Linux OS and tools provider MontaVista has announced that Russell “Rusty” Harris is its new president and CEO. Former CEO Thomas Kelly has taken a position as president and CEO of Epicor Software, but will continue to serve as MontaVista's chairman, the company said.

Vince Emery, marketing and communications specialist for MontaVista, said, “Tom is a wonderful, inspirational person who made big improvements. We're all sorry to see him go.”

Emery added, “Things are very good here. This is not something that just happened suddenly. It's been planned for a long time.”

In a statement, MontaVista CTO and Founder James Ready said, “Under Rusty's direction, MontaVista generated record-breaking sales in 2006 and 2007, a remarkable accomplishment.”

Harris (pictured above) originally joined MontaVista in 2006, and was promoted to EVP of worldwide field operations in February 2007. He was previously managing director of the Application Managed Services Division of outsourcing firm ACS, joining the company in 2004 when it acquired another outsourcing firm, BlueStar Solutions.

Harris started as EVP of sales and marketing at BlueStar in 2002, during a period when Kelly was CEO. Prior to that, Harris was EVP for worldwide field operations for Documentum from 1999 to 2002, and he worked at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) from 1989 to 1999. Harris earned a BS degree in Accounting from Indiana University.

Outgoing CEO Tom Kelly

Kelly (pictured at right) served as MontaVista's CEO since May 2006, overseeing a period of rapid expansion, the vendor of embedded Linux distributions and development tools says. Kelly took over as CEO from current CTO and founder, James Ready.

Epicor is a global enterprise applications and services company with annual revenues exceeding half a billion dollars. It is currently focusing on web services and service oriented architecture (SOA) software. Kelly is taking over for former CEO, Mark Duffell. George Klaus will continue serving as Epicor's executive chairman.

Stated new MontaVista CEO Harris, “This is a wonderful opportunity to lead a team that has earned an international reputation for helping our customers get the most from open source.”

In December, MontaVista hired a new CMO and VP of marketing, Larry Macfarlane. At the same time MontaVista also promoted Derek Howard — another alum of BlueStar/ACS — to VP of engineering and services.

 
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