Igor Vladimirovich Sysoev () is a Russian software engineer. In October 2004, he released the
Nginx
(pronounced "engine x" , stylized as NGINX or nginx) is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Russian developer Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 20 ...
Web server
A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...
,
reverse proxy
In computer networks, a reverse proxy or surrogate server is a proxy server that appears to any client to be an ordinary web server, but in reality merely acts as an intermediary that forwards the client's requests to one or more ordinary web s ...
,
load balancer
In computing, load balancing is the process of distributing a set of tasks over a set of resources
''Resource'' refers to all the materials available in our environment which are Technology, technologically accessible, Economics, economically ...
and HTTP cache software and founded
Nginx, Inc.
Sysoev was born in 1970 and grew up in
Almaty
Almaty, formerly Alma-Ata, is the List of most populous cities in Kazakhstan, largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population exceeding two million residents within its metropolitan area. Located in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains ...
,
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
, at the time called Alma-Ata in the
Kazakh SSR
The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Kazakhstan, the Kazakh SSR, KSSR, or simply Kazakhstan, was one of the transcontinental constituent republics of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Located in northern Centr ...
. Sysoev graduated from
Bauman Moscow State Technical University
The Bauman Moscow State Technical University (BMSTU; ), sometimes colloquially referred as the ''Bauman School'' or ''Baumanka'' (), is a public technical university (Institute of technology, polytechnic) located in Moscow, Russia. Bauman Univ ...
in 1994. Since graduation, he has lived in
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
.
On 13 December 2019, Sysoev was detained by the authorities concerning what has been asserted to be a copyright claim, on the basis that Sysoev was an employee of
Rambler in the 2000s when he wrote the early versions of Nginx.
On 16 December 2019, Russian state lender
Sberbank
The Public JSC Sberbank (, initially a contraction of ) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company headquartered in Moscow. As the Russian successor entity of the State Labor Savings Banks System of the USSR, it was ...
, which owns 46.5 percent of Rambler, called an extraordinary meeting of Rambler's board of directors asking Rambler's management team to request Russian law enforcement agencies cease pursuit of the criminal case, and begin talks with Nginx and its owner
F5.
On 18 January 2022, it was announced that Sysoev had left Nginx and F5 "to spend more time with his friends and family and to pursue personal projects".
Biography
Early years
Igor was born in a small town in Kazakhstan, then part of the
USSR
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
into a family of a Soviet military. Later his father was transferred to Alma-Ata, where Igor lived until the age of 18. His computer experience started with Yamaha
MSX
MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, the director at ASCII Corpo ...
computers at the local
Pioneers Palace
Young Pioneer Palaces or Palaces of Young Pioneers and Schoolchildren were youth centers designated for the creative work, sport training and extracurricular activities of Pioneer movement, Young Pioneers (primarily in the Young Pioneers (Sovi ...
(
youth center
A youth center or youth centre, often called youth club, is a place where young people can meet and participate in a variety of activities, for example table football, association football (US soccer, UK football), basketball, table tennis, vid ...
). He recalls his first program being bugged with small mistakes like confusing I and 1 that kept it from running.
Sysoev graduated from high-school in 1987 and tried to join the
MGTU im. Baumana (
technical university
An institute of technology (also referred to as technological university, technical university, university of technology, polytechnic university) is an institution of tertiary education that specializes in engineering, technology, applied science ...
) in
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
,
Russian Socialist Republic, but failed at the first attempt. Back home, he started working at the lab of the Institute of Teacher Education under the USSR
Ministry of Geology. There he started coding in
BASIC
Basic or BASIC may refer to:
Science and technology
* BASIC, a computer programming language
* Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base
* Basic access authentication, in HTTP
Entertainment
* Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film
...
on old
Iskra-2 PCs.
His first significant and distributable program was
antivirus
Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware.
Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name ...
''AV'', created in 1989-1990, written entirely in
assembly code
In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...
that spanned 100
KB. It could search for several known
viruses
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are found in almo ...
raging in the USSR at that time (''Marijuana'', ''Sophia'', ''Vienna'' and other), was copied as a
binary executable and gradually became popular, even being installed on production plants. Grateful users kept sending in more variants of viruses, that were enrolled into new versions, but by 1992 Igor had lost interest in updating it.
Graduating in 1994 he already had experience of
system administration
An IT administrator, system administrator, sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administr ...
for a year for an
oil company
The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest volume products o ...
, and stayed with that company for almost 7 years. He spent half a year in the internet shop XXL.RU, joining
Rambler, one of the leading Russian web portals, in November 13, 2000.
