MILPITAS,CA — (Marketwired) — 05/21/13 — , the performance leader in flash-based storage-class memory (SCM) solutions, today announced the appointment of the former vice president and general manager of EMC-s flash business unit, Ken Grohe, as the company-s new vice president of worldwide customer operations. Keith Carpenter was also brought in as vice president of sales, Americas; he was formerly with NetApp. Grohe brings more than 25 years of storage-industry experience to Virident and will be responsible for the company-s customer operations strategy, worldwide sales, technical sales and sales operations. Carpenter will be responsible for managing the sales of Virident products and services as well as go-to-market in North America. He will report directly to Grohe.
“Virident is on a roll — adding big customers, big partners and big talent. They are absolutely one to watch in the flash space,” said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at ESG.
Grohe joins Virident from EMC, where he led many of the company-s growth products, programs and divisions during a 25-year career. Most recently, Ken led EMC Flash Products Division-s Global Customer Operations, helping customers get SCM performance in microseconds from flash solutions. He helped EMC build its flash sales team; established many of the initial solid state, memory, storage and software solutions; and was responsible for many customer wins. Ken led the adoption and integration of the CLARiiON mid-tier product line from acquisition to present sales of more than $4 billion annually. He also created the Global xSP program and developed both the Velocity Partner Program and the Software Partner Program.
“During my career, I-ve been fortunate to work with the biggest name in the storage industry from the very onset to build a global flash partnership and product program,” said Grohe. “I look forward to expanding Virident-s market leadership and making it be the premier provider of flash-based storage-class memory solutions.”
Keith Carpenter, the new vice president of sales, Americas, has more than 20 years of national and international sales and senior management experience. Carpenter brings vast knowledge and leadership experience; most recently he was co-founder and vice president of sales for Cache IQ, an early-stage startup developing flash-based technologies with sophisticated software for accelerating demanding I/O applications. Cache IQ was acquired by NetApp in November 2012. Prior to Cache IQ, he was the vice president of sales for Storspeed, a private startup based in Austin, Texas. Earlier, Keith had been a NetApp sales director responsible for a $220 million business unit in the central United States. He has also held sales and leadership positions with Auspex Systems and EMC Corporation.
Virident recently announced the release of FlashMAX Connect, the industry-s first software solution to create a storage management layer integrated with the leading performance of PCIe storage. The FlashMAX Connect suite provides extreme low latency while delivering the shared capacity, manageability and high availability of legacy SAN architectures.
“Ken and Keith join a team at Virident that is grounded in combining innovative technology and game-changing SCM solutions and that puts customers and partners at the core of our model,” said Mike Gustafson, Virident CEO. “As vice president of worldwide customer operations, Ken will team up with Keith to lead Virident-s worldwide and America-s sales operations. With demonstrated knowledge of the industry, plus deep sales experience and leadership across high-growth and disruptive markets, Ken and Keith are the perfect fit to take our company, customers, partners and relationships to the next level.”
Virident Systems is a leading provider of enterprise-class Storage Class Memory (SCM) solutions that deliver unconditional, consistent performance to data-intensive applications. The inherent advantage associated with this disruptive technology revolutionizes computing by speeding application response time and optimizing datacenter efficiency for new levels of ROI. Virident Systems is backed by strategic investors Intel®, Cisco® Systems, Seagate and a storage solutions provider, as well as Hercules Technology Growth Capital and venture investors Artiman Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, and Mitsui Global Investments. For more information, visit .
Virident, Virident FlashMAX, FlashMAX Connect and the Virident logo are trademarks of Virident Systems. All other products and services listed herein are trademarks of their respective companies.
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