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By Michael Eggebrecht
Veteran Sun Microsystems executive Dean Nelson has joined eBay as senior director of global data center strategy, architecture and operations, the online marketplace operator announced today.
Previously senior director of global lab and data center design services in Sun's work environments unit, Nelson is also the co-founder of Data Center Pulse, a one-year-old a data center user group with 1,004 members at 633 companies across 92 industries. He frequently blogs on the Data Center Pulse Web site.
Nelson will lead eBay's data center strategy as it works to finish a Utah facility the company says "is being built to LEED Gold standards and will serve as a showcase for the latest innovations in electrical, mechanical and cooling technologies."
Nelson, in a post on Data Center Pulse, said that when he joined Sun in 1989, he "was as green as you could get. I had no idea what Sun built, who they sold to, or how they got there. I had never touched Unix and didn't know the difference between a compute server and the server at Denny's. What I did know was that I was good at electronics."
This is second time Nelson has left Sun, which has seen a number of personnel depart following Oracle's agreement to acquire the company. In 2000, Nelson joined telecommunications start-up Allegro Networks after completing "the largest project of my life -- an industry bake-off of networking equipment to test the maximum configuration of interfaces on Sun's largest servers," he said on his blog. Nelson returned to Sun after Allegro closed its doors in 2003
The Oracle acquisition, and perhaps the uncertainty surrounding it as European regulators slow the deal, prompted Nelson to leave again. "When the official announcement came through that Oracle intended to purchase Sun, it caused many people to rethink their future," he said.
In eBay, Nelson said, he found the opportunity he was looking for. "They were focused on innovation and enabling their business to grow as fast as the Internet," he said, adding, "What also aligns perfectly are many of the focus areas we have defined for Data Center Pulse. eBay is aligned and believes in the vision -- influence the industry through end users. I consider eBay one of the Uber end-users. They consume products for the datacenter, they don't sell any into it."
In a statement, Mazen Rawashdeh, VP of technology operations for eBay Marketplaces, said: "We are bringing the best technologists into key leadership positions at eBay, and Dean will be responsible for driving the datacenters which are at the very core of our business."
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