Martín Casado is a Spanish-born American

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

, and

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 most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...

. He is a

general partner General partner is a person who joins with at least one other person to form a business. A general partner has responsibility for the actions of the business, can legally bind the business and is personally liable for all the partnership's debts an ...

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

, and was a pioneer of

software-defined networking Software-defined networking (SDN) technology is an approach to network management that enables dynamic, programmatically efficient network configuration in order to improve network performance and monitoring, making it more like cloud computing t ...

, and a co-founder of

Nicira Networks Nicira is a company focused on software-defined networking (SDN) and network virtualization. Nicira created their own proprietary versions of the OpenFlow, Open vSwitch, and OpenStack networking projects. Nicira was co-founded in 2007 by Marti ...

Early life and education

Martín Casado was born around 1976 in Cartagena,

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. He received his bachelor's degree from

Northern Arizona University Northern Arizona University (NAU) is a public research university based in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was founded in 1899 as the final public university established in the Arizona Territory, 13 years before Arizona was admitted as the 48th state. ...

in 2000. In 2017, he received an honorary doctorate from the same university. He worked for

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

doing computational science followed by work with the intelligence community from December 2000 to September 2006. Casado attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

from 2002 to 2008, earning both his Masters and PhD in computer science. While at Stanford, he began development of OpenFlow, an open source protocol that enabled

. During this period, he co-founded Illuminics Systems with

Michael J. Freedman Michael J. Freedman is an American computer scientist who is the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, where he works on distributed systems, networking, and security. He is also the cofounder of database company ...

. His PhD thesis, "Architectural Support for Security Management in Enterprise Networks,” under advisors

Nick McKeown Nicholas (Nick) William McKeown FREng, is the SVP/GM of the Network and Edge Group at Intel and a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments at Stanford University. He has also started technology companies in Silicon ...

Scott Shenker Scott J. Shenker (born January 24, 1956 in Alexandria, Virginia) is an American computer scientist, and professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the leader of the Extensible Internet Group at the Intern ...

and

Dan Boneh Dan Boneh (; he, דן בונה) is an Israeli-American professor in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford University. In 2016, Boneh was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the theory an ...

, was published in 2008.

Career

In 2007, Casado co-founded Nicira Networks along with McKeown and Shenker, a

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

based company working on network virtualization. Along with McKeown and Shenker, Casado promoted software-defined networking. His PhD work at Stanford University led to the development of the OpenFlow protocol, which was promoting using the term

(SDN). McKeown and Shenker co-founded the

Open Networking Foundation The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a non-profit operator-led consortium. It uses an open source business model aimed at promoting networking through software-defined networking (SDN) and standardizing the OpenFlow protocol and related tech ...

(ONF) in 2011 to transfer control of OpenFlow to a not-for-profit organization. In July 2012,

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

acquired Nicira for $1.26 billion. At VMware he was made a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

and held the positions chief technology officer (CTO) for networking and security and

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of the Networking and Security Business Unit. Casado was a 2012 recipient of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM)

Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...

as for helping create the Software Defined Networking movement. In 2015 Casado, McKeown and Shenker received the NEC C&C Foundation award for SDN and OpenFlow. In 2015, he was selected for Forbes’ “Next Gen Innovators 2014.” Casado left VMware and joined

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm

in February 2016 as its ninth general partner. Andreessen Horowitz had been one of the investors Nicira, contributing $17.7 million to the start-up venture.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Casado, Martin Northern Arizona University alumni Stanford University alumni 1970s births Living people