Throughout history, there have been many unsung heroes who have supported movements without the desire for fame, glory or riches. Take for example, the Internet, a movement which has defined the last three decades. Many can point to who the leaders have been in the space, Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Brin and Page, etc., but few know the individuals who established the foundation from which they built upon. We know the leaders’ names because they sought out to develop technology that would evolve into the word’s largest companies in turn bringing them riches beyond comprehension.
Brian Behendorf was the friend everyone knows in high school who would spend all his time thinking, reading, and talking about his computer science project. His passion runs deep and he savors the intellectual pursuit for the pursuit itself a no other ulterior motive. Ideas and possibilities are what keeps him going, advancing the project to open up even more possibilities for the movement at large.
No one in the mainstream has heard of Brian, but he was central to the evolution of the Internet we know today. He was the primary developer of the Apache Web Server, the most popular web server software of the Internet. Development of Apache began in 1995 after work on the NCSA HTTP code had stalled and quickly overtook NCSA as the dominant HTTP server. It has remained the most popular since 1996 and by 2009 served more than 100 million websites. As of August of 2018, Apache served approximately 40% of all active websites.
Today, Brian, has continued to stay central to the advancement of technology. He is the Executive Director of Hyperledger, a consortium of the world’s leading minds from the largest corporations and organizations, to advance and develop blockchain technology. Hyperledger is a project of the Linux Foundation and is supported by the likes of IBM, Intel, SAP Ariba, Cisco, Redhat, VMware, Accenture, JP Morgan, among many others. It’s a who’s who of those in the know who appreciate the importance of staying right at the front edge of technological evolution, who want to stay close to the friend in high school who is pioneering new things.
Since 2015, the founding year of Hyperledger, a number of frameworks and tools have been developed to cover various functional areas including infrastructure, payments, supply chain, networking, as-a-service deployment, developer collaboration, and other areas. With the support of key players in our modern industrial age and with Brian at the helm, the use of hyperledger technology may become just as ubiquitous as the Apache Web Server, which serves as the backbone of today’s internet.
