Trebia Taps Stroh as CEO

Storage network chip startup Trebia Networks Inc. has recruited industry veteran Ruediger (Rudi) Stroh as its CEO following a management shakeup at the company in which former CEO Bob Conrad was booted out the door (see Trebia Ousts CEO).

"We have a great CEO on board. He is Ruediger Stroh," says Atiq Raza, principal at Raza Foundries, which is an investor in Trebia. Raza, who is on Trebia's board of directors, would not discuss the circumstances behind the changes in the company's management team.

In February, Trebia's investors apparently ousted Conrad and VP of engineering Willie Anderson in a dispute over the company's burn rate and its strategic direction, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Stroh could not immediately be reached for comment. A Trebia spokeswoman would not provide any information, saying, "We still have not made a public statement regarding our new CEO."

Most recently, Stroh was CEO of Systemonic AG, a startup based in Dresden, Germany, which developed chipsets for 802.11 wireless networking systems. Systemonic was acquired by Royal Philips Electronics NV (NYSE: PHG; Amsterdam: PHI) in December 2002.Prior to joining Systemonic in April 2001, he was senior VP of the Computer and Network Peripherals Group at Infineon Technologies AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: IFX), another German chip company. He also served as VP and general manager of Siemens AG's (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) computer peripherals division.

Trebia makes chips that accelerate storage network traffic, including iSCSI. The market for storage-acceleration silicon is extremely competitive. Players in this space include Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT), Alacritech Inc., Astute Networks Inc., Emulex Corp. (NYSE: ELX), Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC), and Silverback Systems Inc. (see Silverback Makes iSCSI Howl, Vendors Chip Into IP Storage, and Intel Wiggles Its TOE).

Incorporated in July 2000, Trebia has raised $40 million from investors including Raza, Allianz of America Inc., Atlas Venture, BancBoston Ventures, Deutsche Banc Alex Brown LLC, Kodiak Venture Partners, and VantagePoint Venture Partners (see Trebia's $40M Secret).

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch