/open source software. Within consumer services, he sourced Accel’s investment in Facebook and led Accel's investments in Metacafe, Medio Systems, Mig33, Tumri, and EveryZing, Within saas/open source software, he led investments or serves on the boards of Xensource (acquired by Citrix), Genius, SpringSource, Hyperic, Terracotta, and Aptana. He also currently serves on the board of BBN Technologies, and is actively involved in Riverbed Technology and Transera.
Kevin has an MSEE, BSEE, and BA in Economics all from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller scholar.
Click here to read Kevin's article on The Consumerization of Software and Saas, and The Elusive Great Consumer Experience and his recent profile on the San Jose Mercury News “Silicon Valley's five hot VCs under 40”.
Peter Fenton, Board Member
Peter Fenton is a member of the Board of Directors of SpringSource. Peter joined Benchmark Capital in 2006 after spending seven years as a partner with Accel Partners, where his investment interests included software, digital media, and technology enabled services.
Prior to joining the venture capital community, he spent several years working with Silicon Valley software and high-technology companies as an entrepreneur and strategy consultant. He was an early employee at Virage, a multimedia information retrieval company that went public on the NASDAQ in 2000. Peter also worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company in San Francisco, where he advised high-technology businesses in Silicon Valley on their product and business strategies.
Current Investments: EngineYard, FriendFeed, Hyperic, Lithium, New Relic, Pentaho, Polyvore, SpringSource, Terracotta, Yelp, and Zuora.
Previous Investments: Coremetrics, JBoss (acquired by RedHat), Reactivity (acquired by Cisco), Wily Technology (acquired by CA), Xensource (acquired by Citrix), and Zimbra (acquired by Yahoo!).
Education: MBA from Stanford Business School, Arjay Miller Scholar; BA from Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa.