COMMERCENET - Key Persons
Allan M. Schiffman instituted and oversaw CommerceNet's investment activities and fellows program. Over the years he was advisor to and a board-member for several of CommerceNet's portfolio companies.
Mr. Schiffman's engineering career spans system modeling, processor architecture, programming languages, software development tools, internet applications, and communications security. His current interests include secure distributed systems, user-centric authentication, privacy, and electronic commerce. Mr. Schiffman is sometimes called to be an expert witness and consultant in IP litigation cases.
Prior to CommerceNet, Mr. Schiffman was founder and chief technology officer of Terisa Systems, a pioneer in Web security. Earlier, Mr. Schiffman was chief technology officer at Enterprise Integration Technologies, a leader in the development of Internet electronic commerce and the creator of CommerceNet. He played a significant role in creating many innovative systems that paved the way for electronic commerce, including Mastercard/Visa's payment card protocol (SET), the first Web security protocol (S-HTTP), and the first secure Web browser (Secure Mosaic, deployed by CommerceNet in 1994).
Earlier in his career, Mr. Schiffman led the development of a family of high-performance Smalltalk implementations that gained both academic recognition and commercial success. These systems included several innovations now widely adopted, such as the "just-in-time compilation" technique universally used by Java virtual machines.
Mr. Schiffman holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Founder
- Fellow and Former Board Member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence
Dr. Jay M. ("Marty") Tenenbaum, a world-renowned Internet commerce pioneer and visionary, founded CommerceNet (1994) to accelerate business use of the Internet. While at CommerceNet, he co-founded Veo Systems (1997), the company that pioneered the use of XML for automating business-to-business transactions. When Commerce One acquired Veo Systems in January 1999, Dr. Tenenbaum became chief scientist and was instrumental in shaping the company's business and technology strategies for the Global Trading Web.
Post Commerce One, Dr. Tenenbaum was an officer and director of Webify Solutions (sold to IBM in 2006) and Medstory (sold to Microsoft in 2007). Currently, his focus is on transforming healthcare and accelerating therapy development through collaborative e-science. Towards that end, he founded CollabRx, which builds "virtual biotechs" to help slash the time, cost, and risk of developing new therapies."
Prior to CommerceNet, he was founder and CEO of Enterprise Integration Technologies, the first company to conduct a commercial Internet transaction (1992), secure Web transaction (1993), and Internet auction (1993). Earlier in his career, Dr. Tenenbaum was also a prominent AI researcher, and led AI research groups at SRI International and Schlumberger Ltd.
Dr. Tenenbaum is a fellow and former board member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and a former consulting professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He currently serves as a director of Efficient Finance, Patients Like Me, and the Public Library of Science, and is a consulting professor of Information Technology at Carnegie Mellon's new West coast campus.
Dr. Tenenbaum holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. from Stanford.
Job Titles:
- University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Raj Reddy is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Stanford in 1966. He has been a member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1969. He served as the founding Director of the Robotics Institute from 1979 to 1991 and the Dean of School of Computer Science from 1991 to 1999.
Dr. Reddy's research interests include the study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. His current research projects include Million Book Digital Library Project; PCtvt: 5-in-1 PC architectures for rural environments for use by illiterate people; 100×100 Networks connecting 100 million homes with 100 mbps+ connectivity; MAX: Mobile Autonomous Robot Platform and Learning by Doing.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence from 1987 to 89. Dr. Reddy was awarded the Legion of Honor by President Mitterand of France in 1984. He was awarded the ACM Turing Award in 1994. He served as co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1999 to 2001.
Job Titles:
- Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus, Stanford University
Dr. William F. Miller spent about half of his professional life in business and about half in academia. This combination permitted him to play a unique role in the development of Silicon Valley. He received a PhD in Physics from Purdue University in 1956 and became the Director of the Applied Mathematics Division at the Argonne National Laboratory in 1958. Dr. Miller passed-away in 2017, and is greatly missed.
Dr. Miller was the last faculty member recruited to Stanford University by the legendary Frederick Terman who was then Vice President and Provost of Stanford. Miller carried out research in computer science and directed the research of many graduate students, and led the computerization of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center as well as laid the foundations for the wiring of the Stanford Campus. As Vice President for Research and later as Vice President and Provost Miller championed the establishment of the Office of Technology Licensing which has become the model for such activities at other universities.
As President and CEO of SRI International (1979-1990) Miller opened SRI to the Pacific Region, he established the spin-out and commercialization program at SRI and established the David Sarnoff Research Center (now the Sarnoff Corporation) as a for-profit subsidiary of SRI. He became the Chairman and CEO of the David Sarnoff Research Center.
After 1990, he spent about half of his time working with startups and nonprofits in Silicon Valley. He helped organize " Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and served on the board of directors for three years. He co-founded SmartValley, Inc. and aided the formation of CommerceNet.
