Brent Chapman

Current

Founder, CEO, and CTO at Netomata, Inc.
Principal | Consultant | Owner at Great Circle Associates, Inc.

Past

Sr Manager, Network Architecture at Tellme Networks
Consultant at Kontiki
Director, Network Architecture; Acting Director, IT Infrastructure; Director, Technical Marketing at Covad Communications Company

Consultant at Silicon Graphics
Consultant at SGI
Consultant at Cray
ShowNet Team Member at Interop
ShowNet Team Member at Networld
Consultant at Telebit
UNIX Operations Manager at PARC

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7 more...

Education

Melbourne Business School
University of California, Berkeley

Recommended

4 people have recommended Brent

Connections

346 connections

Industry

Computer Networking

Brent Chapman’s Summary

20 years of IT management and consulting experience, for hundreds of organizations worldwide.

Extensive experience establishing and scaling IT infrastructure for Silicon Valley startups.

International reputation as industry expert, author, speaker, consultant, and educator.

2004 SAGE Outstanding Achievement Award recipient "For outstanding sustained contributions to the community of system administrators" (previous recipients include Larry Wall and Paul Vixie).

Coauthor of Building Internet Firewalls (O'Reilly, 2000), which many consider a canonical reference.

Creator of Majordomo mailing list software, used by hundreds of thousands of sites worldwide.

Brent Chapman’s Specialties:

Network architecture, network automation, Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and startups

Brent Chapman’s Experience

Founder, CEO, and CTO

Netomata, Inc.

(Information Technology and Services industry)

August 2008 — Present (1 year 5 months)

Founder, CEO, and CTO of Netomata, Inc., which makes networks more reliable and flexible by automating network configuration.

We build tools that generate complete configurations for the various devices that make up a network, starting from a simple, light-weight model of the network. Generating configurations in this manner provides a number of critical benefits by ensuring consistency, eliminating human errors, and easing both network expansion (increase in size) and evolution (increase in scope and capabilities).
Principal | Consultant | Owner

Great Circle Associates, Inc.

(Privately Held; Computer Networking industry)

March 1989 — Present (20 years 10 months)

Information Technology Infrastructure Consultant
Internet Security Consultant and Educator
UNIX and Networking Consultant
Business Manager and Technical Lead
Sr Manager, Network Architecture

Tellme Networks

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Telecommunications industry)

November 2003 — January 2005 (1 year 3 months)

Key technical manager for a profitable pre-IPO Silicon Valley startup which develops and operates automated systems to process over 1 billion phone calls per year for Fortune 500 customers as the company grew from 180 to 270 employees.

Managed the Networking Team, which is responsible for architecture, design, deployment, and maintenance of Tellme's production network, which consists of approximately 2,000 UNIX servers spread across 6 sites, with connections to 5 ISPs, multiple data and voice carriers, and dozens of Fortune 500 customers. Networking Team manages for all routers, switches, VPN concentrators, load balancers, and other assorted networking equipment, as well as for corporate LAN at HQ.
Consultant

Kontiki

(Computer Networking industry)

2001 — 2002 (1 year )
Director, Network Architecture; Acting Director, IT Infrastructure; Director, Technical Marketing

Covad Communications Company

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; COVD; Telecommunications industry)

November 1997 — February 2000 (2 years 4 months)

Key technical manager, in various capacities, as the company grew in little over two years from a 40-person pre-IPO startup to a 2000-person public company with a $7 billion market capitalization.

As Director of Technical Marketing (October 1998 through February 2000), evangelize Covad's tremendous technical capabilities to both internal and external audiences, and help continue to develop and extend those capabilities.

As Acting Director of IT Infrastructure, managed an 8-person IT team (UNIX system administrators, NT system administrators, network administrator, and telecom department).

As Director of Network Architecture (November 1997 through October 1998), was responsible for initial design of Covad's regional ATM networks to service DSL subscribers.
Consultant

Silicon Graphics

(Public Company; Computer Networking industry)

1995 — 1997 (2 years )
Consultant

SGI

(Public Company; Computer Networking industry)

1995 — 1997 (2 years )
Consultant

Cray

(Public Company; Computer Networking industry)

1995 — 1997 (2 years )
ShowNet Team Member

Interop

(Computer Networking industry)

1991 — 1991 (less than a year)
ShowNet Team Member

Networld

(Computer Networking industry)

1991 — 1991 (less than a year)
Consultant

Telebit

(Public Company; Computer Networking industry)

1990 — 1991 (1 year )
UNIX Operations Manager

PARC

(Public Company; Computer Networking industry)

1989 — 1990 (1 year )

Brent Chapman’s Education

Melbourne Business School

MBA , Focus on Innovation and Entrepreneurship , January 2002 — May 2003

Named to the Dean's List for outstanding academic achievement, which consists of the top 10% of the graduating class.

Activities and Societies:

Led the Judging Team for the 2002 Melbourne University Entrepreneurs' Challenge, which is the premier business plan competition in Australia.
University of California, Berkeley

BS , Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) , August 1984 — May 1989