Today's podcast is a conversation with Tim Howes, whose contributions to the LDAP directory protocol are nicely described in this 1998 interview from back when he was CTO of Netscape's server products division. In 1999, with Marc Andreessen and others, he launched Loudcloud; in 2002 the company exited its hosting and managed services business, rebranded itself as Opsware, and focused on selling its software for deploying and managing Unix, Linux, and Windows servers -- a suite that was recently extended by the acquisition of Rendition Networks to include routers, switches, and other network gear.
The focus of our interview was a new feature of the Opsware suite that's just being announced today: the Opsware Global Shell. Although it works with and extends conventional shells such as bash and ksh, as well as emerging ones such as Microsoft's Monad, it's not a shell in same sense that these others are, but rather a provider of shared infrastructure to support them: a common virtual file system, a common view of configuration metadata reflected into that file system, and a central chokepoint for monitoring and compliance auditing.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/08/08.html#a1285