Barton formerly was vice-president and general manager of Silicon Graphics' Media Systems Division. The division focuses on developing and marketing servers for the emerging interactive, digital media and professional media authoring marketplaces.
"As the individual who will lead Interactive Digital Solutions, Jim Barton brings with him an impressive understanding of the complexities of interactive technology," said Dan Stanzione, president of AT&T Switching Systems and chairman of the new company.Prior to heading Silicon Graphics' Media Systems Division, Barton was vice-president of advanced technology, where he helped define the company's strategy to promote a complete system architecture for interactive media."Jim's experience in engineering high-performance computing and server software make him a great choice for leading this new company," Stanzione added.
"No one is better equipped than Jim Barton to lead this new company into the interactive frontier," said Edward R. McCracken, chairman and chief executive officer of Silicon Graphics.
"Since starting at Silicon Graphics eight years ago as an operating system architect, Jim has taught us all important lessons about what it takes to bring advanced multiprocessing and media server technologies to people in all disciplines," McCracken said.
His other posts at Silicon Graphics have included vice-president and general manager of the System Software Division and director of engineering for server and workstation systems development.
Before joining Silicon Graphics in 1986, Barton held computer architecture engineering posts at Hewlett-Packard Company in Cupertino, California, and Bell Laboratories/AT&T Information Systems in Denver, Colorado.
Barton received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he later earned a master's degree in computer science. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, the Association for Computing Machinery and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. He has published several papers and articles on UNIX and multiprocessing.
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