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Cloud Computing Expert Scott Bils Joins Everest Group As Partner

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Everest Group, an advisory firm on global services, has appointed Scott Bils as partner.

Prior to joining Everest, Scott was the founding CEO at Conformity, a venture-backed provider of on-demand cloud identity and SaaS management solutions. Bils led and closed multiple seed stage and institutional funding rounds; developed partnerships with leading SaaS and cloud identity ecosystem vendors and created the Enterprise SaaS Working Group.

Bils will play a leading role in developing Everest’s Next Generation IT practice, which will support the needs of service providers, infrastructure vendors, and enterprises as they seek to address the challenges and opportunities of innovative yet disruptive technologies including the cloud (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS), virtualization, and mobile computing.

Scott holds a MBA from the University of Chicago and earned an undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Industry Vet Frank Artale Joins VC Firm Ignition Ventures As Managing Director

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Ignition Venture Management recently announced that Frank Artale has joined the firm as a general partner. Artale brings more than 26 years of experience to Ignition with a deep expertise in cloud and virtualization software.

At Ignition, Artale will focus on core infrastructure, networking and security investments for Ignition Venture Partners IV, a $400 million fund.

The obvious link: Artale has been an entrepreneur and exec in several Ignition portfolio companies including CEO of Consera (sold to HP) as well as VP of business development and strategic marketing at XenSource (acquired by Citrix Systems).

Artale has also worked alongside Ignition as Chairman of the Board and director of Rendition Networks (sold to Opsware) and as an advisor to Zenprise. He’s currently Chairman of the Board and a director at Open Kernel Labs, a mobile virtualization supplier and a director at DotNetNuke, an open source content management platform.

Salesforce.com Appoints Jeff Lautenbach As SVP Enterprise Commercial Sales, Americas

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Enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com has appointed Jeff Lautenbach as senior vice president of enterprise commercial sales, Americas. Lautenbach reports to Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, executive vice president of sales, Salesforce.com.

Lautenbach joins Salesforce.com following a 20-year career at IBM. Most recently, he was responsible for its software business in the Western part of the U.S. where he led an organization of more than 1,000 professionals with software sales, technical, and architecture responsibilities focused on selling to the largest enterprises in the U.S. market.

Lautenbach earned a B.A. in Marketing from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio and a MBA from the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois.

Virtela Gains New CEO, Debuts Open Acceleration Service For Public Clouds

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Virtela, the managed network, security and cloud services company, announced that B.V. Jagadeesh has joined as president and chief executive officer.

Prior to joining Virtela, Jagadeesh served as group vice president and general manager of Citrix Systems’ Application Networking Group after the company’s $325 million acquisition of NetScaler, where he served as president and CEO.

Jagadeesh previously co-founded Exodus Communications and was instrumental in leading its IPO. He serves as chairman of the board of NetMagic Solutions, a leading IT services company in India, and was a director of Ankeena (acquired by Juniper Networks) and Ocarina Networks (acquired by Dell).

In tandem with the appointment of Jagadeesh, Virtela introduced the Cloud Accelerator service, which extends Virtela ESC’s acceleration benefits to applications hosted within the public cloud environment, such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, and IBM Cloudburst.

Jeff Miller Jumps From IBM To Layer 7

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Former IBM exec Jeff Miller has joined Layer 7‘s executive management team as vice president of sales, the company announced this morning.

Layer 7 Technologies boasts a portfolio of SOA and cloud security products, essentially helping organizations secure and govern integrations that span the Internet and cloud.

Miller brings more than 15 years of sales and marketing experience to Layer 7, with expertise in building direct and indirect sales teams for technology companies where SOA, cloud and security have been the focal point.

Most recently, Jeff was a business unit executive at IBM responsible for DataPower, Cast Iron and SOA Appliances in North America. He was a vice president of sales for DataPower before its acquisition by IBM.

Previously, he held sales leadership positions at SOA, cloud and SaaS startups such as Actional and Grand Central Communications.

Says Paul Rochester, CEO of Layer 7 Technologies:

“Jeff has the breadth and depth of experience, coupled with specific domain expertise in Layer 7’s sweet spot, that makes him a perfect fit for taking our sales and market presence to a new level.

He joins the company following a blockbuster year that saw triple-digit growth, strong global customer acquisition and industry recognition of our innovative solutions. Jeff will strengthen our management team as we build on these successes.”

AppSense Recruits Virtualization Guru Dr. Benny Tritsch

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AppSense, provider of user virtualization solutions for enterprises, has hired Dr Benny Tritsch as technology director in Germany, Austria & Switzerland. Tritsch will also be a contributor to the AppSense Office of the CTO, based in San Jose, and also educate the market on user virtualization the company says.

Tritsch will also continue his independent community work, running training sessions and speaking at regular industry events on desktop, application delivery and user virtualization technologies.

Dr Tritsch is based near Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University in Darmstadt, a MSc in Physics from the University in Freiburg after completing his thesis at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and a BSc in Physics from the University in Freiburg.

Tritsch comments:

“Consumerisation of services and devices, componentized desktops, user driven service delivery models, including cloud and outsourcing, and massive desktop migration are driving the need for user virtualisation. The desktop of the future will look very different from today, comprising standardized components, user installed applications and user data, made available across all platforms, delivery mechanisms and devices.

That is the AppSense vision, and I’m genuinely excited about the company’s potential as they continue to drive this expanding user virtualization market.”

AppSense recently announced 1.5 million license sales for 2010, a 60 percent increase in revenues and 43 per cent increase in headcount. This expansion has also seen investment into new EMEA locations, with the opening of new offices in Paris and Oslo.

The company also developed existing and new partnerships with Citrix, McAfee, Microsoft and VMware, and worked with a number of system integrators such as Dell, HP, IBM and CSC.