Rich Friedrich

Rich Friedrich leads the Enterprise Systems and Software Lab (ESSL) in HP Laboratories. His philosophy is to fuse strategy and innovation to create compelling differentiators for HP products and services.

The ESSL research team focuses on ambitious next-generation enterprise computing and management systems, and on inventing distinctive utility computing mechanisms to provide IT infrastructure and enterprise services on demand. Our goal is to reduce total cost of ownership while improving  flexibility and quality of service through the automation of IT operations in a trusted, virtualized data center.

His sustained record of innovative accomplishments spans his 20-plus-year career in HP research and product positions. He led the system performance team that optimized the first commercial PA-RISC based systems in the mid 1980s and the first multiprocessor, online transaction processing Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) systems in the late 1980s. He led the architecture and design of a large-scale, distributed measurement system for the Open Systems Foundation Distributed Computing Environment in the early 1990s.

More recently, he led the teams that invented WebQoS, the novel technology for providing predictable and stable performance for Internet based applications, re-architected Linux for IA-64, and provided key technologies to HP's Utility Data Center, Open View automation products and StorageWorks data grid products.

His team has demonstrated the power of utility services by working with DreamWorks to provide a remote 1000-processor Utility Rendering Service that was critical to the production of the feature films Shrek II and Madagascar.

His team in the UK, working with the UK government, created a next-generation utility rendering service to reach out to up and coming British animators through the SE3D film festival and demonstrated a multi-user service targeted for small and medium businesses using market-based dynamic resource allocation.

He has participated on many scientific program committees, published extensively, and is a co-inventor on 15 patents. He is a graduate of Northwestern University.