Napster has named Claire Hough vice president of engineering. In the newly created position, Hough will manage the ongoing development of Napster’s membership service and future projects. She will report directly to Napster’s newly named chief executive officer Konrad Hilbers.
“We’re all very excited about the upcoming launch of Napster’s membership service and Claire’s leadership and wide-ranging technology experience will be extremely valuable as we enter the home stretch,” Hilbers said. “She’s a seasoned engineer and manager who will be a great asset to our team.”
“Napster continues to be a pioneer in peer-to-peer file-sharing applications,” said Ms. Hough. “The company is at the forefront of working with and developing some amazing technologies. I’m looking forward to the many opportunities and challenges that this new position will provide.”
Ms. Hough spent five years at Netscape Communications, most recently as the vice president and general manager of the directory and security division. One of the early engineering managers to be hired into Netscape’s server division, she oversaw the development of Netscape’s Directory Server, Certificate Management System and Proxy Server. She was also instrumental in launching Netscape’s iPlanet Unified User Management System, closing multi-year OEM contracts with Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, and forging key alliances with independent software vendors such as Netegrity.
Following Netscape, Hough held an executive position with eTime Capital, a company that provides software services and technology to financial institutions. As the executive vice president of product operations, she managed the company’s engineering, operations, product marketing and customer service functions.
Hough has also held management positions at Sybase and the Ingres Products Division of the ASK Group, which was later acquired by Computer Associates. She has bachelors and masters degrees in operations research from the University of California, Berkeley.