groheBarracuda Networks, Inc. announced that storage industry veteran Ken Grohe has joined the company as senior vice president & general manager of emerging products.

Grohe brings more than 26 years of technology experience to Barracuda, most recently as vice president of worldwide customer operations at Virident, which was acquired by HGST, a division of Western Digital. While at Virident, he expanded the sales and partner teams, and acquired new customers and OEMs, which contributed to its $685 million acquisition by HGST, a division of Western Digital.

Prior to that, Grohe was at EMC for more than 25 years, where he held a number of executive sales and partner positions and led several internal "start-up" disruption technologies that helped grow the company.

At Barracuda, Grohe will be responsible for the CudaTel and CudaEye product lines, and will help drive sales for Barracuda Copy, the company's file, sync and share platform, as well as SignNow, the company's eSignature service.

 


 

LightCyber, a leading provider of active breach detection solutions, announced that Gonen Fink was been recently appointed as the company's CEO.

Gonen Fink brings to LightCyber over 20 years of entrepreneurial and leadership experience in the technology and network security industry. During his twelve-year tenure at Check Point, Fink held a number of strategic positions, including chief architect, vice president of products and vice president of solutions and strategy.

Prior to Check Point, he served in the Israeli Defense Force's elite intelligence unit and as a strategic planning consultant to the Ministry of Defense.

Fink was also the founder and CEO of Pythagoras Solar and has served on several IT security companies' boards and advisory boards.

He holds a B.Sc. summa cum laude in Physics and Computer Science and an M.A. summa cum laude in Digital Philosophy from Tel Aviv University.

In addition, LightCyber expanded its management team by naming Jason Matlof executive vice president and chief marketing officer and Tim Straight vice president of sales for North America. These combined hires add more than 60 years of technology industry experience to LightCyber's management team.

JasonJason Matlof is a seasoned marketing executive with nearly 20 years of experience in the technology, networking and network security industry. Prior to joining LightCyber, he served as vice president worldwide marketing for A10 Networks through its IPO, and held similar roles at Neoteris and Big Switch Networks. Matlof has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. with honors from UCLA.

TimTim Straight is an experienced sales and business development leader with 25+ years of experience in taking new technologies to market and carrier customers through various resale channel models, including leadership of western region sales during the early growth stage at both Check Point Software and NetScreen Technologies. Most recently, Straight was the vice president of sales and business development at Zettaset. Straight earned his B.A. from University of Rhode Island.

LightCyber also announced the establishment of its global sales and marketing headquarters in Los Altos, CA, as well as the expansion of R&D operations in Israel.

 


 

Extreme Networks, Inc., a leader in high performance networking, announced the appointment of Bob Gault to the position of vice president of global channels and partners.

Gault will build Extreme's channel partner program into a core element of its growth and innovation strategy. He will implement programs that help channel partners capture emerging profit pools and new revenue streams as Extreme Networks solutions are positioned as the 'on-ramp' to the cloud.

Gault's appointment follows the transition of Theresa Caragol into the role of vice president of strategic sales initiatives for Extreme, where she will continue to support Extreme's Customers and Channel Partner-first commitment and sales efforts. Gault leads a global ecosystem of 2,500 channel partners backed by Extreme Networks' channel and sales organizations, innovative product portfolio and award-winning service and support.

Gault has devoted more than 26 years to the channel with experience in sales and marketing with solution service providers. He was most recently vice president of Cisco's Cloud and Managed Services Partner Organization where he drove the worldwide go-to-market strategy, recruited channel partners across the ecosystem, focused on field sales enablement and profitability by helping channel partners monetize their investments while accelerating the adoption of cloud and managed services into the market.

 


 

andyEpsilon, an Alliance Data company and the global leader in creating connections between people and brands, announced that Andy Frawley has been named Chief Executive Officer of Epsilon.

Andy, who joined the company in 2009 and most recently served as President of Epsilon, has been instrumental in the business's growth and success. He will be responsible for all sales, account management and delivery across Epsilon and will continue to report to Bryan Kennedy.

On the heels of Epsilon's acquisition of Conversant, Bryan Kennedy, previously Chief Executive Officer of Epsilon, will lead the combined Epsilon and Conversant entity. Together, Epsilon and Conversant will deliver cross-device, online and offline, data-enabled, technology-driven marketing solutions that serve the global 1000 CMO. Kennedy's primary focus will be working closely with John Giuliani, Conversant's Chief Executive Officer, along with Andy Frawley and the Conversant and Epsilon leadership teams to integrate the businesses and uncover opportunities for brands to create deeper connections with their customers across the data-driven, digital ecosystem.

