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Co-founder Dan McCall and the 35 employees at Virtual Computer Inc. in Westford were in mourning this week, after the death on Sunday of company co-founder and CTO Alex Vasilevsky.
Vasilevsky, who would have turned 49 on Aug. 25, died Aug. 8 of a rare form of tissue cancer, said McCall, his co-founder at Virtual Computer. The company has developed desktop virtualization software for businesses.
Yesterday, McCall and Virtual Computer chief engineer Gerry Plouffe remembered the “nutty professor,” “mad scientist” and “genius,” who drew talented engineers into his orbit for forward-looking schemes.
When McCall first met him, Vasilevsky was at his prior company, Virtual Iron, where he was co-founder and chief scientist until the company’s asset sale to Oracle Corp. last May. Vasilevsky did some due diligence on a business plan McCall had put together for the company’s investors.
“He said something pretty funny,” McCall recalled: “You seem like a pretty smart guy and I like your business plan, but I’m going to tell the investors it’s not a good idea, so you’ll still be around to work on my idea, which is much better.”
It turned out, McCall said, Vasilevsky’s idea was much better, and so Virtual Computer was born.
Plouffe also met Vasilevsky at Virtual Iron, where he was interviewing for a job. He was a little intimidated, he said. “(CEO) Scott (Davis) had told me I had to impress Alex – I had to have a good interview,” Plouffe remembers. “It turned out to be just a fabulous interview, one of the best of my life. We had a fabulous conversation about so many aspects of tech that it didn’t even feel like an interview. It was just a conversation, just a wonderful long conversation that we had.”
In a memoriam posted to Xen.org, a tech blog in Vasilevsky’s virtualization niche, Citrix Systems CTO Simon Crosby said though he and Vasilevsky originally lined up as competitors, at their first meeting he found Alex to be an “incredibly warm and open man.”
“Alex was a great innovator, an award-winning scientist and entrepreneur, and most importantly a good father and husband, and a trusted friend,” Crosby wrote. “He will be missed.”
Virtual Computer’s succession plan includes the recent hire of Simon Graham, former lead architect at Stratus Technologies Inc., as chief scientist.
Vasilevsky is survived by his wife, Robin; daughter, Sarah; and two sons, Daniel and Joshua. Funeral services were held Wednesday at the Temple Beth El Cemetery in Chelmsford. The family has asked that donations in Vasilevsky’s memory be made to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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