Brian Berliner

Current

Distinguished Technologist, IM CTO Office at Hewlett-Packard
BOD Member & CEO Advisor at Syncplicity

Past

Owner at Sand Hill Venture Consulting
Advisor to the CEO at Akimbi Systems
Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Sevin Rosen Funds

Founder, EVP & CTO at Cassatt Corporation
Founder, EVP Engineering at Allocity, Inc.
Founder, Chief Architect & VP of B2B Technologies at ChannelPoint, Inc.
Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sr. Software Engineer at Prisma Supercomputers
Sr. Software Engineer at Convex Computer Corporation
IT Operations at Gould Computer Systems Division

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Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Recommended

3 people have recommended Brian

Connections

344 connections

Industry

Venture Capital & Private Equity

Websites

Brian Berliner’s Summary

I currently work for Hewlett-Packard as a member of the Information Management CTO Office.

I am best known as the author of CVS, an extremely popular Open Source revision control tool, and winner of the USENIX STUG Award for 2003. I have been awarded 10 patents for network file systems and have 1 patent pending for Distributed Computing.

I have founded 3 VC-backed software companies and have spent many years working with the Silicon Valley Venture Capital community and Bay Area startups. I currently serve on the BOD of Syncplicity.

Previously, I was Founder, EVP, and Founding CTO for Cassatt Corporation - a company focused on virtualization, IT automation, datacenter power management, and cloud computing. I've held various senior executive and engineering positions at companies like Sun Microsystems, Convex Computer Corporation (IPO), Allocity (Acquired by EMC), ChannelPoint (filed for IPO), and Prisma Supercomputers.

Brian Berliner’s Specialties:

I focus on the following markets:

1) Enterprise IT hw/sw infrastructure, applications, mgmt
2) Virtualization, Cloud Computing, and SaaS
3) Enterprise and cloud storage, file systems
4) "Web 2.0" social networks & ad services
5) Open Source software
6) Mobile & Wireless

Brian Berliner’s Experience

Distinguished Technologist, IM CTO Office

Hewlett-Packard

(Public Company; HPQ; Computer Hardware industry)

October 2009 — Present (2 months)
BOD Member & CEO Advisor

Syncplicity

(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)

April 2008 — Present (1 year 8 months)

Worked closely with CEO to refine and expand business model. Introduced, brokered, and help close Series A funding of $2.35M with True Ventures. Serve as a member of the Board of Directors.
Owner

Sand Hill Venture Consulting

(Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

January 2005 — October 2009 (4 years 10 months)

As an early-stage investor, advisor, and executive coach, I worked with numerous early-stage companies on their business plans, strategies, market positioning, and provided assistance with VC fundraising. Key clients included Sevin Rosen Funds, Akimbi Systems, GuardianEdge Technologies, and Syncplicity.
Advisor to the CEO

Akimbi Systems

(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

January 2006 — July 2006 (7 months)

Member of the Board of Advisors and advisor to the CEO. Akimbi was acquired by VMware in June, 2006.
Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR)

Sevin Rosen Funds

(Partnership; 11-50 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

April 2005 — February 2006 (11 months)

As an EIR for Sevin Rosen Funds, I:

- Investigated and reported on emerging markets
- Maintained a list of 10 biggest opportunities
- Attended all Partner meetings and planning Offsites
- Brought in dealflow
- Participated in due diligence activities
- Worked closely with prospective investment management teams
- Attended 2 Annual Limited Partner meetings
- Assisted with M&A preparedness for Portfolio companies
Founder, EVP & CTO

Cassatt Corporation

(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

April 2003 — November 2005 (2 years 8 months)

As Founder and Founding CTO for Cassatt, I was responsible for the product design center, architecture, roadmap, advanced development, corporate strategy, and partner strategy. Cassatt technology assets and employees were acquired by Computer Associates in June, 2009.
Founder, EVP Engineering

Allocity, Inc.

(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

January 2001 — September 2002 (1 year 9 months)

As EVP of Engineering, I built the business plan that resulted in an $8M Series A investment by Mohr Davidow Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. I built the engineering team from scratch and oversaw the architecture for a distributed virtualization storage subsystem with continuous backup/recover for Microsoft Exchange servers. Allocity was acquired by EMC in November, 2004.
Founder, Chief Architect & VP of B2B Technologies

ChannelPoint, Inc.

(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

January 1997 — January 2001 (4 years 1 month)

Founder and Chief Architect of the ChannelPoint Insure product, which was used by insurance carriers to greatly improve the distribution and installation of insurance products. Also, ran a Business Unit which created a B2B Exchange for Life Insurance carriers, general agents, and brokers.
Senior Staff Engineer

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SUNW; Computer Software industry)

December 1989 — January 1997 (7 years 2 months)

Founder of the first Colorado development site for Sun Microsystems. Contributed to many aspects of SunOS and Solaris. Created PC-CacheFS, a non-volatile caching product for Microsoft Windows systems, which earned 10 patent awards.
Sr. Software Engineer

Prisma Supercomputers

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

September 1988 — December 1989 (1 year 4 months)

Prisma was trying to build the world's fastest scalar supercomputer that also ran the SPARC architecture. Couldn't be built. However, I did a bunch of work to scale SunOS to supercomputer speeds. Also, created and contributed CVS, the Concurrent Versions System, which became the world's most popoular tool for source code revision control.
Sr. Software Engineer

Convex Computer Corporation

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Computer Software industry)

January 1986 — September 1988 (2 years 9 months)

Convex created the world's first vector-processor mini-supercomputer, which competed quite well against the Cray systems for vector-processing applications. It ran BSD UNIX. I dropped in the NFS subsystem, ported the OS to the multiprocessor version of our box, and wrote drivers for NETEX HyperChannel networks. We took the company public in August, 1986, and Convex was later acquired by HP.
IT Operations

Gould Computer Systems Division

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Computer Software industry)

January 1984 — December 1985 (2 years )

Was Compion, then acquired by Gould. We worked on the secure version of the UNIX version that ran on the Gould FireBreather mini-supercomputers, UTX-32.