 


 

China's leading mobile ad platform company Madhouse announced the appointment of Clement Huang as its Chief Product Officer (CPO).

Huang comes from Yahoo USA where he led the product team of ads and data platform and was responsible for building and managing the product team to create Yahoo's new Programmatic Buying Platform.

In 2012, Huang was the product leader of global ad platform at GREE, the world's second largest mobile social gaming network.

Meanwhile, he has been consulting for Silicon Valley China Entrepreneurship Forum (SVCEF) since 2005, giving startup mentorship on product strategies to new business owners in the U.S.

Huang graduated from California Polytechnic State University in 1997 with President's Honor.

 


 

Synopsys, Inc, a global leader providing software, IP and services, announced the appointment of Janice D. Chaffin to its board of directors, effective December 12, 2014.

Ms. Chaffin is an experienced technology industry executive, specializing in strategic marketing and global operations. She has held several senior executive positions with Symantec Corporation, most recently as group president, consumer business unit from 2007 to 2013. Ms. Chaffin brings to Synopsys extensive public company board experience. She currently serves on the boards of International Game Technology and PTC Inc., and formerly served on the board of Informatica Corporation.

Prior to leading Symantec's consumer business unit, Ms. Chaffin served as the company's executive vice president and chief marketing officer from 2006 to 2007, and as senior vice president and chief marketing officer from 2003 to 2006. Before joining Symantec, Ms. Chaffin worked more than twenty years at Hewlett-Packard Company in a variety of management and marketing leadership positions.

In addition to serving on the boards of International Game Technology and PTC Inc., Ms. Chaffin also serves in supporting leadership roles for Ancestry.com LLC, the UCLA Anderson School of Management, Montalvo Arts Center and Illuminate Ventures. Ms. Chaffin graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science, and earned a Masters of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was an Edward W. Carter Fellow.

With the addition of Ms. Chaffin, Synopsys' board of directors now has ten members, eight of whom are independent.

 


 

Unisys Corporation announced that it has named Peter A. Altabef as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective January 1, 2015. At that time, Altabef, 55, also will join the Company's board of directors.

Altabef comes to Unisys with more than 20 years of senior leadership experience in the IT industry and has a proven ability to drive revenue growth and achieve strong financial performance. He served as President and CEO of Perot Systems Corporation and MICROS Systems, Inc., and led both to double-digit revenue growth and increased profits. He also served as President of Dell Services, the business and IT services unit of Dell Inc.

Paul E. Weaver, currently interim Chairman of the Unisys board, will become Chairman, effective January 1, 2015. Weaver has served as a director of Unisys since 2010, and was the Board's lead independent director before being named interim Chairman last month.

Altabef was most recently President and Chief Executive Officer of MICROS Systems, the enterprise applications, services and hardware company, and a member of its board of directors, from January 2013 until the completion in September 2014 of its acquisition by Oracle Corporation. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Perot Systems from 2004-2009 until it was acquired by Dell, at which time he became President of Dell Services until his departure in 2011.

 


 

Accelerize and its digital marketing software division CAKE announced that Eric Rosenthal has been named Executive Vice President of Sales.

Rosenthal brings over 15 years experience in building, managing and scaling sales for a number of high-growth, ad-tech and SaaS-based businesses. He will be responsible for spearheading CAKE's global sales operations, which span North and South America as well as Europe and Asia.

Throughout his career Rosenthal has been instrumental in driving revenue growth for both start-up and mid-stage ad-tech companies, many of which have gone on to be acquired by large industry players such as Google and AOL. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President of Sales for CrowdTwist, Inc., a leading multi-channel loyalty and analytics solutions provider, where he managed and grew client relationships with TOMS, Pepsi, Nestle and Barclays.

Over the course of his sales career Rosenthal has been responsible for driving significant revenue growth for a number of SaaS-based companies by developing go-to-market sales strategies, building strong customer relationships, and managing sales force growth. At OpenX, a global leader in digital and mobile advertising technology, he served as General Manager of the company's SaaS-based ad serving business as well as head of the company's publisher sales team, where he worked closely with a number of well-known media brands including Hearst, Forbes, Time Inc. and Mashable. Rosenthal was instrumental in growing the company's SaaS-focused publisher and network business revenues by more than 300 percent in his first year as General Manager.

