AUSTIN, TX — (Marketwired) — 10/29/13 — SolarWinds® (NYSE: SWI), an IT management leader serving over 150,000 customers worldwide including small to medium sized businesses and 425 of the Fortune 500 companies, today announced that it has named John F. Rizzo as the company-s Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing and Chief Customer Officer. Rizzo, who starts with the company on November 4, 2013, will oversee SolarWinds- marketing organization, and help drive the company-s marketing activities and new, focused customer experience initiatives.
“As SolarWinds continues to expand its relevance in the IT management market and develop new ways to create connections with and value for IT professionals around the world, we must evolve the ways that we engage our audience and reach and penetrate new markets. We are at an important point in the company-s lifecycle and I believe that John brings the right mix of leadership and experience to help drive our marketing organization to new levels of creativity and productivity,” said Kevin Thompson, president and Chief Executive Officer, SolarWinds.
“We believe that his understanding of technology and core B2C and B2B branding, combined with his experience with emerging marketing strategies like community building, marketing automation, analytics, big data and content marketing, will have an immediate impact on our go-to-market activities.”
Rizzo brings more than 25 years of marketing and technology leadership experience to SolarWinds, during which time he-s been involved in creating and growing new markets. Most recently, he was Chief Marketing Officer of Jive Software, a SaaS-based Social Business software provider selling to enterprises and helping to improve communication and collaboration between employees, customers and partners. Prior to Jive, Rizzo served as President and CEO of Zeebo, which produced a 3G videogame and wireless digital content delivery system for emerging markets including Brazil, China, India, and Mexico. He was also the President and CEO of Informative, one of the first SaaS providers developing solutions aimed at marketers. Previously in his career, he was the CMO at the world-s first fabless chip company, which was his first IPO. He was the first product marketer at Intel for Flash memory and the first product marketer for the first Macintosh at Apple Computer. Rizzo holds a bachelor-s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
“SolarWinds- strong connection to the IT professionals- community and even stronger technology foundation create what I believe is tremendous potential for continued success. With a high velocity sales model where the user and the buyer of the technology are one and the same, I am excited to be a part of the next phase of this company-s market disruption,” said John Rizzo, SolarWinds CMO and Chief Customer Officer. “SolarWinds- evolution will require contributions in both the art and science of marketing and the leadership required to implement them. I believe that my previous experience, along with the fantastic team already assembled at SolarWinds, will create a dynamic that will be hard to beat. I-m honored to have a chance to lend a hand.”
This press release contains “forward-looking” statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the evolution and direction of our marketing organization. These forward-looking statements are based on management-s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts and may be identified by terms such as “will,” “plans,” “believes,” “intends” or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, increased regulation related to data privacy and data-driven marketing practices and such other risks and uncertainties described more fully in documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013 filed on February 19, 2013. All information provided in this release is as of the date hereof and SolarWinds undertakes no duty to update this information except as required by law.
SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide — from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. We work to put our users first and remove the obstacles that have become “status quo” in traditional enterprise software. SolarWinds products are downloadable, easy to use and maintain, and provide the power, scale, and flexibility needed to address users- management priorities. Our online user community, ®, is a gathering-place where tens of thousands of IT pros solve problems, share technology, and participate in product development for all of SolarWinds- products. Learn more today at .
SolarWinds, SolarWinds & Design and thwack are registered trademarks of SolarWinds. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Dave Hafner
Phone: 512.682.9867
Tiffany Nels
Phone: 512.682.9545
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