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Former Microsoft executive Gordon Mangione has a new job as senior vice president of product operations at XenSource, a Microsoft ally that develops infrastructure virtualization solutions based on the open-source Xen hypervisor.
Mangione was last an executive at Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm in Seattle, a position he took after leaving Microsoft, where he was a corporate vice president for the Security Business and Technology Unit.
Before that, Mangione served as a corporate vice president for the SQL Server Team and was also vice president of the Exchange team.
He also participated in the development of SNA Server, one of the first servers developed for the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.
In July, Microsoft and XenSource announced a strategic relationship for the development of technology that provides interoperability between Xen-enabled Linux and Windows Server virtualization.
“I am excited to join XenSource and create a strategic product road map to enable the company to take advantage of the numerous opportunities available to it. This is an exciting time and XenSource has a unique and dynamic business model based on the innovation of open-source development and exploding market demand for volume virtualization products,” Mangione said in a statement.
Peter Levine, president and CEO at XenSource, based in Palo Alto, Calif., said Mangiones experience leading product teams at Microsoft would help XenSource deliver great virtualization products for its customers.
Ian Pratt, XenSources founder and the project leader for the open-source Xen hypervisor project, said Mangione brings “a wealth of experience delivering complex enterprise systems software and managing large distributed teams. With XenSource now shipping its first enterprise products, and ramping development with major ISV partners, he will play a key role in XenSources success.”
There has also been a lot of debate over whether the Xen virtualization technology is ready for enterprise use, with Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell offering different views.
For example, Red Hats Chief Technology Officer Brian Stevens recently told eWEEK that Novell was being irresponsible and risked damaging enterprises first experiences with Xen.