High performance vendor Panasas today announced that COO Tom Shea has succeeded Faye Pairman as president and chief executive officer and member of the board of directors, effective immediately.
Shea has more than 20 years of business and engineering experience in the storage industry, including tenures as CEO of Gear6 and Mirra, Inc. He has led software and hardware teams in both public and private companies, according to Panasas.
“I am honored to succeed Faye as CEO and to lead the Panasas team, building on our incredibly strong technology foundation,” said Shea. “We have re-invented ourselves over the past five years, and we are re-defining the price-performance equation in HPC storage with innovative technology that eliminates hidden costs. I look forward to working with our fantastic employees, customers and partners to advance our strategy, drive growth, and deliver value every day for our customers.”
Under Pairman’s leadership, Panasas executed a technology roadmap that included introduction of the PanFS parallel file system, release of the new ActiveStor Ultra data storage appliance based on COTS hardware, and new customer acquisitions.
“It has been my privilege to lead the Panasas team over the past 10 years and I am proud of what we have accomplished together,” said Pairman. “We commercialized the product, expanded into new markets and did something very few data storage companies have achieved: building a new HPC parallel file system, an effort that took four years of deep engineering work. After focusing on product development and market expansion, it is now time to transition the company to customer-focused leadership, and I am confident that Tom will drive Panasas in that direction.”
In addition, Panasas announced that Harry Ault, chief revenue officer at DataStax, has joined the Panasas Board. Ault has more than 20 years of Silicon Valley field leadership experience and brings strong go-to-market and customer acquisition experience to the Board. In his role at DataStax, Ault leads worldwide field operations including data architects, sales, open source consulting, and partner ecosystem development.
source: Panasas
