Interviewed by Uday Kapoor on 2017-02-28 in Mountain View, CA X8120.2017
© Computer History Museum
Andrew Heller has had a distinguished career in the computing industry spanning over 46 years of tireless service. In his 23 years at IBM he was honored by being the youngest person ever appointed to the prestigious post of IBM Fellow, along with numerous other technical and business honors. While at IBM he served in many technical and management capacities including the job of Corporate Director of Advanced Technology Systems directing a wide range of R & D activities within IBM. He also served as a member of the Executive Committee On Technology (ECOT) and on the executive Technical Review Board (TRB) overseeing long term technology commitments for the company across the operating units. In his last position at IBM, he served as the General Manager of the Independent Business Unit responsible for UNIX and workstation activities within IBM. The Independent Business Unit created, architected and developed the AIX operating system and the RISC RS 6000 workstation and server line. Today’s Power PC and SP2 are also direct descendants of that activity.
After leaving IBM, he worked in the venture capital firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield, and Byers, (KPCB) a well known Silicon Valley Venture capital pioneer, as a consulting partner where he worked with numerous start up companies helping them both in formulating and defining their business plans and in the early stage execution of those plans. He represented KPCB on the boards of S3, Rambus, n-Chip etc.. During this time he also served as a consultant for IBM and Xerox. Until the end of 1993 he served as the Chairman and CEO of HaL Computer Systems, a very aggressive hardware/software system startup with operations in both Silicon Valley and in Austin, Texas. Hal produced the first commercial 64 bit microprocessors and the unix based operating system modified to support this operating mode (almost 10 years before Intel produced their first commercial 64 bit microprocessors). He stayed until the company was purchased by Fujitsu, Ltd. and for several years continued as a consultant to Fujitsu.
He is currently involved in working with early stage startup companies and serves on numerous boards of directors and advisory boards of high technology, software, networking, data mining, and other related technology companies. In addition he serves on several nonprofit boards in Austin in the music, arts and medical fields. He continues to operate his privately held consulting firm of Heller Associates based in Austin Texas. His current client list boasts worldwide clientele representing many of the largest corporations in the semiconductor, computer, communications, and software industries.
* Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information – http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102706897
Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum’s Oral History Collection.
Lot number: X8120.2017
Catalog number: 102706898
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