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Jeremy Burton Joins EMC as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

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EMC today announced that 20-year IT industry veteran Jeremy Burton has joined the company as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer.

Burton will be responsible for the global structure, strategy, and execution of all aspects of EMC’s marketing efforts. Burton will report to Joe Tucci, EMC’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Burton, 42, joins EMC from Serena Software, where he was President and CEO. Previously, as Group President of Symantec’s Security and Data Management Business Unit, Burton was responsible for the company’s $2 billion Enterprise Security product line.

Prior to that role, he served as Executive Vice President of the Data Management Group at VERITAS, responsible for the company’s backup and archiving products, and also served as VERITAS’ Chief Marketing Officer. Earlier in his career, Burton spent nearly a decade at Oracle, culminating in his role as Senior Vice President of Product and Services Marketing.

CA Set To Pick Up Nimsoft for $350 Million

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CA recently announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Nimsoft, a provider of IT performance and availability monitoring solutions for emerging enterprises and Managed Service Providers (MSPs)—in an all-cash transaction valued at $350 million.

The acquisition significantly extends CA’s ability to meet the unique IT management needs of emerging enterprises and MSPs, both of which are playing leading roles in the growth of cloud computing.  CA estimates that emerging enterprises, which it categorizes as organizations with annual revenues from $300 million to $2 billion, will account for approximately a quarter of the software spending in CA’s market space by 2013.  By leveraging Nimsoft’s market expertise and technology, CA expects to add an entirely new set of customers to its base, which historically has been comprised of large enterprises.

Nimsoft’s technology and go-to-market approach also will leverage CA’s presence in growing international markets—where the Company expects cloud computing and hosted/managed services to play a central role in business development.

The Nimsoft Unified Monitoring solution is designed to allow MSPs complete visibility into the performance and availability of their customers’ business applications across both internal and external IT infrastructures.  Its broad capabilities and easy deployment and automated maintenance make it an optimal solution for MSPs. Its automated implementation can help accelerate time-to-value and its advanced features are specifically designed to streamline monitoring of a wide range of business applications for multiple customers—advantages that MSPs around the world are leveraging to improve service, expand offerings, and boost margins.

Nimsoft has developed monitoring and reporting solutions for public cloud and on-demand offerings like Google Apps for Business, The Rackspace Cloud, Amazon Web Services and EC2, Salesforce.com, as well as internal applications, databases, and physical and virtual server environments.

Today’s announcement follows CA’s recent acquisitions of Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore and the planned acquisition of 3Tera.

The acquisition is expected to have minimal impact on fiscal year 2010 results and to be dilutive to earnings per share in fiscal year 2011.

Pivot3 Raises $25 Million From Focus Ventures, Others

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Pivot3, the first company to deliver virtual servers and scalable storage in a single platform, today announced that it has raised $25 million in a new funding round led by Focus Ventures, the investor firm behind storage companies EqualLogic (acquired by Dell) and Isilon.

Participation in this round also included existing investors InterWest Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mesirow Financial Capital Partners IX, and Silver Creek Ventures. The sizable investment will be used to expand sales operations beyond the Americas, as well as to develop and promote innovations that open up new markets for the Pivot3 Serverless Computing platform.

Pivot3 Serverless Computing is the first scale-out storage solution offering integrated server virtualization to enterprise customers. Integrated server virtualization consolidates physical servers into Pivot3 storage appliances for high availability while realizing significant savings in power, cooling and rackspace. The compelling value proposition led the company’s quick rise to number one market share in the IP SAN market for video surveillance, as recently reported by IMS Research.

Pivot3 has more than 140 customers such as the Port of Seattle, the Mall of America, and the City of Trenton. The largest installation at the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is a regulated installation with four petabytes of SAN storage that simultaneously provides more than 200 virtual servers.

Citrix Touts New “End-to-End” Virtual Networking Solution

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Citrix Systems today announced Citrix Branch Repeater VPX, the WAN optimization virtual appliance that provides a high definition desktop and application experience to thousands of branch offices worldwide, and Citrix Access Gateway VPX, the secure access virtual appliance that provides safe application access to users from anywhere.

With these new products, Citrix is changing the industry landscape by extending the benefits of server and desktop virtualization to virtual network services running at both the datacenter and the branch office.

The two new virtual appliances join Citrix NetScaler VPX, the industry-leading application acceleration and load-balancing virtual appliance, (see “Citrix Delivers NetScaler VPX Virtual Appliance and Unveils Citrix Ready Open Networking Program”), Together, these virtual networking solutions accelerate and secure virtual desktops and applications from thousands of enterprise datacenters and cloud providers to users anywhere, on-demand, anytime. By combining all the benefits of hardware network appliances with the simplicity, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of software appliances, Citrix now offers the industry’s only complete end-to-end networking system.

The Citrix VPX solution represents the company’s leadership in creating a fundamentally different approach to the growing convergence of virtualization and networking technologies in the modern datacenter and emerging cloud architectures. By offering open, flexible solutions that work with the technology customers have already invested in, Citrix allows them to extend the value of their existing investments in the network and branch offices in ways they never thought possible before.

