Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 9, 2002
NEW POSITION: Chief executive and director, Jibe Inc., Tampa
PREVIOUS POSITION: Senior vice president of products, Veritas Software Corp., Mountain View, Calif.
Still in its early stages, Jibe Inc., a startup software company launched in January 2001, has appointed Neal Ater as chief executive and to its board of directors.
The Tampa company develops "content delivery networks" that enable companies to distribute media, such as video clips, over the Internet far faster than otherwise possible and at less cost.
Jibe software targets two markets, Ater said. First, the corporate market that uses the video files for training or communications; the second market allows companies to send high-speed video feeds to consumers. The latter could be a news service providing video clips on breaking news to subscribers or a company providing consumers -- for a fee -- with entertainment video, clips or text.
"We facilitate a much faster, high-speed downloading of material to a customer's desktop," Ater said.
For example, if a customer wanted to download the British Open from CNN, "Our technology locates who has that content and then can download it from multiple sources, so if it normally took 30 minutes to download, we can theoretically do it in one minute."
Jibe also offers a "progressive downloading" feature that allows a consumer to view the beginning of a video clip as the clip is downloading to the computer. "Napster really started this, peer-to-peer downloading," Ater said. "Conceptually, it's very similar."
Ater's move from Veritas Software Corp. is a major shift from a big corporation to a small operation with fewer than 20 employees. Veritas, a software storage company, last year did $1.5-billion in sales with more than 1-million customers, Ater said, and he was responsible for the company's backup products. "The scope is much different," he said.
Before joining Veritas in 1999, Ater was vice president of research and development at Seagate Software. In 1994, Ater co-founded and was president of OnDemand Software, a systems management software company offering Windows-based software. He joined Seagate when it acquired OnDemand in 1996.
From 1977 to 1993, Ater was senior vice president of software at Goal Systems International, a mainframe systems management software company. Goal Systems grew from a startup company to having more than 1,200 employees before being acquired by Legent Software in 1992.
"I experienced that growth. I've been through this before," he said. "I like working with small companies and making them big."
Ater earned a bachelor's degree in systems analysis from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1973 and an MBA in 1976 from Xavier University in Cincinnati.
"I've always been interested in technology and mathematics," he said, but since a mathematics major required two years of a foreign language, Ater said, he switched to computers.
He has had homes in Naples or Orlando, where he now lives, for several years. With new offices on Harbour Island, Ater said he plans to move to Tampa.
Ater, 51, said he looks forward to the slower pace of the fledgling Jibe.
"At Veritas, I was managing 600 people. I got way over 100 e-mails a day. I was reading e-mails before bed (and) first thing in the morning. I drove my wife crazy."
At Jibe, the atmosphere is much more relaxed. "Everybody sits right outside your door," Ater said. "There's no need to do e-mail."
Ater said he likes the challenge of building companies. "I think it's the personal satisfaction of new challenges and conquering new challenges -- something you can focus your attention at, and you're in control with the situation.
"It's very complex subject matter, but if you're willing to work, it's something you can get a handle on," he said. "Besides, it always boils down to 1s and 0s."