Management

Vikram Mehta brings 20 years of global experience in the technology industry and has been at the helm of the company since its inception. Under his leadership BLADE Network Technologies has become the industry’s #1 provider of blade server switch solutions. He co-founded Nortel’s Blade Server Switch Business (BSSBU) in 2002 and led the business through June 2005. Under his leadership, BSSBU partnered with the world’s largest suppliers of blade server systems—IBM and HP—and became one of Nortel’s fastest growing businesses.

In July 2005, Vikram joined Garnett & Helfrich Capital as CEO-in-Residence and brokered the alliance between Nortel and Garnett & Helfrich Capital to spin out BSSBU and establish it as an independent company.

Vikram came to Nortel through its acquisition of Alteon Web Systems, the leading provider of Web & application switches, in 2000. At Alteon, he led the company’s strategic alliances and laid the foundation for what would later become BSSBU.

Prior to Alteon, he served as Vice President of Marketing at Ensim, a leading supplier of service enablement and automation software for hosted IP and application services.

Before Ensim, Vikram spent 12 years at HP in various leadership and executive positions across the company’s diverse operations in India, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, and the US. His last position at HP was GM, Enterprise Servers, North America Region. Vikram is an electrical engineer from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India.

Ardene is an accomplished human resources executive with over 15 years of experience in the technology industry. Prior to joining Blade Network Technologies, she was human resources consultant to Ingres, a Garnett & Helfrich Capital portfolio company. Previously, Ardene was Vice President of Human Resources at Persistence Software. Her extensive experience includes leadership positions in the human resources function at several technology companies including Xcert, NEON (A Sybase Company), Harbinger Corporation, DeltaNet Inc., and Vectra Technologies. Ardene majored in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco. She was certified by the American Compensation Association as a Compensation Professional in 1993. Ardene was also certified by the Society of Human Resources Management as a Professional in Human Resources in 1992.

As the Chief Marketing Officer, Mark Hudson is responsible for Strategy and Product Management; Field and Channel Marketing; Marketing Communications; and Strategic Alliances. Prior to joining Blade, Mark spent 19 years at Hewlett-Packard. In his most recent role he was Vice President Worldwide Marketing for HP’s Enterprise Storage and Server business (ESS). In this role Mark was responsible for driving cross-ESS Marketing activities that positioned HP as the leading storage and server provider in the market.

Prior to this, Mark was Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for HP’s Business Critical Systems organization, with global responsibilities for the HP 9000, HP 3000, HP AlphaServer and the HP NonStop servers.

Previously, he held a number of marketing management position for HP’s server, internet, and networking products and technologies.

Mark holds a bachelor’s degree from California State Unversity, Fresno, and a master’s degree in business administration from Santa Clara University.

Bob Murden has over 30 years experience in supply chain management and electronic systems manufacturing. Prior to BLADE, Bob was a senior manufacturing executive with Compaq Computer Corporation where he directed the company’s production and demand fulfillment operations in Fremont, California. Compaq’s 508,000 square foot, 700 person Fremont factory produced several brands of hi-end, custom and configured-to-order computers, networking products and security modules delivering revenue at rates exceeding $2 billion per year. Before Compaq’s acquisition of Tandem Computers, Bob served as senior director of manufacturing for Tandem’s UB-Networks and Atalla subsidiaries and earlier, he was general manager of Tandem’s Cupertino factory, a principal supplier to the firm’s $1 billion Non-Stop computer business. In the years before to joining Tandem, Bob was President and CEO of high performance graphics workstation maker Saber Technology and, previous to that, Vice President of Manufacturing at image processing provider Vicom Systems. Early in his career Bob served in various manufacturing operations and materials roles at Fairchild/Schlumberger Test Systems, the tape drive division of Pertec Computers and the calculator division of Texas Instruments.

After graduating from college, Bob served as an Engineering Duty Officer in the U.S. Navy. He earned a B.A. in Political Science (International Relations) from California State University at Northridge and has been certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) by the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS).

Shailesh Naik has more than 25 years of senior sales, marketing and channel experience in the technology sector. He established and led the sales function for Nortel’s Blade Server Switch Business Unit. Under his sales leadership, BSSBU garnered the top market share position in a highly competitive market.

