Another advisor - Atanu Ghosh!

Well, we did it again! We added another advisor to help us grow the business, Atanu Ghosh from the XORP team at ICSI. Welcome aboard Atanu!

As those of you who follow us know, we have been working with the folks at XORP since our inception and that project is an integral part of our product. What many folks don't know is how we got hooked up with XORP....

In classic Internet form, I heard about XORP from some colleagues and sent in a blind email to the XORP team late one night in early 2005. After a few email forwards, I finally reached Atanu who then invited me to come by and chat with him in Berkeley. Not surprisingly, I was not the first member of the venture capital herd to show up at Atanu's door promising to guide XORP to the promised land of networking milk and honey. Yet, over the weeks and months that followed, we worked together to build a partnership between our company and XORP. I think the XORP and Vyatta teams have shared Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Mediterranean, Asian Fusion and American food over the past 18 months - and we've consumed some beverages along the way too. Good thing that the Bay Area supports a variety of cuisine :)

Back to the point, after our first initial meeting, I went away inspired that the XORP team had developed a project that could be commercialized into a whole product. We worked with the ICSI business folks to develop a sponsorship arrangement that would allow XORP to pursue their research while Vyatta took XORP and other projects as a starting point for our products. I think that the main reason that our relationship got started on the right foot is that we've always wanted XORP to remain open source.

So, Atanu, welcome aboard - I think the ride has just begun!