Good friend and former colleague Ed Rothberg has started a new venture. Gurobi Optimization is scheduled to release their suite of optimization products in March 2009. With Ed and Bob Bixby behind the product suite, it’s sure to be groundbreaking.
Ed is one of those rare people who is both personable and can take anyone you think is bright and seriously blow them away. You’ve probably seen some of those interviews where a Flash celebrity is asked who they look to for inspiration. Whenever I think of that question, Ed’s name pops into my head.
I’m glad to have known and worked with Ed and wish him the best of luck at Gurobi.
The Algorithmist 
You are quite right about Ed! Ed, Bob Bixby and Zonghao Gu form a brilliant team, and it shows in the Gurobi Solver — its performance characteristics are outstanding. (We’ve been running it internally for a number of months.)
Ed, Bob and Gu’s company Gurobi Optimization will offer the Gurobi Solver directly (with its own APIs and tool set) starting in April, but it’s available in a full commercial release this month (February) as embedded in several modeling systems for optimization (AIMMS, Frontline, GAMS, MPL). We have it available for download right now (15 day free trial with no other restrictions) at http://www.solver.com/gurobi.