| Lew Cirne | |
|---|---|
| Born | Canada |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | US Citizen |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College |
| Occupation | Computer Scientist, CEO |
| Employer | New Relic |
| Known for | Application Performance Management |
| Title | Founder, CEO |
| Website | |
| http://lewsblog.newrelic.com/ | |
Lewis Karl "Lew" Cirne (born February 21, 1970) is a Canadian-American Silicon Valley-based technologist and serial entrepreneur who is known as the creator and driving force in application performance management technology (APM). Cirne is Founder & CEO of New Relic.[1]
Cirne pioneered APM software technology for the enterprise as the founder and CEO of Wily Technology, which was acquired by CA, Inc. (NYSE: CA) in March 2006 and Cirne served as chief technical officer at the company until 2008.[2] Cirne is known as the father of APM.
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Lew Cirne was raised in Port Hope, Ontario. His parents, Geoff and Jean Cirne, were immigrants to Canada from Manchester, England. Lew Cirne attended Trinity College School and in 1993 received an A.B. from Dartmouth College with a major in Computer Science.[3]
In 1998, Cirne founded Wily Technology. He was responsible for developing Wily Technology's vision of enterprise class application performance management and ie credited with bringing it to the Java platform. Cirne was one of the chief technologist's and driving force in enterprise application performance and availability. He served as Wily Technology's President and Chief Executive Officer until October 2001.[4]
The "Wily" name came out of Cirne's previous experiences in the development and marketing of advanced technologies, where the most impressive and valuable were referred to affectionately as "Wily Technology." The Wily name was selected to embody the creative and aggressive approach to the company's products and business culture. After eight years of consistent growth, Wily was acquired by CA for $375 million in March 2006.[5]
Prior to founding Wily Technology, Cirne held senior technical positions at Apple Computer[6] and Hummingbird Communications. Cirne holds patents in the area of software related to application performance management, some of which were sold in the acquisition in 2006 of Wily Technology by CA, Inc.
In 2008, Cirne turned his eye to the software as a service model while an entrepreneur in residence for Benchmark Capital and founded New Relic. New Relic is a top SaaS provider of web application performance management that let developers and ops teams quickly and cost effectively monitor, troubleshoot, and tune application performance in real time. More than 7,700 organizations use New Relic. (as of February 2011)[7]
"New Relic" is an anagram of Lew Cirne's name.
Cirne is generally credited as the inventor of application performance management.[8] He created the original design of and holds several patents in this area of expertise. Cirne has also made major contributions to several other software systems.
In 2006, Cirne and Wily chairman David Strohm announced a $1 Million Gift to Dartmouth College.[9] The gift supported the creation of an endowed scholarship called the Wily Scholars Fund, and to establish a fund for undergraduate internships in early-stage technology companies, called the Wily Initiative Fund.