Atipa Linux Solutions has announced that Marc Torres, formerly president of the Linux distribution company SuSE, is now the Chief Technology Officer for Atipa. Said Atipa CEO Jason Talley, “high-quality, talented people with Linux expertise are the critical competitive difference in our business.”

Mr. Torres brings thirteen years of multi-platform UNIX experience to Atipa, one of the largest suppliers of pre-configured Linux workstations, servers and clusters. A major contributor in the Linux community since 1992, he currently servers on advisory boards of the Linux Professional Institute, Linux Open Hardware Certification project and the Atlanta Linux Showcase, among many other organizations.

Of the opportunity to lead research and development at Atipa, Mr. Torres said “Atipa presented a new challenge for me professionally. By accepting this leadership role I am committed to developing a whole new suite of technology innovations to complement the existing Atipa solutions.”

“Expanding our research and development teams and leading them to new levels of achievement is my first priority,” he added.

Mr. Torres has been credited for achieving a 200% growth rate for SuSE overall, including a 350% increase in sales, during his tenure there. Noted Dirk Hohndel, SuSE CTO: “Because of Marc's contributions to the development of our U.S. subsidiary, as well as his speaking engagements and participation in developer conferences, SuSE elevated its presence within the U.S. market and demonstrated our technical superiority.” Mr. Hohndel was previously Vice-President of Strategic Development at SuSE.

Atipa Linux Solutions was most recently in the news announcing the availability of their new Linux firewall appliance, the Atipa Monolith Firewall, which features “dynamic packet filtering”, and a recent deal with Motorola to use Atipa's 200+ node cluster system to enhance Motorola's atomic and device scale modeling for development of future semiconductors.