Sun co-founder Bechtolsheim steps back

Andreas von Bechtolsheim plans to step down as chief systems group architect to become chairman and chief development officer at Arista Networks, a networking hardware startup von Bechtolsheim co-founded.

Arista specialises in hardware for 10Gb networks and cloud networking systems. The company has also landed Cisco veteran Jayshree Ullal to serve as chief executive.

Von Bechtolsheim is credited with inventing the first Sun workstation and was part of the four-man team that founded the company in 1982. After leaving to work on startup ventures, he rejoined Sun in 2004.

Sun stressed that von Bechtolsheim will not be leaving the company completely. He will still work in an architect role with the firm's x64, storage and HPC server units.

"Andy has made a career of entrepreneurial ventures, and we look forward to his continued involvement with Sun, as his passion for innovation has helped to pioneer some of the world's leading technologies," Sun said in a statement.

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