Former J.D. Edwards exec heads server upstart

Robert M. Dutkowsky, the chief executive of J.D. Edwards until PeopleSoft bought the software company, has been named CEO of server maker Egenera.

Dutkowsky, who also has been named president and chairman of the board, replaces Egenera co-founder Vern Brownell, the Marlboro, Mass.-based company said Monday. Brownell will remain chief technology officer.

The new Egenera CEO began his career at IBM and has led marketing for Big Blue's Unix server and mainframe lines, rising to executive vice president of the worldwide Unix server marketing. He then worked for a time at storage specialist EMC.

Since then, he has been CEO of two companies that were acquired by larger corporations: GenRad, bought by Teradyne, and J.D. Edwards, bought by PeopleSoft.

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Egenera makes high-end systems with technology that juggles software tasks from one thin "blade" server to another. Its first systems, costing upwards of $250,000, ran Linux, but the company now supports Microsoft's Windows as well.

The server maker competes with larger companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. Its technology, which lets a collection of servers rapidly adjust to changing workload requirements or faulty hardware, fulfills some of the promises of the widely sought-after utility computing vision.

It's not the first CEO swap for the company. Debbie Miller took over in April 2002, but resigned in February 2003, saying it was too difficult to split her life across both U.S. coasts.