Short Takes - People & Positions:

FOUR NEW MEMBERS JOIN ARGONNE BOARD OF GOVERNORS

The University of Chicago has named four new members to its Board of Governors for the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

The university, which operates Argonne for the Department of Energy, names the board members to oversee and guide Argonne management. Members of the board are chosen from faculty, administrators and trustees of the University of Chicago, from other universities and organizations, and from industry. In addition, the director of Argonne is an ex-officio member of the board.

The new members are Walter Massey, president of Morehouse College; Charles V. Shank, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Rick Smalley, physics professor at Rice University; and Jim Utterback, professor in the Sloan School of Management and in the School of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

XQUERY TECHNOLOGY EVANGELIST JONATHAN BRUCE JOINS DATADIRECT TECHNOLOGIES

DataDirect Technologies, the leading provider of components for connecting software to data, today announced the appointment of Jonathan Bruce to XQuery technology evangelist. A technical and specification architect with experience leading industry standards such as Java, J2EE and SQL, Jonathan will be responsible for advancing the XQuery and XQJ standards and driving the adoption of DataDirect's new XQuery products.

Jonathan joins DataDirect from Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he served as the JDBC specification lead and architect for the Java Platform. While at Sun Microsystems, Jonathan led four Java Specification Request efforts and successfully patented technology that now forms an integral part of the latest J2SE and J2EE platforms. Jonathan's background also includes business development, sales support as well as inbound and outbound licensing consulting for the Java platform and database-dependent components of Sun's Java Enterprise System.

Jonathan will lead the company's strategic beta program and official release of DataDirect XQuery planned for later this year, in addition to DataDirect's comprehensive offering of standards-based data connectivity components. DataDirect XQuery is an embeddable software product based on the XQuery and XQJ standards that enables Java developers at independent software vendors and in corporate IT departments to access relational and XML data sources with a single XQuery query.

Jonathan is co-author of the book JDBC API Tutorial and Reference, Third Edition, and frequently speaks at industry conferences, contributes numerous articles and frequently BLOGs on Java.net. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Dublin's Trinity College in Ireland.

SCALI APPOINTS INDUSTRY SPECIALIST TO ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Scali, a leader in commercial Scalable Cluster Control, today announced the strategic appointment of Phil Weaver as non-Executive member to its Board of Directors. Weaver has 25 years' of experience and extensive industry knowledge across key technology sectors, including platform computing, software, systems integration and network management.

As Scali continues to extend its value proposition and technical expertise to an increasingly global and commercial market, the appointment of Weaver to the board highlights this continued drive and brings greater opportunity for growth in the North American market. Weaver is currently President and CEO of Nuvo Network Management, a publicly traded company and a leading provider of remote managed IT operations.

Previously, Phil Weaver was President of Platform Computing, the industry leader in Grid Computing, where he built up strategic partnerships with technology leaders such as IBM and Hewlett Packard and a strong world wide distribution and vertical industry focus. He has also spent eight years at HP, was COO of Jetform, a leader in workflow and server based electronic forms, and spent three years as the Vice President of Business Development at Systemhouse, an outsourcing and systems integration company. Weaver has significant expertise in generating exceptional levels of profitability and growth in companies.

ANTs SOFTWARE INC. APPOINTS BOYD PEARCE CEO AND DIRECTOR

ANTs software inc., a developer of high-performance SQL database management systems, today announced the appointment of Boyd Pearce as chief executive officer and director on the company's board. Mr. Pearce will remain president while resigning his position as chief operating officer to take over CEO responsibilities, effective February 1, 2005. Francis Ruotolo, current CEO, will remain an employee and chairman of the board of directors.

Mr. Pearce was appointed ANTs president and COO in October 2004 after an extensive search. He began his career with 15 years at IBM in R&D, sales and marketing. Since then he has led organizations in a range of capacities including product development, sales, and marketing, and as vice president and general manager for Hitachi Data Systems and Teradata, the latter of which was subsequently acquired by NCR.