With physical network appliances, IT organizations grapple with inefficient procurement, trial and deployment cycles while increasing the complexity associated with hardware proliferation and management. IT loses agility in the branch office due to infrastructure availability problems, resulting in high cost and delays of new branch office setup. Citrix virtual network appliances help transform the economics and agility of IT services by leveraging industry-standard server hardware and virtualization in the network infrastructure. By simplifying and expediting procurement, trials, and deployment for enterprises, Citrix improves availability of desktops and applications, and enables dynamic provisioning to meet varying user demand. By virtualizing the branch and network infrastructure, organizations can simplify and lower the TCO of network infrastructure in branch offices as well as in datacenters.

Network virtualization also improves the economics of cloud computing by providing a flexible and cost-effective deployment model for delivering customized network services. Virtualized network appliances simplify the complexity and challenges of supporting and managing multi-tenant cloud environments. The Citrix end-to-end virtualization networking solution enables cloud service providers to offer value-added services, such as application acceleration, secure access and WAN optimization on a per-tenant basis. Cloud service providers can leverage Citrix Service Provider subscription pricing to offer on-demand network services to their customers, eliminating large, up-front capital expenditures and enhancing the elasticity and profitability of service offerings.

By virtualizing the foundational network services and deploying the Citrix VPX solution on any off-the-shelf hardware, enterprises can now realize reduced bandwidth costs, simplified branch infrastructure, faster performance and better security. Specific benefits include:

  • Flexible Deployment – The Citrix VPX solution enables flexible datacenter and branch deployment options requiring minimum changes to the underlying network infrastructure.
  • Lower TCO for Hardware – The Citrix VPX solution provides significant cost savings from hardware standardization, lower energy consumption and faster new branch office setup.
  • On-Demand Provisioning – The Citrix VPX solution increases agility, scalability, performance and availability with on-demand provisioning and de-provisioning of virtual network appliances.
  • Flexible and Affordable Pricing Model – The Citrix VPX solution provides flexible Pay-As-You-Grow pricing models, allowing service providers and enterprises to offer security and acceleration services based on demand.

Citrix Access Gateway VPX is available today and Citrix Branch Repeater VPX will be released later this month.

Both will be available from Citrix Solution Advisors worldwide. Later in 2010, Access Gateway VPX Express and Branch Repeater VPX Express will also be available for free download here.

Accenture Veteran Terry Breen Joins EMC As Head Strategic Alliances

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EMC Corporation today announced that 26-year Accenture veteran Terry Breen has joined EMC as Senior Vice President of Strategic Alliances.

Reporting to Bill Teuber, EMC’s Vice Chairman, Breen will be responsible for enhancing and extending EMC’s strategic go-to-market relationships with the world’s leading systems integrators, outsourcers and service providers. In this role, Breen will align closely with EMC’s technology integration and channel distribution alliance teams to ensure a holistic and unified EMC relationship model across its entire partner ecosystem.

Breen (50) most recently served as Global Managing Partner of Accenture’s Electronics and High Tech Industry Practice and was a member of the Accenture Global Leadership Council.

He previously held the position of Global Managing Partner of the Management Consulting Group for the company’s $5 billion Communication and High Tech Operating Group. Promoted to Partner in 1993, Breen served many clients around the world including EMC, Sony, Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco, HP, Ingram Micro, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Siemens, and Samsung. Breen holds a master of business administration from George Washington University and a bachelor of arts from Amherst College.

