Panasas bolsters sales and marketing leadership with four key appointments

High-performance data solution provider Panasas has announced a reshuffle of its sales and marketing leadership team, with four appointments to key roles.

The revamp sees Jeff Whitaker take on the role of VP of Marketing and Product Management, Kieran Penwill and Chris Sassone become Sales Directors of EMEA and APAC, respectively, while Mike Sheppard is now Global Director of Channels and Alliances.

In an announcement, Panasas COO Brian Peterson said the appointments have been made due to the recent success of the company’s ActiveStor Ultra product line.

“The ActiveStor Ultra product line has received high praise from both established and new customers, and Panasas has enjoyed a sharp increase in demand over the last 18 months,” he said. “As a result, we are investing further in our teams and our products to support our expanding global customer base.”

Jeff Whitaker, who will oversee marketing and product management, has previously held the role of VP of Product at Excelero and was a founding member of the cloud team at NetApp.

Commenting on his appointment, Whitaker said he was joining Panasas due to its commitment to “making the world a better place with data”.

“Our products are critical to the success of organisations that are transforming healthcare and life sciences, advanced AI and predictive analytics, manufacturing, and climate and energy exploration,” he said. “I am bringing a disruptive way of thinking from my success in the cloud storage industry to the high-performance data industry.”

With Whitaker’s appointment, former VP of Product and Alliances Brian Reed takes over the position of VP of Corporate Development as Panasas prepares to expand its strategic partnerships.

Elsewhere, Kieran Penwill brings a host of experience from previous roles at Intel, Dell and Microsoft, while Chris Sassone joins the business having spent the previous 10 years at Intel. Mike Sheppard also previously worked for Intel, as well as DDN and Strongbox.

“Kieran Penwill, Chris Sassone, and Mike Sheppard were instrumental in building out end-customer installations of the Lustre parallel file system across the globe during their tenures at Intel,” COO Brian Peterson added.

“They each bring strong customer and partner relationships with them, which they will use to deliver Panasas’ stability, easy manageability, and optimized performance to organisations throughout the world.”