Some of Rosenthal's sales management career highlights include Pictela, where during his tenure as Senior Vice President of National Agency and Publisher Sales, he managed sales of the company's media ad serving platform through its acquisition by AOL in 2010. During the merger transition, he helped grow revenues derived from Pictela's platform from $5 million to $50 million by leveraging AOL as a sales channel. As Senior Vice President at Panther CDN, a SaaS-based organization servicing online publishers, media companies and content owners, Rosenthal managed the company's East Coast sales team where revenues doubled over a two-year period. This helped lead to the acquisition of Panther CDN by CD Networks in February of 2009. Earlier in his sales management career he led the east region publisher sales division at DoubleClick where he managed a 20-person team that built division revenues to an annual run rate over $70 million.

 


 

ANCILE Solutions, Inc., a global developer of learning and performance software solutions used by more than half of the Fortune 100, announced the appointment of Greg Sybersma as its Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. A veteran in the education and software industries, Sybersma will lead ANCILE's marketing, sales, and professional services teams.

Sybersma, formerly of Socrates Connected, LLC and Blackboard Inc., brings to ANCILE comprehensive knowledge and a deep understanding of learning software, as well as the strategic vision to continue fueling the company's growth.

Sybersma has more than 15 years of leadership experience in building and selling platforms from the ground up. He was the Vice President of International Sales at Blackboard Inc., where he expanded the learning tool's client base to over 60 countries and secured one of the company's largest customers. Sybersma has also held executive positions at Deltek, Inc. and BearingPoint Consulting Inc.

Sybersma received an Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Business Administration from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario.

 


 

PAYTOO Corp., an expert in mobile phone solutions, VoIP, prepaid cards, and secured e-commerce payment transaction, announced that Michael Price has been named Chief Operating Officer of PAYTOO Corp.

In his new role, Price will be responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations and ensuring companywide alignment with competitive strategies to enhance marketplace execution and service delivery to PAYTOO®'s 3.5 million customers.

Michael Price brings 22 years of leadership in sales, marketing and consultative management to PAYTOO®. His experience and strengths come from leading key strategic growth initiatives spanning from SMB to Fortune 100 companies both domestically and abroad. He served most recently as Vice President of Business Development with Ordyx POS, a cloud-based Saas, where he developed and deployed Channel Marketing, Distribution and process strategies as well as spearheaded the company's M&A efforts. Prior to Ordyx, Michael held the role of Director of Marketing and Sales with the Boston based Entwistle (TEC), which manufacturers and engineers complex defense products for applications within international defense and aerospace arenas, where he worked to expand the company's offering to both the renewable energy and nuclear sectors.

Price earned a Bachelor's Degree from Baldwin-Wallace College and currently resides in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

 


 

The Raine Group, a global merchant bank focused exclusively on technology, media and telecommunications, announced that Mika Salmi has joined the firm as a Senior Advisor.

A veteran technology and digital media entrepreneur and investor, Salmi brings many years of deep experience to the firm. He will be based in San Francisco and will work with Raine on digital media and technology-related initiatives.

Prior to joining Raine, Salmi served as CEO of CreativeLive, Inc., a leading social video platform for the $100 billion continuing education market. Under Salmi's leadership, the firm expanded significantly, increasing revenues over 600% and raising over $30 million in funding from a number of top-tier investors including Greylock Partners and Social + Capital Partnership.

A widely-recognized digital media entrepreneur, Salmi successfully founded and served as CEO of numerous companies, including Atom Entertainment, a pioneering user-generated online video platform that was sold to Viacom in 2006 and includes the AtomFilms, Shockwave and AddictingGames brands. He was also the founder and CEO of Mad Races, a GPS and mobile-based gaming company that was sold to Betaworks in 2010. Salmi also served as President of Global Digital Media for MTV Networks/Viacom, working across all of Viacom's 33 brands and overseeing more than 1,500 employees in 60 countries. Salmi's leadership helped quadruple Viacom's digital revenues to over $1 billion while also helping transform MTV Networks into a global new media leader. Salmi graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and earned his MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He currently serves on numerous company Boards, including CreativeLive, INSEAD and Feed.fm.

