Storage vendor X-IO Technologies has overhauled its executive organisation, including the appointment of Brian Owen as its new president and CEO.
He replaces John Beletic, who has taken the chairman role at the Colorado-based company. He describes Owen as “an outstanding talent to lead X-IO.”
Previously CEO of MapInfo, Owen (pictured) oversaw an IPO that was 24 times oversubscribed, while his planned IPO at decalog NV triggered a sale to SunGuard. He has also held senior executive positions within Computer Associates and Oracle. Most recently, Owen was a general partner with Masthead Venture Partners where he oversaw early-stage investments in emerging technology-based companies.
Owen promises to drive X-IO out of its technology focused comfort-zone and go head-to-head with both the new wave of all-flash / hybrid storage start-ups and the traditional legacy storage brands such as NetApp and EMC.
He comments: “The realisation of the software-defined datacentre is dramatically transforming the way companies buy, deploy and manage storage and the ISE (Intelligent Storage Element) is the only storage technology that reduces cost and complexity whilst also providing consistent performance and reliability.”
According to Owen, SDS provides greater efficiencies for data management through exploiting server hypervisor feature sets and less need for expensive, feature-bloated storage arrays. He believes that customers adopting SDS “now want storage that they can ‘rack and stack’ in a more efficient way that allows their infrastructure teams to dictate how it best wants to use and manage its storage.”
“The fact is, the more virtualised the data centre is, the more relevant we become,” he adds.
Meanwhile former VP of engineering, David Gustavsson, has been appointed chief operating officer, where he will oversee engineering, technical marketing, manufacturing and support.
In addition to the new COO, Owen has appointed Gavin McLaughlin as VP of worldwide marketing. Previously X-IO’s solutions development director, Gavin brings 27 years of technical, sales and marketing experience of the storage industry at organisations such as EMC, HP and Sun Microsystems.
McLaughlin will be leading all outbound communications at X-IO including press and analyst relations, core communications, channel and field marketing, together with strategic alliances.
