Redwood City, CA Ð NeXT has continued its track record of hiring heavy hitters from the computer industry in its latest round of executive hiring. All major positions are now filled, except in the system software division, which is also losing one of its key employees.
William Parkhurst, one of the principal architects of NeXTSTEP and currently NeXTSTEP '486 director, will leave to start his own NeXT software company in Hawaii. Avi Tevanian will take charge of all NeXTSTEP ports. Steve Jobs remains as the acting head of the division.
Tom Lavelle, 42, was named vice-president and general counsel as well as secretary of NeXT. Formerly group counsel for the components group at Intel, which includes all chip manufacturing, Lavelle's legal specialities include intellectual property law and securities work, key legal concerns for NeXT. He is also expert in anti-trust litigation.
"I hope NeXT is in a position to have that problem someday," said Lavelle, who will serve on the pivotal policy team at NeXT.
Brent Bachman, 37, takes over as director of software marketing. For the last nine years, Bachman has been at Rational Systems, most recently as general manager of a group that helped customers building large systems based on custom applications, NeXT's current marketing focus.
"My mission is to help NeXT become more of a software company," said Bachman. "With the move into the '486 market, we can realize more revenue from the tremendous added value of NeXTSTEP."
Also, Jon Rubenstein has been named vice-president of hardware engineering.