Rod Drury

Rod Drury is a technology entrepreneur from Wellington, New Zealand. He is currently CEO of the online accounting software company Xero.

Professional history

In 1995 Drury established Glazier Systems, one of New Zealand's leading software development and consulting companies. Glazier Systems was acquired by Advantage Group in 1999 and continues today as Intergen.

Drury subsequently founded and served as CEO of AfterMail which was [http://www.quest.com/news/show.aspx?ContentId=2726 acquired] by Quest Software for US$65 million in January 2006 and subsequently won Best Exchange Product at Microsoft TechEd 2006 in Boston.

In 2000, Drury co-founded Context Connect, a US-based company developing technology to increase connectivity across different mobile networks. He continues as CTO for the Boston-based company which now has a US patent for its mobile directory application.

Through his career Drury has maintained a close relationship with Microsoft and was selected as New Zealand's first representative on the Microsoft MSDN Regional Director program, holding the role from 1997 to 2000. He achieved Microsoft MVP status for his work in the early days of Active Server Pages.

In 2005 Drury joined the board of TradeMe, New Zealand's most successful eCommerce internet site, as an independent director. Rod continues to sit on the Trade Me Advisory Board following the sale of Trade Me to John Fairfax Holdings in 2006.

In July 2006 Drury founded Xero, a publicly-listed Software as a Service Accounting software company, of which he is currently Chief Executive.

In August 2006 he joined NZ Trade & Enterprise Beachheads Program Advisory Board. He is a member of the New Zealand Institute of Directors.

In October 2007 Rod was a judge for the New Zealand Open Source Awards. [cite web
url=http://nzosa.org.nz/judges
title=New Zealand Open Source Awards
date=2007-10-17
accessdate=2008-05-11]

Drury was also awarded the Hi-Tech New Zealand "Entrepreneur of the Year" award in 2006 and 2007. [cite web
url=http://www.hitech.org.nz/
title=Hi-Tech Awards site
date=2007-11-03
accessdate=2008-05-11]

In August 2008 Drury was conferred the title of "Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Computer Society" (HFNZCS) during the 2008 NZ Computerworld Excellence Awards. He is only the 21st person to be awarded the title in the Society's 48 year history.

References

External links

* [http://www.drury.net.nz Rod Drury's Blog]
* [http://www.xero.com Xero]
* [http://idealog.co.nz/articles/now-january/february-2007/repeat-offender.html Repeat offender] , Idealog magazine, January/February 2007
* [http://www.unlimited.co.nz/unlimited.nsf/default/0EEC6725ACEB6E2FCC2571550008A3BD Serial entrepreneurs] , Unlimited Magazine, Issue 82, May 2006
* [http://www.intergen.co.nz Intergen]