Bruce Helart, Former Executive Director for Seagate, to Lead Engineering and Operations; IT Industry Veteran, Larry Cormier, Joins Board of Directors
NexGen Storage has expanded its management team with the appointment of David Bangs as senior vice president of worldwide sales and Bruce Helart as vice president of engineering and operations. The company also named Larry Cormier to its board of directors. Bangs, Helart and Cormier each bring strong track records of success and proven leadership, and will focus on accelerating NexGen’s growth strategy, building its leadership position in solid-state storage and delivering world-class solutions to its customers and partners.
A proven sales leader with deep channel knowledge and commitment, Bangs will be responsible for rapid expansion of NexGen’s worldwide sales force. Bangs brings extensive channel experience and customer-focused success leading sales organizations within the storage technology industry.
Prior to joining NexGen, Bangs was senior vice president of sales at Drobo where he helped lead the NEA- and Greylock-backed company to surpass the 200,000th customer mark, achieve its first 1 petabyte sale and transition to generating more than 50 percent of revenues from the Drobo business line of products. Previously he managed the HP StorageWorks sales organization tasked with penetrating US Emerging Growth Accounts to deliver annual storage and networking products revenues in excess of $900 million.
Before his role at HP, Bangs was vice president of worldwide sales at LeftHand Networks, an innovator and leader in the iSCSI SAN market, where he built and led the sales organization from initial shipments to more than 3,000 customer wins prior to the company's acquisition by HP in November 2008. Prior to LeftHand, Bangs held sales leadership roles at Quantum and Control Data.
As vice president of engineering and operations, Helart will be responsible for advancing NexGen’s purpose-built PCIe solid-state storage solutions and accelerating product development and time-to-market. He brings 30 years of progressive management experience in the storage industry to the NexGen leadership team with executive roles in operations, engineering, and supply chain and division management. Prior to NexGen, Helart was executive director of engineering at Seagate Technology where he led multiple corporate initiatives, most recently as the R&D Project Director for the Seagate Samsung HDD merger.
Joining the NexGen board of directors, Cormier brings more than 30 years of leadership experience in the technology industry. He has successfully led marketing initiatives at a number of leading data infrastructure companies, including LeftHand Networks (now HP), CommVault and McDATA, and has extensive experience driving the growth and success of emerging technology companies. Cormier served two terms as a board member for the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and is currently senior vice president of worldwide marketing for venture-backed Silver Peak Systems, an enterprise network software provider.
“NexGen has enjoyed a strong reception of our PCIe SSD storage systems in the market, and we are now making key investments in both people and technology to accelerate growth and drive the success of our customers and partners,” said John Spiers, CEO and founder, NexGen Storage. “David Bangs brings proven success in high-growth businesses, deep knowledge of the market, and a strong track record of generating traction with innovative, advanced technologies, while Bruce Helart possesses a stellar reputation for advancing engineering and product development. We are pleased to welcome David, Bruce and Larry, and we look forward to their contributions as we take NexGen to the next level.”
Recently named ‘2012 Best Product’ in the storage solutions category by Network Products Guide and a CRN 2012 Emerging Technology Vendor, NexGen delivers the industry’s first PCIe SSD storage system designed from the ground up to manage performance just like capacity. Unlike any other shared storage system, the NexGen n5 system delivers Storage QoS for managing performance and Service Levels to guarantee the performance of mission-critical applications no matter what happens. Backed by the industry’s only solid-state performance guarantee, NexGen’s PCIe solid-state architecture avoids performance bottlenecks to offer the best price/performance ratio of any midrange storage solution.
To learn more, attend NexGen’s live webinar, “Accelerating VM Recovery with NexGen and Veeam” on Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 12:00 noon ET. Register here.