ATLANTA, Aug. 21, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- The Atlanta CEO Council, an exclusive organization for CXOs, today announced that Scott McNealy, chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, will deliver the keynote address Sept. 26 at the ION Venture Forum, the Council's 2007 venture capital event.
"We're excited to have an entrepreneur of Scott's caliber kick-off our event," said Ashish Mistry, president of the Atlanta CEO Council. "As someone who has taken his business from start-up to Silicon Valley icon, Scott will be an inspiration to the entrepreneurs participating in the Forum and member executives alike."
McNealy spent 22 years as CEO before stepping up to the Chairman's role full time in 2006. During his tenure, McNealy grew Sun into a leading provider of network computing infrastructure, all the while maintaining a strong commitment to corporate integrity. In 1986, McNealy took Sun public, creating one of the most notable publicly traded companies in the world. Today, Sun employs over 34,000 employees worldwide, and, Java powers six billion devices.
McNealy's keynote address will take place the morning of Sept. 26, 2007 and will serve as the kick off for the 2007 ION Venture Forum, the South's premier event for venture capitalists and emerging technology companies. Now in its sixth year, the Forum has helped pair over $256 million in funding with companies like JBoss, CipherTrust, Jacket Micro Devices, AllConnect, CardioMEMS, EG Technology, EZ Prints, Oversight Systems, PurDigital(tm) Media, Qcept Technologies and VistaScape. Among these, past presenters CipherTrust and JBoss were sold to Secure Computing and Red Hat, respectively, for a combined value of over $500 million dollars.
If interested in attending the 2007 ION Venture Forum, please visit www.ionventureforum.com to register. You can find more information about the Atlanta CEO Council and its upcoming 2007 schedule at www.atlantaceo.org.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.
About the Atlanta CEO Council
The Atlanta CEO Council is an exclusive organization for C-Level and senior executives that has been serving the community since 1999. The Council membership is comprised of more than 1,000 CEOs and senior executives (CIOs, CFOs, COOs, CTOs,) from leading technology and related companies from across the Southeast. The Atlanta CEO Council focuses on the strategic development and support of the technology community in the metro Atlanta area. Members of the Atlanta CEO Council represent companies that employ more than 50,000 people in the Atlanta region and generate over $10 billion in direct annual revenue for the local economy. To find out more about the Council, please visit http://www.atlantaceo.org.
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