Stephen Pollack leaves PlateSpin but shares his knowledge with others

In the early part of 2000, Stephen Pollack’s name came up quite a bit around the virtualization circle. Of course, back then, the virtualization circle probably consisted of a few hundred of us — the few, the proud, the insane users of black magic technology.

But Pollack’s name continued to grow in the community — a virtualization community that itself grew into the tens of thousands of users that we have today. And PlateSpin, Pollack’s company, grew in popularity as well. So popular in fact that in February 2008, the company was acquired by Novell for $205 million.

Pollack stayed on with Novell after the acquisition but has since left. Recently, his name surfaced again in the media and the blogosphere when he joined the Advisor Board of two startup virtualization companies: Embotics and Enomaly.

So why did Pollack leave Novell? Was it time? And what are his future plans? I was able to catch up with him briefly, and asked him these very questions.

“I left Novell/PlateSpin largely to focus on family having spent my whole career building towards a PlateSpin experience,” said Pollack. “I owe some meaningful time back to my family and myself for a while. I am also using the down time to see what I can do to help other companies succeed in ways we experienced at PlateSpin. I’m not specifically focused on the virtualization market per say as my background covers a variety of industries, market segments and roles over the past 25 years or so, but we are seeing the data center undergo many changes so this is certainly a hot spot to focus on from an investment/startup perspective.”

By joining the Advisor Board of Embotics and Enomaly, Pollack brings with him a wealth of knowledge to share. Shortly after joining the Embotics board, the company announced that they had raised $4 million in Series B funding, a difficult task in this economy.

Pollack stated, “Embotics and Enomaly are examples of young companies yearning to explore some of the new areas emerging in systems management – if I can help them succeed in some way using my experiences, I’m happy to do so. If there are companies who might need some assistance from someone like myself, I’m happy to explore that with them.”

Pollack may no longer be working at Novell, but he said he continues to believe that Novell has an excellent overall business strategy and that the future of the PlateSpin branded products and the team itself is bright, so long as it continues to execute well and be supported by the company overall.

It will be interesting to watch what happens next with Embotics and Enomaly. And just as interesting will be to watch and see where Pollack surfaces next.