Tim Howes

Last updated
Tim Howes
Born
Timothy Alan Howes

September 21, 1963
Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Education University of Michigan
Known forCo-creator of LDAP
Co-founder of Opsware
Co-founder of Rockmelt
Co-founder of Know Yourself
Spouse Nancy Howes (m. 2000)
Children Zhi Howes (B. 2004) Maddy Howes (B. 2006)

Tim Howes (born September 21, 1963) is a software engineer, entrepreneur and author. He is the co-creator of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), [1] the Internet standard for accessing directory servers. He co-founded enterprise software company Opsware, web browser company Rockmelt, and children's education company, Know Yourself. He has co-authored two books, several Internet RFCs, and holds several patents. He co-founded and currently serves as CTO for Palona AI: building High EQ, fully customizable AI Agents for businesses that learn about each individual customer and adapt to their needs.

Contents

Education and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

Howes was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering, a Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, all from the University of Michigan.

While at the University of Michigan, Howes was tasked with creating a campus-wide directory service using the X.500 standard. X.500 directories list network resources to make finding them and using them easier for network administrators and users. Unfortunately, accessing X.500 records has required a full-blown X.500 server; there was no such thing as an X.500 client. This led Howes to co-create DIXIE, a directory client for X.500 directories (as well as contribute significant enhancements to improve performance of the Quipu directory). This work formed the basis of his Ph.D. dissertation [2] and was the foundation for LDAP, a standards-based version of DIXIE for both clients and servers. The first publicly available version of LDAP was published in 1993.

Career

Netscape

In 1996, after joining Netscape as directory server architect, Howes was named one of the Top 25 Network Technology Drivers by Network Computing magazine. In 1997, LDAP version 3 won PC Magazine's Technical Excellence: Networking award. Howes was also named a Netscape Fellow, Netscape's highest engineering honor, [3] and was promoted to chief technology officer of Netscape's Server Products Division. [4]

Loudcloud and Opsware

In 1999, shortly after AOL acquired Netscape, Howes left AOL to co-found Loudcloud with Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and In Sik Rhee. Howes ran the engineering department and spearheaded the creation of Opsware, the company's data center automation software to speed-build sites. [5] He was recognized by InfoWorld in 2000 as one of the top 10 e-business innovators. [6] In 2002, Loudcloud shifted businesses and was renamed Opsware. At Loudcloud & Opsware, Howes held the positions of Executive Vice President and CTO. In 2005, Howes was named a "Top 25 CTO's of 2005" by InfoWorld magazine. [7] In 2007 Opsware was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.65 billion, and Howes became vice president and CTO of HP Software. [8]

Rockmelt

In October 2008, Howes left Hewlett-Packard to co-found RockMelt with Eric Vishria. [9] In August 2013, Rockmelt was acquired by Yahoo, and Howes joined Yahoo! as Vice President of Engineering for Yahoo's Mobile and Emerging Products Group. [10] He left the company in December, 2014.

Know Yourself

In 2012, Howes co-founded Know Yourself, [11] a public benefit corporation [12] based in Oakland, California, dedicated to making self literacy a vital part of early education. The company designs and sells products that teach kids about their anatomy, physiology, and psychology, including activity kits, books, comics, and various apparel and lifestyle products. [13]

ClearStory Data

In May 2015, Howes was named Chief Technology Officer for ClearStory Data, a leading cloud-based provider of fast-cycle data intelligence based on Apache Spark. [14] ClearStory Data was acquired by Alteryx in April 2019. [15]

Facebook

In November 2018, Howes joined Facebook as Director of Engineering in Facebook's AI Infrastructure group, where he worked on improving AI developer experience. [16]

Palona AI

In late 2024, Howes co-founded Palona AI with Maria Zhang and Steven Liu. Palona AI is a suite of AI solutions that accelerate the growth of D2C and other consumer-facing businesses.

Boards and awards

Howes has served on the IETF's Internet Architecture Board. [17] He has served as a director on the boards of Blue Coat Systems and Homestead Technologies, as a member of the University of Michigan College of Engineering's National Advisory Committee, as a trustee of SFJazz, and he is technical advisor to various startups. [18] In 2016, Howes was the recipient of the Arbor Networks PhD Research Impact Lecture and Award. [19]

Personal life

Howes lives in Los Altos Hills, California with his wife, Nancy Howes, and their two daughters, Zhi and Madeline.

Related Research Articles

Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. Windows Server operating systems include it as a set of processes and services. Originally, only centralized domain management used Active Directory. However, it ultimately became an umbrella title for various directory-based identity-related services.

