Background of Andreas von Bechtolsheim
Andreas (Andy) von Bechtolsheim was born in 1955 in the country of Germany.  When he was 21, he graduated Carnegie Mellon Univ. with a Master’s in Electrical Engineering.  Then he moved on to get a PhD from Stanford between 1977-1982. 

While Bechtolsheim was at Stanford, he had discovered a way to build a powerful computer based on a network connected to a Unix operating system.  Bechtolsheim created the workstation because he was bored of waiting for the computer time on the campus university system.  Vinod Khosla approached Bechtolsheim regarding his invention and they decided to start a company together, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA).  Sun was actually an acronym for Stanford University Network.

Bechtolsheim dropped out of the PhD program to go full-time on Sun and pulled in his friend Scott McNealy to become a co-founder.  The four original founders of Sun were Andy von Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy.

Today Sun Microsystems is a $3.38 billion company.  Sun’s brands include Java, MySQL, and Sun StorageTek.  Sun bought out MySQL for $1 billion earlier 2008.

Investments/Other Startups/Back to Sun
Bechtolsheim stepped down from Sun in 1995 and then started Granite Systems.  Granite was bought out by Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) for $220 million in 1996.  After that Bechtolsheim became VP and GM of Cisco Gigabit Systems Business Unit.

Bechtolsheim stepped down in 2003 from Cisco to become the head of Kealia.  Sun bought out Kealia in 2004 and brought Bechtolsheim back to Sun.  Bechtolsheim became the Chief Architect and SVP at Sun.  

Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton, who both were at Granite, were two of Google’s first investors.  They wrote a $100,000 check to “Google Inc.” before the search engine company even incorporated itself.  Larry and Sergery did not even have a company checking account at the time.

The New Start-Up
Bechtolsheim stepped down from Sun again recently to work on a new startup.  This startup plans to take-on network giant and Bechtolsheim’s former employer, Cisco.  Bechtolsheim’s new company is called Arista Networks and they have built a fast network switch that costs 1/10th of the prices of Cisco’s products.

Some of Arista’s customers already include several government labs, Internet startup companies, and other data intensive companies like Google.  Today the company is also announcing that they have hired Jayshree Ullal as their CEO.  Ullal was an executive at Cisco that lead their corporate switch business.

Cheriton will also be joining Arista as the company’s chief scientist.  

Arista, based in Menlo Park, Calif. has kept their team at a small number.  This is because Bechtolsheim believes if you hire a bunch of key executives at once, they’ll just twiddle their thumbs while collecting large sums of money.  Even though the company has already been shipping units, they did not have an official CEO until today.

Don’t Forget Where You Came From
Although this is the second time Bechtolsheim is leaving Sun, he stated that he will a part-time advisor with the company.   ”It’s my baby,” Mr. Bechtolsheim said. “I will always be associated with Sun.”

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) has entered a definitive agreement to buy out Jabber, Inc.  Jabber is a Denver, Colorado-based instant messaging company.  Cisco plans on integrating Jabber in their Collaboration portfolio.  This acquisition complements Cisco’s acquisition of WebEx. 

“Enterprise organizations want an extensible presence and messaging platform that can integrate with business process applications and easily adapt to their changing needs,” stated Doug Dennerline, SVP of Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group. “With the acquisition of Jabber, we will be able to extend the reach of our current instant messaging service and expand the capabilities of our collaboration platform. Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space.”

Jabber’s customers and partners include AOL’s AIM, Bank of Ireland, BT, CapWIN, Carahsoft, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Defense, Early warning, Emerald, Eyeball, GameAccount.com, Lymabean, Earthlink, Eyeball, Intelink, Me.dium, Privacy Networks, Sun, Adobe, Akamai, and Akonix.

Jabber’s IM platform supports an aggregatioin of AIM and Google Talk.  The Jabber IM platform can also support built-in Microsoft Outlook features.  Jabber IM is already compatible with WebEx, which may have been a reason why Cisco was interested in the IM platform.

Cisco Systems, Inc. has made a definitive agreement to acquire PostPath. PostPath has an online mail and calendar software that serves either as a replacement or as a supplement to Microsoft Outlook.

PostPath will be used to enhance WebEx, a video conference company that Cisco acquired last year. Cisco will also use PostPath’s email and calendar systems and improve upon the IM, voice, video, data, and document experience.