The Raine Group invests and advises across the media landscape. Some of the firm's principal investments include fantasy sports and online gaming provider DraftKings, South Park creators' Important Studios, restaurant operator and brand licensing company Margaritaville, multimedia fitness leader Zumba Fitness, live event producer C3 Presents, action sports collective Nitro Circus and multimedia producer Vice Media.

 


 

comScore, Inc., a global leader in digital media analytics, has announced a partnership with Lotame, the world’s leading independent data management platform (DMP), that will allow advertisers and publishers to engage with customers and prospects using rich web analytics data. The global agreement, which includes the entire Asia Pacific region, will allow Digital Analytix customers to convert their analytics data into premium audience segments, and then make the segments actionable across a broad range of activation channels via Lotame’s DMP.

Key benefits of the partnership include the ability for advertisers and publishers to:

• Run targeted campaigns against data segments developed within the Digital Analytix platform;

• Scale out or further refine Digital Analytix segments by leveraging first- and third-party data sets within Lotame’s DMP;

• Gain a deep understanding of audience and behaviour overlaps between Digital Analytix and Lotame data sets through Lotame’s powerful Insights tool;

• Leverage Lotame’s Optimizer tool to enhance campaign performance and scale out Digital Analytix audiences into larger, targetable profile pools;

• Use Lotame’s Cross-Device functionality to map Digital Analytix segments from desktop to mobile, and vice versa.

 


 

Michael1Havas Media Group has announced the appointment of Michael Lelievre as Chief Financial Officer for Asia Pacific.

In his new role, Michael will be responsible for back office functions including finance, legal, HR and IT. His key mandate is to support the general management in developing the business in the fast growing market and he will be working closely with the regional and local teams to bring about greater operational efficiencies within the group.

He joins the agency with 19 years of experience in the finance space, 18 of which have been spent with Bollore Group working across South Africa, France and UK. He was most recently the CFO of SAGA, one of the companies under Bollore Logistics, where he spent four years based out of Paris.

He will be reporting in jointly to Vishnu Mohan, CEO of Havas Media Group APAC and Antonio Caceres Martinez, Global CFO of Havas Media Group, with the dotted line to global heads of IT, HR and Legal.

 


 

Jawabkom, the Arab world’s largest interactive question and answer website, has partnered with SLA Mobile, a leading mobile solutions provider, focused on generating new revenue streams for mobile operators and merchants, to bring Digital Services to its customers.

Set up in January 2014, Jawabkom offers users the opportunity to ask questions to professionals such as lawyers and doctors and get a personalised answer for a small fee. The service allows users to consult experts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in areas such as Marriage, Legal and Nutrition with new fields of expertise to be added as the service grows.

Jawabkom echoed its success by attracting over 1 million registered users within 8 months of launching, marking a new growth record in the Arab world, which also granted a place on the top 15 fastest companies in the world to reach their first 1 million users.

SLA Mobile will introduce Digital Services to Jawabkom in order to improve their customers’ experience and is set to partner the company with major mobile operators so that they can bring Direct Operator Billing to Jawabkom customers alongside an Identity Management solution that will help reduce churn and attract new customers.

 


 

FabrizioAppier, the Cross-Screen targeting innovator, announced the appointment of Fabrizio Caruso as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), effective immediately.

Fabrizio is the newest member of Appier's executive team. With more than 15 years of experience in the digital and mobile industry, he will lead and drive Appier's revenue growth and expansion across the global markets.

Before joining Appier, Fabrizio was the Senior Vice President of Asia at Opera Software, a leading mobile internet and advertising company, famous for its mobile browser. As the SVP of Asia, he was responsible for expanding and developing Opera's business across the Asian markets. He successfully grew a strong client base for Opera - including leading advertisers, mobile carriers and handset makers.

Prior to Opera, he was the APAC Managing Director and Vice President for Business Development at Out There Media. He has also held a number of senior positions at Buongiorno and Amdocs in China, Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

Fabrizio has deep industry knowledge of wireless and internet technologies. He is also a frequent public speaker and has contributed to articles published in various trade magazines and websites, specifically about mobile marketing in Asia-Pacific.

Following the opening of new offices in Tokyo and Sydney, this announcement marks the latest news for Appier in the expansion of its C-Suite. Fabrizio will be based in Singapore and report to CEO Chih-Han Yu directly.

