Linux company hires industry veteran

Enrico Pesatori, an executive who has held posts at several major computing companies, has taken over as chief executive of Linux system seller Penguin Computing, the company said Tuesday.

Pesatori has worked at three companies that eventually became a part of Hewlett-Packard: Digital Equipment, Tandem Computers and Compaq Computer.

He left Compaq in 2000 to become CEO of start-ups Synaxia and then BlueArc. He left BlueArc in 2002.

At Penguin Computing, Pesatori will take over from co-founder Sam Ockman, who will become chairman and continue working on the company's strategy, Penguin plans to announce.

Penguin began as a seller of workstations and servers running the Linux operating system. With the acquisition of Scyld Computing in June, it diversified, selling groups of systems for high-performance technical computing called Beowulf clusters. Beowulf pioneer Donald Becker founded Scyld.

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Penguin has never achieved the recognition of rival VA Linux Systems, but it survived while that competitor was forced to abandon its server business and transform itself into collaborative programming tool company VA Software.

At Digital, Pesatori ran the company's computer systems division. In 1996 he became president of Tandem, a maker of high-end servers used by stock exchanges and other customers with heavy computing demands. Compaq acquired Tandem in 1997.