Dr. William F. Miller spent about half of his professional life in business and about half in academia. This combination permitted him to play a unique role in the development of Silicon Valley. Dr. Miller passed-away in 2017, and is greatly missed.
Job Titles:
- Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus, Stanford University
Dr. William F. Miller spent about half of his professional life in business and about half in academia. This combination permitted him to play a unique role in the development of Silicon Valley. Dr. Miller passed-away in 2017, and is greatly missed.
Job Titles:
- Chairman and CEO of RDN Group
Rob Rodin is the Chairman and CEO of RDN Group and a strategic investor/advisor and manager. He is focused on portfolio companies for several venture capital and private equity funds. Special focus on corporate transitions, customer interface, sales and marketing, distribution, supply chain management, Internet and technology strategies. Additionally, he serves as Vice Chairman, Director and Chairman of the Investment Committee of CommerceNet which researches and funds open platform, interoperable business services to advance commerce and healthcare.
Mr. Rodin served for over 10 years as CEO and President of Marshall Industries (NYSE: MI) a global, industrial, electronics distributor and supply chain management company with approximately $2 billion in sales. The company managed more than 2500 employees, 500 suppliers, 300,000 part numbers, and 77,000 customers in 36 countries. Customers and suppliers included Intel, General Electric, AT+T, Motorola, IBM, Toshiba, and Siemens. Quality and customer demands required compliance with many of the following disciplines: Six Sigma, ISO 900X, Malcolm Baldridge, TQM, and Deming's Total Quality System.
At Marshall Industries, Mr. Rodin engineered the reinvention of the company, turning a conventionally successful $500 million distributor into a web enabled $2 billion global competitor. He lead the enterprise design which created a complete transformation of the company's organizational structure and entire IT platform (and interface modules) which included complete development and implementation of the following systems: ERP, MRP, forecast and demand planning, CRM (customer relationship management), SRM (supplier relationship management), ERM (employee relationship management) and an ASRS (automated storage retrieval warehouse system). All of these solutions were required to interface seamlessly with the company's global customer base and Marshall's joint venture partners (in 36 countries in Europe and Asia).
Additionally, he was the creator of the "World's Number One Business to Business Website" as recognized, 2 years in a row, by Advertising Age Magazine. Information Week Magazine highlighted Marshall Industries as the "World's Number One Company in the Use of Technology", and CIO Magazine recognized Mr. Rodin as one of the "Top 100 Leaders for the New Millennium". UCLA presented Mr. Rodin with the "Information Systems Award for System Leadership" and the University of Connecticut presented him with the "Distinguished Alumni Award" and elected him to the "University Hall of Fame".
Mr. Rodin's book, "Free, Perfect and Now: Connecting to the Three Insatiable Customer Demands", chronicles the radical transformation of Marshall Industries. The changes he led have been taught as case studies at Harvard Business School, Columbia University, University of Southern California, MIT, and Stanford University. The transformation was also covered by CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and reviewed in several books including "The New Economics" by W. Edwards Deming and "Customer Intimacy" by Fred Wiersema.
After the sale of Marshall Industries to Avnet Inc., Mr. Rodin lead the spinout of several new start up companies which brought to market many of the company's IT and Internet properties to provide extended supply chain management tools for the electronic industry.
Mr. Rodin's current Board activities include: Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of CommerceNet, Board Member / Director of SupplyFrame (SupplyFX), Board of Leaders of the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, Board Member / Chairman of Compensation Committee of ALS TDI (The ALS Therapy Development Institute), Advisory Board Member of LASEC (Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission) and Board Member YPO / WPO LA (World Presidents Organization and 2013-14 Co-Chapter Chairman).
Mr. Rodin formerly served on the Board of Directors (until sale) of Marshall Industries (NYSE: MI), Board Member / Director / Advisor of IntriPlex, Board of Directors of Napster (NASDQ: NAPS) (formally Roxio) as Chairman of the Compensation Committee and a Member of the Audit Committee, Director and Member of the Governance and Nominating Committee of SM&A (NASDQ: WINS), Director of Inter-Tel (NASDAQ: INTL), Advisory Board of Distribution at University of Southern California, the Board of Directors of RosettaNet, as a Trustee of the W. Edwards Deming Institute, Board Member/Director Cyber Coders, Board Member / Director of CollabRx, Board Member / Director of ABB Concise, Advisory Board of Electronics Supply & Manufacturing Magazine (CMP Publications), on the planning committee for Harvard and Stanford Presidents Seminars (YPO) and on University of Connecticut (UCONN) School of Business Board of Advisors (Executive Council and Strategic Development Committee) and President of NEDA's (National Electronic Distribution Association) Education Foundation.