“The acquisition of PostPath complements our strategy to develop an integrated collaboration platform designed for how we work today and into the future, providing real productivity gains and a more satisfying user experience”, stated Doug Dennerline, Cisco SVP of Collaboration Software Group. “Our ‘cloud-based’ delivery model offers our customers rapid deployment and compelling economics.

As part of the agreement, Cisco will pay $215 million in exchange for 100% of the shares in PostPath. The acquisition is expected to finalize by Q1 2009. PostPath’s current employees will become part of Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group.

PostPath is based in Mountain View, Calif. PostPath will continue to support existing customers.

Related Links:
1. Cisco Press release
2. PostPath Press Release
3. PostPath.com

“This will be the largest advertising platform on Earth” stated Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp. on a media call that was reported on TechCrunch.  What Chernin is referring to is a future product announcement in collaboration with some of the leading media and Internet giants: News Corporation (owner of MySpace), NBC, FOX, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!.  Advertisers that are already wanting in on the upcoming video website includes Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco Systems, Esurance.com, Intel, and GM.

“This is a game changer for Internet video,” stated Chernin. “We’ll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want — professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live. We’re excited about the potential for this alliance and we’re looking forward to working with any content provider or distributor who wants to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity.”

When the video website launches, full episodes and clips of TV shows and movies like 24, Heroes, My Name is Earl, SNL, The Simpsons and movies Devil Wears Prada, Borat, and Little Miss Sunshine will appear on the website.

“This partnership is completely aligned with our continued investment in video on MSN and will allow hundreds of millions of our consumers to tune into a vast library of high-quality, safe and legal online video,“ stated Kevin Johnson, the President of Platform and Services Division at Microsoft Corporation. “Our alliance proves that you can deliver quality online video entertainment and protect intellectual property and copyright at the same time. We look forward to working together to explore additional opportunities to distribute this content across other Microsoft services and devices.”

The content will be delivered to users on News Corp.’s MySpace as well.  MySpace has 65 million users that will have access to the media content.  “The ability to embed video clips within over 160 million profile pages will empower members of the MySpace community to view, share and truly interact with some of the entertainment world’s most popular content,” stated Peter Levinsohn, President of Fox Interactive Media.

The name of the new video website is unknown, but Google executives have coined the gigantic media partnership, “Clown Co.”  I guess that is Google’s executive response to Steve Ballmer’s (CEO of Microsoft) statement: “Google built one very good business. They only have one thing they do. Everything else is sort of cute.”

Today, it was announced that Cisco Systems, one of the world’s leading routing device manufacturers has acquired WebEx, a web conferencing company. The amount that Cisco paid was $3.2 billion, an amount that eclipses some of the more recent acquisitions (i.e. MySpace for $580 million and YouTube for near $1.7 billion).

WebEx was founded by Subrah S. Iyer and Min Zhu and is based in Santa Clara, CA. WebEx has several products that include WebEx Meeting Center, WebEx Event Center, and WebEx Training Center. WebEx had acquired Intranets.com in 2005 and had announced to launch a business version of AOL Instant Messenger last year using the conference tools of WebEx.

Currently WebEx Communications, Inc. has a market cap of $2.82 billion and trades under the NASDAQ: WEBX symbol. GigaOM has some further insight regarding why Cisco would actually buy the company. In summary, Om Malik summarized that this move by Cisco is a way for them to stay competitive with Microsoft’s VOIP efforts.

Yesterday, Microsoft had announced that they had acquired TellMe. TechCrunch had speculated and then later confirmed the rumor and it was made official by a Microsoft press release.

“Speech is universal, simple and holds incredible promise as a key interface for computing,” said CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer. “Tellme brings to Microsoft the talent, technology and proven experience in speech that will enable us to deliver a new wave of products and revolutionize human-computer interaction.” The price is unknown, but Om Malik mentioned that he heard a rumor that it was greater than $800 million and less than $1 billion.

TellMe was founded in 1999 by Mike McCue. McCue is also currently the CEO. According to some Wikipedia analysts, “Early venture-funded competitors included BeVocal, Hey Anita and Quack.com, which was acquired by America Online to power its competing service AOL By Phone.” Tellme has processed almost 2 billion unique calls. The company is based in Mountain View, CA.