Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft, has stated in not so many words that he’s not intending to leave his current role in the near future. This comes as questions have been asked recently as to whether he’s the right man for the job in a technology world that…

Neowin.net

Simon Crosby is leaving his post as data center and virtualization CTO at Citrix Systems to launch a new company called Bromium that will utilize virtualization technology to tackle cloud computing security. Crosby, who previously co-founded XenSource, is joined in this venture by XenSource co-founder (and Citrix colleague) Ian Pratt and Phoenix Technologies CTO Gaurav Banga.

The company has raised $ 9.2 million in a Series A funding round from Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Bromium will launch in the second half of this year, although exact details are vague. During a phone call on Tuesday, Crosby hinted at how the company will address cloud security, explaining that cloud computing is innately vulnerable not only at the system level, but also because it involves employees accessing corporate systems from insecure devices. Click on an infected link in an e-mail and — voila! — the company’s system is compromised.

Although cloud computing itself hasn’t suffered from a public security breach the likes of which other large web properties have, Crosby said the threat it to everything under the umbrella of the public web. “[U]nless we solve some of these problems,” he said, “the whole cloud thing is just a big waste of time for everybody.”

As for how Bromium utilizes virtualization, Crosby was willing to divulge a bit of the strategy. Essentially, he explained, the hypervisor is very useful because it can monitor and control activity across the physical server and any virtual machines running across it. Additionally, he noted how, when properly engineered, hypervisors have a very small code base that’s inherently less vulnerable to attack because there are fewer potential holes to exploit.

When asked about the name Bromium, Crosby only suggested to think about another technology product with which it rhymes. It’s easy to see the Chromium connection as it relates to protecting client devices tied to cloud-based resources, but whether there’s a deeper connection to Google’s web operating system remains to be seen.

Crosby shares some more insights behind the creation of Bromium on his blog this morning, and also will discuss the new company during a morning talk at our Structure conference.

Feature image courtesy of Flickr user subcircle.

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Vivek Kundra, the U.S.’ first Chief Information Officer, is stepping down to take a fellowship at Harvard University. Jack Lew, the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget confirmed the news, saying Kundra will leave in August for a joint fellowship position between the Kennedy School and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Kundra, who was previously the CTO of Washington D.C., joined the Obama Administration in March 2009 with a charge of leveraging technology to improve the performance and efficiency of government operations. Lew said Kundra’s efforts saved $ 3 billion in taxpayer dollars, transitioned the federal government to the cloud and strengthened cybersecurity while promoting more transparency and openness.

Om had a good interview with Kundra after he joined and discussed how Kundra planned to help the government tap cloud computing. Kundra announced last month that government agencies will move 78 computer systems to cloud resources over the next year, part of a larger effort to shift $ 20 billion worth of e-mail, website management and claims processing to the cloud. With much of the work still to be done, it will fall to Kundra’s successor to see that the proposed efficiency gains are realized and the shift to the cloud goes through as planned.

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Chrome extensions have played a vital role in taking the popularity of the Chrome browser to a very next level. These extensions have helped in increasing the productivity of the browser and one such useful Chrome extension is Google Calendar. This extension helps you to access Google Calendar on the web, without visiting the calendar [...]

Google Chrome Browser – Plugins and Themes

Four months after CEO Mark Kingdon left the San Francisco-based Linden Lab, the company behind erstwhile hot virtual world, Second Life, interim CEO and founder Philip Rosedale is getting real too. He is leaving the company he started in 1999 in order to pursue his new idea – LoveMachine, a collaboration software company. In a message to the Second Life community, he wrote:

After about four months as interim CEO, working closely with Bob Komin, the management team, and the board, we’ve decided we are ready to start the search for a new CEO. I’ll be leaving day-to-day management of the company and continuing in my role on the board, including helping in the search to find a great CEO. I will also be continuing my work with my new company, LoveMachine. Bob will lead Linden Lab while we conduct the search. It’s been an intense few months of transition, and we all feel like we are in a better place now, with a clearer sense of direction and more focus, and are ready to bring someone new into the mix as a leader.

Second Life was one of the hottest virtual worlds during the early part of the decade but its fortunes have slumped over past few years as it has started to lose attention to newer virtual environments and other shinier distractions. It would be tough for the company to regain its former glory and perhaps that is a good enough reason for its founder to move on to newer  pastures.

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Photo of Philip Rosedale courtesy of Wikipedia

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Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children

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John Wood discovered his passion, his greatest success, and his life’s work not at business school or helping lead Microsoft’s charge into Asia in the 1990s but on a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas. He made the difficult decision to walk away from his lucrative career to create Room to Read, a nonprofit organization that promotes education across the developing world. By the end of 2007, the organization will have established over 5,000 libraries and 400 schools, and awarded long-term scho

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