Activia Networks hires an experienced CEO

The start-up of Sophia has hired Pierre Liautaud, CEO of @viso, after integrating Sacha Fosse-Parisis, founder of Aucland, and Marc Chanteloube, founder of Compaq France.

The start-up of Sophia, Activia Networks, the European Akamai is getting ready to the international battle, reinforcing its supervision. The company, specialized in the global solutions for the routing of Internet content at the service of network operators, announced on Tuesday May 30th, the nomination of Pierre Liautaud for the position of Chief Executive Officer. Former CEO of @viso, the latter will have as main objectives to lead the second fund raising (it should take place in July 2001 and should reach around 80 million francs) and to develop the activities towards international firms.An international big nameFranck Lyonnet, the doctor of the INRIA who has launched the start-up together with other doctors of the research unit of Sophia has then chosen to leave its position of CEO. He preferred to hand over the control of the company Activia to a manager used to international markets. Pierre Liautaud, 42 years old, benefits from 17 years of experience through management positions within multinationals and start-ups in the sector of the high tech and the e-business.Before joining Avtivia Networks, Pierre Liautaud was CEO of @viso, the European incubator, common subsidiary of Vivendi Universal and Softbank. He also previously had several duties at IBM, in Europe, then in the United States, including the ones of Executive Assistant of the Chairman and CEO, Marketing Vice President of the Internet Division and General Manager of the electronic sector for IBM Corporation. Married and father of four children, Pierre Liautaud is graduated of the Ecole Polytechnique (1977) and of the National grande école for telecommunications (1982).Sacha Fosse-Parisis : the legend of SophiaIt isn't the first reinforcing of its supervision for Activia. In February already, the start-up which accounts among its board of outstanding personalities as Jean-François Abramatic, vice-president of Ilog and president of the World Wide Web Consortium, had integrated two important personalities. Sacha Fosse-Parissis, 30 years old, founder of Aucland with Fabrice Grinda, and founder of the software platform of one of the first big auction websites in Europe, he wished to join the team of Activia hardly a month after he left Aucland. He came to join his friends of the INRIA again (he had obtained a doctorate in IT when he was at the Research Institute) and since then, he holds the position of technical director.Another big name arrived at the same time: Marc Chanteloube, 42 years old, founder of Compaq France, took up the position of vice-president for sales. Graduate of a Master in IT at the RICE university (Houston) and of a MBA from the INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France), he built a strong reputation in terms of commercial development on this market in constant evolution. He started his career at Compaq within the Systems engineering group in Houston, then initiated Compaq France where he was appointed Sales Manager in charge of Corporate Customers.Activia, which hires more than forty people, is from now on ready for a new stage of its development. It has now a high technology which starts to be acknowledged worldwide and formed a dream team. It is worth to be up to a worldwide challenge, which is a really big one.