One of the nicest things about being at Software 2008 (which this year was combined with InterOp in Las Vegas) was catching up with a bunch of folks who in small and big ways shaped the enterprise software industry over the last 25 years. They are not household names, but I can tell you individually had more operational impact on the industry than better known names.
- Chris Roon, Red Pepper, PeopleSoft, salesforce.com, now a consultant to vendors at Marketing Arts
- Jay Fulcher, SAP, PeopleSoft now an investor in a number of media properties, especially sports related ones.
- Bryan Stolle, Agile, now a VC at Mohr Davidow
- Tim Harvey, MSA, Synquest, now CEO at XAware
- Dave Simbari, Ross Systems, IMI, now at SupplyPro.
- Padman Ramankutty, SAP, Bristlecone, now an investor in a variety of start ups including a mobile one
Jay told me he was particularly thrilled that the skills he developed in enterprise software are now helping in his ventures in other industries. The negative, of course, is the enterprise software industry has lost his skills.
I arrived in Vegas via California and managed to make it to Jeff Nolan's B-B-Q for several of the Bay Area Enterprise Irregulars . Coming weekend many of the EIs from rest of the world will convene at SAP's Sapphire in Orlando. The next generation of software warriors.
I am honored to share occasional no-hype hours with such an incredibly bright group of folks. Of course, most of the conversations are also not bloggable :)