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory services play an important role in developing intranet and Internet applications by allowing the sharing of information about users, systems, networks, services, and applications throughout the network. As examples, directory services may provide any organized set of records, often with a hierarchical structure, such as a corporate email directory. Similarly, a telephone directory is a list of subscribers with an address and a phone number.

X.500 is a series of computer networking standards covering electronic directory services. The X.500 series was developed by the Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T). ITU-T was formerly known as the Consultative Committee for International Telephony and Telegraphy (CCITT). X.500 was first approved in 1988. The directory services were developed to support requirements of X.400 electronic mail exchange and name lookup. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) were partners in developing the standards, incorporating them into the Open Systems Interconnection suite of protocols. ISO/IEC 9594 is the corresponding ISO/IEC identification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Andreessen</span> American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer (born 1971)

Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard; he also co-founded Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites. He is an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. Andreessen's net worth is estimated at $1.7 billion.

In computing, a directory service or name service maps the names of network resources to their respective network addresses. It is a shared information infrastructure for locating, managing, administering and organizing everyday items and network resources, which can include volumes, folders, files, printers, users, groups, devices, telephone numbers and other objects. A directory service is a critical component of a network operating system. A directory server or name server is a server which provides such a service. Each resource on the network is considered an object by the directory server. Information about a particular resource is stored as a collection of attributes associated with that resource or object.

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Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California, that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers. Opsware had offices in New York City, Redmond, Washington, Cary, North Carolina, and an engineering office in Cluj, Romania.

The 389 Directory Server is a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server developed by Red Hat as part of the community-supported Fedora Project. The name "389" derives from the port number used by LDAP.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rockmelt</span> Chromium-based web browser

Rockmelt is a discontinued proprietary social media web browser developed by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria based on the Google Chromium project, incorporating social media features such as Facebook chat, Twitter notifications and widgetised areas for other content providers such as YouTube and local newspapers. The Rockmelt web browser project was backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. In April 2013, Rockmelt discontinued its desktop web browser, replacing it with a collaborative project bringing together social elements from various sources.

The SLAPD and SLURPD originally evolved within the long-running project that developed the LDAP protocol. It was developed at the University of Michigan, and was the first Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) software.

Eric Vishria is a general partner at Benchmark, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of Rockmelt and served as vice president at Yahoo following Yahoo's acquisition of Rockmelt.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Illinois Department of Computer Science</span>

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References

  1. ↑ RFC 1777 - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
  2. ↑ Howes, Timothy Alan (1996). A scalable, deployable, heterogeneous internet directory service (Thesis). Ph.D. dissertation. University of Michigan.
  3. ↑ Michigan Engineer Fall/Winter 2003
  4. ↑ Howes/Smith/Good, Timothy/Mark/Gordon (1999). Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services. Macmillan Computer Publishing. ISBN   978-1-57870-070-7.
  5. ↑ Crank It Up. Wired. August 2000
  6. ↑ E-business innovators. InfoWorld. (2000-10-09)
  7. ↑ Opsware's Tim Howes Honored as a "Top 25 CTO of 2005" by InfoWorld. Business Wire (2005-04-11). Retrieved on 2013-07-17.
  8. ↑ https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=204203 LinkedIn profile of Tim Howes. Retrieved on 2014-12-105.
  9. ↑ Liedtke, Michael. "Web Browser Pioneer Backs New Way To Surf Web". NBC News. Archived from the original on April 3, 2016.
  10. ↑ Yahoo acquires Rockmelt. Forbes August 2013
  11. ↑ Know Yourself Launches Literacy Adventure Series for Kids
  12. ↑ Benefit Corporation, Know Yourself, PBC.
  13. ↑ Know Yourself Team. Retrieved on 2017-09-05
  14. ↑ Clearstory Data Appoints Dr. Timothy Howes as Chief Technology Officer; former Vice President of Yahoo, CTO of HP Software, Opsware and Netscape. May 2015
  15. ↑ Alteryx Acquires ClearStory Data to Accelerate Innovation in Data Science and Analytics
  16. ↑ LinkedIn profile of Tim Howes. Retrieved on 2020-04-28
  17. ↑ Alumnus Tim Howes Chosen for Arbor Networks PhD Research Impact Lecture and Award. University of Michigan, CSE News and Awards. (2016-11-10)
  18. ↑ Michigan Engineer Fall/Winter 2003
  19. ↑ Alumnus Tim Howes Chosen for Arbor Networks PhD Research Impact Lecture and Award. University of Michigan, CSE News and Awards. (2016-11-10)
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