Autodesk Taps Sun Executive

Concluding a six-month search, software vendor Autodesk Inc. has hired former Sun Microsystems executive Carol A. Bartz as chairman, president and chief executive.

Bartz, 43, assumes the helm of a highly profitable but idiosyncratic firm that has had trouble following up the runaway success of its flagship computer-aided design program. She also becomes one of the few women to occupy the top spot at a major technology company and is believed to be the first woman to head a computer company of which she was not a founder.

Though it now ranks as the world’s fifth-largest personal software company and remains hugely successful by most measures, Sausalito-based Autodesk has seen growth and profit fall recently amid criticism that it did not have a clear direction.

In a scathing memo circulated a year ago, reclusive company founder John Walker called for major changes in the firm’s technical and marketing strategies. In October, Chairman and Chief Executive Alvar Green announced that he would retire, and Walker returned from Switzerland for a “temporary” stint as manager of technology.

Bartz, who is credited with playing a major role in Sun’s phenomenal growth, said she is confident that she will have full authority to run the company--even though Walker and other co-founders have traditionally wielded considerable clout behind the scenes.

Sun named Joseph P. Roebuck, head of U.S. field operations, to succeed Bartz.