World Wide Web Consortium appoints new CEO

Jeffrey Jaffe has worked at Novell, Lucent and IBM

International web standards body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has appointed former Novell chief technology officer Jeffrey Jaffe as its new chief executive.

Jaffe will help to promote and communicate the W3C's work, having previously served as president of Bell Labs research and advanced technologies at Lucent and vice president of technology at IBM.

Jaffe said in a blog post that his immediate priority will be to preserve and enhance the W3C culture of an open and consensus-based process.

"Web technologies continue to be the vehicle for every industry to incorporate the rapid pace of change into their way of doing business. The W3C is the place where the industry sets standards for the web in an open and collaborative fashion," he wrote.

The W3C takes the lead on several key web initiatives, such as HTML 5, the mobile internet and accessibility, all designed to help promote the web's capabilities for commerce, collaboration and creativity, the group said.

This is something Jaffe is keen to push. "The W3C is the single organisation that leads the web to its full potential with its protocols and guidelines," he said.

The director of the W3C, Tim Berners-Lee, explained that Jaffe's business background is just what the group needs to address the growing opportunities created by the continued evolution of the internet.

"His broad experience gives him a deep understanding of many different types of organisations, which will be invaluable in managing the W3C's evolution," he said.