Rambler and Apache modules
There not only did he work as a system administrator, but also resumed coding in his spare time, adapting several
Apache
The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...
modules.
In fall of 2001 he conceived an idea to code a more lightweight and performant web server than Apache. With enough experience as an administrator and a coder, he made many principles of his program similar, while the code itself was original from the start. This work commenced around 2002.
Nginx
The development of Nginx started in 2002 after Igor had been administering the Rambler servers, which had been running Apache, for two years, but those lacked scaling capability beyond 1000 users on a single server. Increasing the number of servers could help, but initiated the problems of its own, and Igor conceived an idea to do scaling inside a server, increasing the number of possible connections. At first the idea was driven by mere technical curiosity, until after about two years he was offered to try it on Zvuki.ru web library of music.
Among the first customers were Zvuki.ru, Estonia dating service Rate.ee and Russian dating service
Mamba.ru. There were zero promotion efforts, as Igor didn't have the ability or desire to do that in addition.
He continued posting program updates on his own website, and the users picked up support for it with documentation and help. A user from Austria started translating it to English, which led to first English-speaking users in 2006.
In 2007 Igor was surprised to see the statistics at
Netcraft
Netcraft is an Internet services company based in London, England. The company provides cybercrime disruption services across a range of industries.
History
Netcraft was founded by Mike Prettejohn in Bath, Somerset. The company provides web s ...
, placing Nginx at 4% of all
web server
A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...
s, with many customers residing in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
.
Igor recalls the principal difference with the popular Apache server - the ability to work with multiple users in a single running process, saving
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...
and
CPU
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...
resources.
With his aversion to
marketing
Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce.
Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...
and
sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred ...
, Igor wasn't seeking to start a commercial company, but first
investor
An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of pr ...
s started approaching him, and in 2010 he had a meeting with Maxim Konovalov, the future
co-founder
An organizational founder is a person who has undertaken some or all of the formational work needed to create a new organization, whether it is a business, a charitable organization, a governing body, a school, a group of entertainers, or any oth ...
of the company. Another factor that influenced the company's creation was Igor meetings with
Serguei Beloussov, Russia's
entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones.
An entreprene ...
, investing in
IT, in December, 2010. He introduced Igor to the idea of "market momentum", with the momentum being quite right to start a commercial business.
Company foundation
The company had international ambitions right from the very beginning, both because it helped attract investments and because the product had a world appeal, while Russia's market was too small and not ready for the paid support model. The two owners had little knowledge of international sales procedures and didn't hope to gain the skills quickly enough. That prompted a goal of opening an American office and hiring a US director.
The company had been staying under the radar for some time, and customers were unaware of the commercial support option. Igor recalls finding his correspondence from 2011 naive, as it suggested the idea of selling technical support for an open source project. It was a popular trend of the time, but few could succeed with it.
By 2013 the company had yet no paying customers with its subscription service Nginx ''Plus'', but was cooperating with
Netflix
Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...
, helping them build a network of
CDN servers based on
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...
and Nginx. The alliance was quickly able to speed each server up from 1 Gbit/s to 10 Gbit/s and then to 40 Gbit/s of traffic.
The same year the company had millions of users of the free version and more than 1500 customers paying for additional modules. Their marketing muscle amounted to zero, Igor recalls, which the company countered by hiring Gus Robertson, former
vice-president
A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...
of
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...
, in 2013.
The company had 10–13 of staff in 2013 and grew to 250 by 2019 in all 5 countries of presence (Russia, United States,
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
,
Singapore
Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
), of whom 70 were
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...
s, 33 employees were located in Moscow.
See also
*
Nginx, Inc.
References
External links
*
NGINX Author Igor Sysoev: "I wanted People to use it, so I made it Open-Source"- Interview on WorldCloudNews
Interview with creator of NGINX Igor Sysoev- translated from the Russian magazine Хакер of November 2011
Interview with Igor Sysoev, author of Apache's competitor NGINX- 5 January 2012,
Free Software Magazine
''Free Software Magazine'' (also known as ''FSM'' and originally titled ''The Open Voice'') is a Web site that produces a (generally bi-monthly) mostly free-content online magazine about free software.
It was started in November 2004 by Austral ...
NGINX and F5: Our Continued Commitment to Open Source- March 19, 2019,
Nginx Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sysoev, Igor
Russian computer programmers
Free software programmers
1970 births
Living people
Bauman Moscow State Technical University alumni
People from Almaty