Willem van Biljon

{{Short description|South African businessman}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}

{{Use South African English|date=November 2012}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Willem van Biljon

| image = WillemVanBiljon.jpg

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=yes|1961|12|29}}

| birth_place = Pretoria, South Africa

| occupation = Entrepreneur

| alma_mater = University of Cape Town

}}

Willem van Biljon (born 1961) is an entrepreneur and technologist born, raised and educated in South Africa.

Van Biljon graduated from the University of Cape Town with a degree in Computer Science.

He held engineering and research positions at LinkData, the Institute for Applied Computer Science and the National Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Van Biljon co-founded Mosaic Software.{{cite web

|url=http://www.cbr.co.za/news.aspx?pklNewsId=4052&pklCategoryID=382

|title=Mosaic Software selects Stratus for its EFT software solution

|date=July 2001

}} Mosaic built the Postilion payment system, the first high-end payment transaction switch for commodity hardware and operating systems (Windows). Mosaic's investors included GE and Paul Maritz.{{cite web

|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-78974459.html

|title=Former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz invests in Mosaic Software.

|date=8 October 2001

}} The company became one of the top three payment processing software vendors in the world and was sold in 2004 to S1 Corp.{{cite web

|url=http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=124833

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041112035605/http://www4.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=124833

|url-status=dead

|archive-date=12 November 2004

|title=S1 to Buy Mosaic to Add ATM Channel to Front-Office Suite

|date=9 November 2004

}}{{cite web

|url=http://investor.s1.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=77921&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=641167&highlight=

|title=S1 To Acquire Financial Transaction Solution, Add ATM Channel to Complete Integrated Front-Office Suite

|date=9 November 2004

}}

Van Biljon worked for Amazon.com where he, along with Chris Pinkham and Christopher Brown, led the team that developed Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Willem built the business plan for the service and was responsible for product management and marketing for the public cloud service.{{cite web

|url=https://www.itweb.co.za/content/wbrpOqgzRNJMDLZn

|title=Amazon opens Cape software centre

|date=19 July 2005

}}{{cite web

|url=http://www.oneafrikan.com/2005/07/20/amazon-opens-dev-centre-in-cape-town/

|title=Amazon opens dev centre in Cape Town

|date=20 July 2005

}}{{cite web

|url=http://ww2.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2006/0611291035.asp?A=BSR&S=BestRead&O=FPIN

|title=Amazon's Pinkham quits

|date=29 November 2006

}}{{cite web |url=http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/cloud-computing/2010/06/17/amazons-early-efforts-at-cloud-computing-partly-accidental/

|title=Amazon's early efforts at cloud computing? Partly accidental

|date=17 June 2010}}

{{cite web

|url=http://gigaom.com/2010/06/18/the-origins-of-amazons-cloud-computing/

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100621045918/http://gigaom.com/2010/06/18/the-origins-of-amazons-cloud-computing/

|url-status=dead

|archive-date=21 June 2010

|title=The Origins of Amazon's Cloud Computing

|date=18 June 2010

}}

In 2006, van Biljon left Amazon Web Services and later started a venture with Chris Pinkham. The company, Nimbula, was focused on cloud computing software and was funded by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners.[http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/062310-amazon-ec2-cloud-startup.html Amazon EC2 creator launches private cloud start-up]{{cite web

|url=http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/hosted/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227001128&subSection=News

|title=Nimbula Secures $15 Million Venture Capital Investment

}} In March 2013, Nimbula was acquired by Oracle Corporation.{{Cite web|url=http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/acquisitions/nimbula/index.html|title=Oracle and Nimbula|website=oracle.com|language=en-US|access-date=2018-01-08}}

Van Biljon co-authored seven patents in cloud computing including "Managing Communications Between Computing Nodes",{{cite web

|url=https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2007126835

|title= (WO2007126835) MANAGING COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN COMPUTING NODES, Patent page on Patentscope

}} "Managing Execution of Programs by Multiple Computing Systems".{{cite web

|url=https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2007126837

|title= (WO2007126837) MANAGING EXECUTION OF PROGRAMS BY MULTIPLE COMPUTING SYSTEMS, Patent page on Patentscope

}}