MICROSOFT'S NATIONAL TECHNOLOGY OFFICER TO KEYNOTE ANNUAL TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL DINNER

The Virginia Piedmont Technology Council (VPTC), the premier organization for promoting and supporting technology businesses in Virginia's Piedmont region, announced that Stuart McKee, the national technology officer for Microsoft Corporation, will be this year's keynote speaker at its annual Tech Awards dinner in May. McKee, who is responsible for driving a comprehensive set of technical and business strategies for Microsoft's U.S. public sector including education, state/local and federal government segments, will discuss "How Technology Is Changing the Way We Live, Work and Play."

As part of the annual event, VPTC is now accepting nominations for its seventh annual Tech Awards. The deadline for submitting nominations is Friday, February 25, 2005, and award winners will be announced at a dinner to be held on May 3 in Charlottesville. The Tech Awards honors individuals and organizations that are addressing technology issues affecting the Central Virginia region and its markets, and their place in the global economy. Through the creation, commercialization, application or use of technology, award recipients have made noteworthy contributions to the marketplace in the past year.

VISUAL NUMERICS PROMOTES MAURA MCGINNITY TO VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKET STRATEGY AND CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT

Visual Numerics, Inc., a leading provider of numerical analysis and visualization software, announced that Maura McGinnity has been promoted from Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development to Vice President of Market Strategy and Corporate Development. In her new role, McGinnity will focus on expanding Visual Numerics' presence in key growth areas, such as business intelligence and predictive analytics.

Under McGinnity's leadership, Visual Numerics has launched new solutions for the business analytics markets and has established valuable strategic partnerships with IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Cray, among others. She is responsible for managing Visual Numerics' business development, product management, education programs and marketing, as well as helping to evolve the company from a tools to a solutions provider. In addition, McGinnity manages all corporate branding and communications. Finally, she led the creation of Visual Numerics' Knowledge in Motion(TM) program, which focuses exclusively on providing analytics technology to the academic community for curriculum development and research. Today, professors from prominent institutions such as Hong Kong University, the University of Colorado, Columbia University and the University of Texas use the JMSL Numerical Library to develop new applications and instructional aids for a variety of computationally-based disciplines such as engineering, mathematics, statistics and computer science.

In addition to her executive responsibilities at Visual Numerics, McGinnity leads a strategic initiative for SC 05, called HPC Analytics. This new initiative at the annual Supercomputing Conference helps support and promote the convergence of advanced analytics and visualization in the high- performance computing space, including a high profile competition, the HPC Analytics Challenge.

CA ELECTS FORMER IBM EXECUTIVE AS INDEPENDENT DIRECTOR

Computer Associates International, Inc. announced that retired IBM executive William E. McCracken has been elected to the Company's Board of Directors. This expands CA's Board to 11 members, including eight independent directors.

McCracken, 62, was with IBM for more than 36 years in numerous executive positions. Most recently, he was a member of its Chairman's Worldwide Management Counsel and served as general manager of IBM's printing division. Prior to that, he held the post of general manager, marketing, sales and distribution for IBM PC Company and was president of IBM's EMEA and Asia PC Company.

After retiring from IBM in 2001, McCracken formed Executive Consulting Group LLC.

McCracken serves on the Boards of IKON Corporation and Lutheran Social Ministries of New Jersey, one of the state's largest providers of affordable housing. He is also vice president of the Board of Plainfield Habitat for Humanity and a member of the New Jersey State Anti-Poverty Network.

FORCE10 NETWORKS NAMES DENNIS O'CONNELL VICE PRESIDENT OF U.S. CENTRAL REGION

Force10 Networks, the pioneer in Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet innovation, today announced that Dennis O'Connell has been named vice president of the U.S. central region. An industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience increasing sales revenue and market share, O'Connell will lead Force10's efforts to further identify and develop new high-growth market opportunities in the region.

O'Connell has served in a variety of sales leadership roles, including as director for Cisco Systems' central field operations, where he more than doubled the annual revenue of the sales organization to more than $400 million. He has also held senior sales and management leadership positions with Meridian IT Solutions, PictureTel Corporation and Wang Laboratories.

O'Connell holds a BA in marketing from Western Illinois University and an MBA from Roosevelt University.

O'Connell's addition to Force10 marks a continued expansion of the company's sales team to better serve its growing and potential customer bases. Already, Force10 has a foothold in vertical markets such as media and entertainment, oil and gas, portals, research, education and service providers. With its growing sales team, Force10 is expanding its customer base both within these verticals as well as developing new markets and opportunities.