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Former IBM executive is new CEO at World Wide Web Consortium

Jeffrey Jaffe (W3C photo)

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NEW YORK – Jeffrey Jaffe, a former executive with IBM and other tech companies, is the new chief executive officer at the World Wide Web Consortium.

The Web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, is remaining the director of the W3C, which writes the technical rules designed to ensure that Web pages can work using different software, different computers and different languages.

Jaffe, 55, is a former vice president of technology at IBM and most recently served as chief technology officer at Novell. He replaces Steve Bratt, 53, who left the position in mid-2009 to run a Web foundation also started by Berners-Lee.

Jaffe, 55, has been vice president of technology at IBM Corp. and most recently chief technology officer at Novell Inc. He also was an executive at Bell Labs.

In an interview with Cnet, Jaffe said his priorities will be funding, communications and interacting with W3C stakeholders while Berners-Lee focuses on technical matters. He also said his focus “needs to be more outside the organization rather than inside.

He cited the W3C incubator group called XG as an example. "One of the reason for XG, for incubation groups, is there is a priority to strengthen the outreach to the developer community," Jaffe said.

"Tim is passionate about the fact that you need a variety of processes to deal with different situations and different issues," Jaffe added in his CNET interview. "Right now the W3C has a very robust, very open process that brings in everyone's views. There are times there are hot new technologies where you need a faster path to get to the answer quickly. You need a variety of mechanisms. That will be a focus - trying to have highly robust approaches as well as streamlined approaches."

Jaffe’s bio from the W3C Web site:

After receiving a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 1979, Jeff joined IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. During his tenure at IBM, he held a wide variety of technical and management positions, including vice president, Systems and Software Research, corporate vice president of technology, and general manager of IBM's SecureWay business unit, where he was responsible for IBM's security, directory, and networking software business.

Jeff then served as president of Bell Labs Research and Advanced Technologies, where he established new facilities in Ireland and India, and served as chairman of the board of the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium.

Most recently, Jeff served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Novell. He was responsible for Novell's technology direction, as well as leading Novell's product business units.

Jeff was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the Advisory Committee for the Presidential Commission for Critical Infrastructure Protection. He has also chaired the Chief Technology Officer group of the Computer Systems Policy Project, and has served on the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. He is a Fellow of ACM and the IEEE.

Dr. Jaffe holds a BS in Mathematics and an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in addition to his Doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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