Phoenix Technologies Appoints Tom Lacey President and CEO

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Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTEC), a global leader in core systems software, today announced that its Board of Directors has named Tom Lacey as the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, effective as of February 25, 2010. Additionally, Mr. Lacey has been appointed to serve as a member of the company’s Board of Directors.
(Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070410/SFTU048LOGO)
“We are delighted that Tom has joined Phoenix,” said Jeffrey Smith, Chairman of the Board. “Tom brings three decades of engineering, marketing, sales and operational leadership experience to Phoenix, and has a record of driving profitability and growth in his prior roles at leading technology companies. Tom brings an extensive knowledge of Phoenix’s key customers and partners and we are confident that his leadership skills and industry relationships will drive shareholder value at Phoenix.”
Prior to joining Phoenix, Mr. Lacey served as corporate Vice President and General Manager of Applied Materials’ SunFab Thin Film Solar Products since 2009, where he was responsible for all aspects of the turnkey solar thin-film production business.  Prior to Applied Materials, from 2006 to 2007, Mr. Lacey was President of Flextronics International’s Components Group, an 8,000 employee division that designs and sells display, power system and camera cell phone modules. Mr. Lacey joined Flextronics in connection with the successful $300 million sale to Flextronics of International Display Works (IDW), a developer of LCD displays, where he served as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer from 2004 to 2006. While at IDW, Mr. Lacey drove significant revenue and profitability growth and increased the market capitalization of IDW by approximately 6 times following a successful listing on NASDAQ.
Prior to IDW, Mr. Lacey had a distinguished 13 year career at Intel Corporation, where he held various management and executive positions of increasing responsibility, including Vice President Sales and Marketing, President of Intel Americas, where he was responsible for over $12 billion in sales and managed Dell, IBM, HP, Cisco Systems, Motorola and other critical accounts. In his last year at Intel, as Vice President and General Manager, Flash Products, Mr. Lacey grew revenues by $500 million to $2.3 billion with customers such as Samsung, Sony, Nokia, Motorola and others.
“I am very excited to join Phoenix. Phoenix has been at the core of the PC ecosystem for over 30 years and has developed valuable intellectual property assets and technology, long-standing relationships with all of the major OEMs, ODMs and silicon vendors in the industry, and unique firmware expertise and engineering competencies with extremely talented employees,” said Lacey. “The immediate focus for me at Phoenix is to ensure that the Company’s core business returns to its full potential so that Phoenix can continue to provide the most innovative solutions and services to its customers. I am confident in the prospects for Phoenix and look forward to working with the rest of the management team and Board of Directors to maximize value for all shareholders.”
Mr. Lacey succeeds Woodson Hobbs, who has served as Phoenix’s President and Chief Executive Officer since 2006. The Company also announced that Mr. Hobbs has resigned from the company’s Board of Directors.
In connection with his appointment, and as an incentive to his joining, Mr. Lacey was granted a non-qualified inducement stock option to purchase 400,000 shares of common stock of Phoenix, par value $0.001 per share, with an exercise price equal to $2.70 (USD), the closing sale price of the Company’s stock on February 25, 2010, the grant date. Assuming Mr. Lacey remains actively employed by Phoenix, the option will vest and become exercisable with respect to 1/48th of the total number of shares underlying the option each month after the grant date so that all of the shares will be fully vested on the four (4) year anniversary of the grant date. The vesting of the options will accelerate if Mr. Lacey’s employment is terminated without cause or for good reason after a change of control. Additionally, Mr. Lacey received an inducement grant of 425,000 shares of restricted stock on the grant date. The restricted stock vests as follows: 25,000 shares vested on the grant date, and 1/48th of the remaining shares vest monthly so that all of the shares of restricted stock will be fully vested on the four (4) year anniversary of the grant date. The vesting of all unvested restricted stock will accelerate if Mr. Lacey’s employment is terminated without cause or for good reason following a change of control. The inducement options and restricted shares were granted outside of the terms of any existing Phoenix equity incentive plan and without shareholder approval pursuant to NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 4350(i)(1)(A)(iv).

Phoenix Technologies today announced that its Board of Directors has named Tom Lacey as the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, effective as of February 25, 2010.

Additionally, Mr. Lacey has been appointed to serve as a member of the company’s Board of Directors.

Prior to joining Phoenix, Mr. Lacey served as corporate Vice President and General Manager of Applied Materials’ SunFab Thin Film Solar Products since 2009, where he was responsible for all aspects of the turnkey solar thin-film production business.  Prior to Applied Materials, from 2006 to 2007, Mr. Lacey was President of Flextronics International’s Components Group, an 8,000 employee division that designs and sells display, power system and camera cell phone modules.

Mr. Lacey joined Flextronics in connection with the successful $300 million sale to Flextronics of International Display Works (IDW), a developer of LCD displays, where he served as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer from 2004 to 2006. While at IDW, Mr. Lacey drove significant revenue and profitability growth and increased the market capitalization of IDW by approximately 6 times following a successful listing on NASDAQ.

Prior to IDW, Mr. Lacey had a distinguished 13 year career at Intel Corporation, where he held various management and executive positions of increasing responsibility, including Vice President Sales and Marketing, President of Intel Americas, where he was responsible for over $12 billion in sales and managed Dell, IBM, HP, Cisco Systems, Motorola and other critical accounts. In his last year at Intel, as Vice President and General Manager, Flash Products, Mr. Lacey grew revenues by $500 million to $2.3 billion with customers such as Samsung, Sony, Nokia, Motorola and others.

Mr. Lacey succeeds Woodson Hobbs, who has served as Phoenix’s President and Chief Executive Officer since 2006. The Company also announced that Mr. Hobbs has resigned from the company’s Board of Directors.

In connection with his appointment, and as an incentive to his joining, Mr. Lacey was granted a non-qualified inducement stock option to purchase 400,000 shares of common stock of Phoenix, par value $0.001 per share, with an exercise price equal to $2.70 (USD), the closing sale price of the Company’s stock on February 25, 2010, the grant date.

Assuming Mr. Lacey remains actively employed by Phoenix, the option will vest and become exercisable with respect to 1/48th of the total number of shares underlying the option each month after the grant date so that all of the shares will be fully vested on the four (4) year anniversary of the grant date. The vesting of the options will accelerate if Mr. Lacey’s employment is terminated without cause or for good reason after a change of control.