Ernst & Young Announces Acquia Co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert is the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012 Award winner in New England
BURLINGTON, Mass., – JUNE 26, 20121 – Ernst & Young LLP announced that Dries Buytaert, co-founder and CTO of Acquia, the enterprise guide to Drupal, received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012 award in the emerging technology category in New England. The award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Buytaert was selected by an independent panel of judges, and the award was presented at a special gala on Thursday, June 21, 2012.
Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for Drupal, the open source web publishing and collaboration platform. Originally built from Buytaert’s Ghent University dorm room as a message board for his friends in 2001, Drupal has grown into the largest open source community with more than 800,000 registered community members in 228 countries speaking 181 languages. Drupal has dramatically changed the pace of innovation and economics of web engagement management. Today the platform powers more than 1.5 million web sites worldwide, including those used by leading-edge organizations in financial services, government, healthcare, media, entertainment, pharmaceutical, publishing, education and technology.
Buytaert is also co-founder and CTO of Acquia, the venture-backed company started in 2007 that is commercializing the social publishing platform to help organizations such as Mercedes Benz, NBC, NPR, Twitter, the World Economic Forum, Verizon, Warner Music and more than 2,000 enterprise customers leverage the power, technical innovation and economic value of Drupal. In the past twelve months, the 33 year-old Belgium native led Acquia in more than doubling its revenue, growing its employee base around the world and successfully opening new offices in the UK, France, the Netherlands and Australia.
“Recognition for this award needs to include the more than 800,000 members of the Drupal community,” said Dries Buytaert, co-founder and CTO of Acquia. “Their ingenuity has led some of the best and biggest brands around the world to adopt Drupal. With the power of the community and support of our partners, we look forward to the next chapter in our mission to transform the web.”
Now in its 26th year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Fred Smith of FedEx, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of Best Buy, Andrew Mason of Groupon, Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, and many more.
As a New England regional award winner, Buytaert is now eligible for consideration for the National Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012 Award. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the National Entrepreneur Of The Year Overall Award winner, will be announced at the annual awards gala in Palm Springs, California, on November 17, 2012. The awards are the culminating event of the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum®, the nation’s most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies.
Sponsors
Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards are nationally sponsored in the United States by SAP America and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
In New England, sponsors include Marsh, Nixon Peabody LLP, Citybizlist, Murray Devine, RR Donnelley, Scherzer International.
About Acquia™, the enterprise guide to Drupal
Acquia empowers enterprises with the open source social publishing system Drupal. Co-founded by Drupal’s creator in 2007, Acquia helps customers manage their growth and scale their online properties with confidence. Acquia’s products, cloud infrastructure, and support enable companies to realize the full power of Drupal while minimizing risk, as it’s done for nearly 2,000 enterprise customers including Twitter, Warner Music Group, Turner Sports, World Economic Forum, Stanford University, Mercedes-Benz and NPR. See who’s using Drupal at http://www.drupalshowcase.com, and for more information please visit www.acquia.com or call 888-9-ACQUIA.
About Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year®
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The unique award makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential, and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 140 cities in more than 50 countries.
About Ernst & Young
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This news release has been issued by Ernst & Young LLP, a US client-serving member firm of Ernst & Young Global Limited.