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Hard Knocks, Age Transform Marc Andreessen
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Marc Andreessen, the brain behind Netscape, has spent the past several years engaged in an old-fashioned pursuit: rebuilding a traditional software company, Opsware, and trying to make it profitable, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'That he is making progress will be evident next week when the company expects to report a hefty quarterly revenue increase. In the process, he has settled down personally, morphing from technical whiz kid into serious businessman — the kind who delegates authority, makes sales calls in suits and dabbles in philanthropy. His experience helping bring Opsware back from the brink of financial disaster — in 2001, the company, then called Loudcloud Inc., staged a disappointing IPO and later had to completely overhaul its business to stay afloat — also has been formative, those who know him say.'"
This company is the former LoudCloud. They changed their name and basically became an entirely different company with an entirely different business plan, but it is still technically the same company.
His new company is called Ning.
Loudcloud was a managed hosting provider, that also made software that allowed servers/network devices to be monitored, deployed and controled with a small number of highly technical staff. The benefit to the customer is/was that they don't have to pay for the high priced technical staff that is needed to host their site. Loudcloud had some of the best people I have ever worked with. It was a great place to work at. Sadly, because of some mistakes, Loudcloud ended up running very low on cash and management decided to sell the hosting part of the company to EDS (which already had a hosting division).
If you have the chance to look at Opsware's newest products (NAS & SAS), you should. I recently saw a demo of the NAS product (Network Automation tool), and it is super slick. The product flat out rocks. You can manage all of your switches, firewalls, routers, and load balancers, through a very slick web interface. A very nice product.