 


 

oilverBrandMaker GmbH, a leading European provider of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) systems, welcomes Oliver Eschenbach as its new Director International Sales.

With long-term professional experience in the sales sector, Eschenbach is an acknowledged expert in Digital Asset Management (DAM). His most recent position was that of Director Sales & Marketing at DAM solutions supplier celum, which he occupied for several years.

A further long-standing milestone in Eschenbach’s career was Pitney Bowes Germany; as Sales Manager, he was responsible for the sale of process optimization software solutions for the logistics sector in the DACH region.

 


 

PeterAbacus International, the Asia Pacific region’s leading travel solutions provider, announced the appointment of online travel veteran Peter Li to a new role as General Manager for the company’s expanding China operations.

Reporting directly to Brett Henry, Vice President - Commercial, Li will build on the collaborative strategy that has established Abacus as China’s complementary foreign Global Distribution System (GDS) used by a fast growing network of international travel agents.

Li brings with him over 17 years of experience, most recently overseeing business development at TripAdvisor where he was particularly instrumental in educating China’s hoteliers on the online opportunity, connecting them with wider domestic and overseas audiences. Li also previously focussed the China strategy for TravelClick, Travelzoo and Accor, with the benefit of experience working for China International Travel Service and with Northwest Airlines.

Li, who holds a Master’s Degree in Economics, will oversee Abacus’ operations across six provincial offices. He will also be working closely with his counterparts around the region and the Abacus executive team in Singapore.

 


 

Millennial Media announced the acquisition of mobile supply-side platform (SSP) and programmatic pioneer Nexage.

This acquisition creates one of the world’s most complete mobile ad technology stacks. Millennial Media’s historic leadership in the managed brand and performance advertising businesses is now complemented by a full programmatic platform. This combination will allow Millennial to bring ad dollars from hundreds of demand sources and thousands of advertisers to its network of 60,000-plus applications and mobile sites around the globe.

Nexage will become the core of Millennial Media’s Platform business, run by Matt Gillis, President of Platforms, which includes:

  • Monetization solutions for publishers and developers globally and advanced programmatic buying capabilities to meet the needs of all buying in mobile today.

1. Millennial Media can now source demand from over 120 global networks (including the Facebook Audience Network, Google’s Admob, and iAd), the Nexage/Millennial Media exchange, and Millennial Media’s fully managed media businesses. This will ensure the highest yield in the industry, and also provide a simple unified reporting dashboard.

2. A leading exchange that allows hundreds of demand-side platforms (DSPs) and trading desks to buy ad impressions via programmatic direct, private exchange and open RTB auctions.

  • An industry-leading data management platform (DMP) that allows marketers to reach targeted audience at scale throughout the ecosystem and leverage first-party, third-party, and CRM data. This creates a data-leakage-safe marketplace that allows publishers and advertisers to trade media with audience data without exposing it to each other. Millennial is proud to break free from black-box environments, by passing campaign-level data back to advertisers to create win-win relationships, and enable Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) marketing strategies.

In addition, with the close of the transaction, former CEO of Nexage, Ernie Cormier, has joined Millennial Media’s Board of Directors.

 


 

Inmarsat, the leading provider of global mobile satellite communications services, has appointed SpeedCast International Limited (SpeedCast), a leading global network and satellite communications service provider, as a Distribution Partner (DP) for its flagship maritime service, FleetBroadband, and Fleet One, its new voice and broadband data service for leisure yachts and near-shore fishing boats.

As part of the agreement, SpeedCast has also been appointed as a Value Added Reseller (VAR) for Fleet Xpress, Inmarsat’s high-speed broadband maritime service, delivered over the new Global Xpress (GX) constellation.

SpeedCast’s maritime unit has continued its growth momentum in the marketplace across all segments of the maritime industry, including merchant shipping, offshore services, and the leisure market. SpeedCast successfully acquired SatComms Australia, an existing Inmarsat Service Provider earlier this year and has for many years provided VSAT services to Globe Wireless, which was acquired by Inmarsat in January.

 


 

AirTies, Aruba Networks, ATDI, Broadcom, and Saankhya Labs are the latest members to join the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, with Broadcom and Aruba Networks being elected to its Board of Directors.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance welcomes new members as it continues to advocate for laws and regulations that lead to more efficient and effective spectrum utilization, thereby helping governments around the globe address key policy challenges around making Internet access more ubiquitous and more affordable and improving the lives of their citizens.