Prior to joining Nortel, Shailesh held senior executive positions at Qwest as Vice President of Business Development and General Manager of Qwest’s Storage Utility business. Previously, he spent 16 years at HP in executive sales and marketing roles including General Manager of storage sales for North America. Shailesh has extensive global experience, having worked in the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and the U.S. He has an MBA from Lancaster University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Kingston Polytechnic University, United Kingdom.

Timothy Shaughnessy has extensive marketing experience in consumer and enterprise technology solutions in the U.S. and internationally. He has over 17 years of experience in networking.

Prior to joining BLADE, Tim served as Director of Solutions Marketing at NETGEAR, Inc. and was responsible for the growing area of home networking and shared Internet access, including multimedia entertainment networks. Mr. Shaughnessy was also responsible for the company’s technology alliances and solution partnerships.

Tim has also served in various positions in support and marketing at Hewlett-Packard over a period of 16 years. His last position was Director of Enterprise Product Marketing for Asia/Pacific.

Tim holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Management.

Jim Sladek brings over 20 years of finance experience in leadership roles, at HP. Most recently he led the development and successful deployment of business plans and financial processes at HP which enabled a broad array of Consumer Support offerings to the North American market place. Prior to working in the Consumer Products Group, he led the financial integration of three major acquisitions for HP: Compaq Storage, StorageApps, and Transoft Networks.

Previously, Jim was Financial Controller for HP’s Scalable Network Solutions Operation, a worldwide business unit that developed and delivered SAN technologies and storage software. He has also served as Financial Controller for HP’s ProCurve networking business. Under his financial leadership, HP’s ProCurve business developed and deployed a number of successful business strategies including off-shore manufacturing, ODM product development, and alternative go-to-market models. Prior to his many contributions to the networking businesses, Jim was the General Accounting Manager for HP’s North American Distribution Operation a multi-billion dollar operation serving the sales and distribution needs for all HP products.

Prior to working at HP, Jim spent five years in commercial finance at ITT and General Electric Credit Corp. He has a bachelor’s degree in general management from Purdue University.

Clive Surfleet has over 30 years of experience in the computer industry in a variety of senior executive roles at Hewlett-Packard. These roles have covered Marketing and Channels, Research & Development, Operations, Strategic Planning, and Finance. In these roles, Clive has built businesses of over $1B in revenue, managed P&Ls, and managed worldwide organizations with direct budgets of over $60M. He is an expert in developing and executing successful business plans and partnerships.

Clive established HP’s position in enterprise storage by building strong product and channel programs with EMC, Hitachi, Clariion, and Storagetek. As worldwide marketing manager and Mass Storage Operations manager, he grew these businesses from inception to major revenue streams (>$1B) for HP. He also established HP’s program in storage management software with the acquisition of Transoft Networks and led the storage software business for over 2 years. As part of the acquisition of Transoft Networks, Clive managed a separate, wholly owned subsidiary of HP which had completely separate business functions of sales, R&D, marketing, supply chain, and finance. For the HP/Compaq merger, Clive was the senior executive for HP leading the merger planning for storage. His responsibility was to create an overall plan for the merger of the HP and Compaq storage businesses covering R&D, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-Market strategy, partnerships, financial plans, supply chain, and personnel.

Prior to his work in storage, Clive led the HP9000 Unix Server channel and ISV partner program. He developed the ISV program from its beginning into a major differentiator that drove over $700M in HP9000 sales annually. This included building key partnerships with Oracle, SAP, Informix, Sybase, Peoplesoft, and many others. He also managed the HP9000 reseller program and established HP’s first 2-tier distributor channel for servers and several OEM partnerships.

Clive is Founder and President of his own management consulting business, Agora Research. He specializes in assisting executives and senior managers with business, marketing, channel, and product strategies along with the implementation of these strategies for storage, networking, and server companies. He serves on the advisory boards of Exanet, Inc. and Storactive, Inc.

Clive has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and an MBA, both from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dan Tuchler has over 25 years experience in technical and marketing roles in the networking industry. Most recently, he led product management at Mellanox Technologies, the leading supplier of InfiniBand products and an important player in the fast-growing High Performance Computing (HPC) market. Prior to Mellanox, Dan led product management at Force10 Networks, a leading vendor of large scale, resilient 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching products.

Dan’s product experience spans a range of networking product technologies including emerging Ethernet standards, InfiniBand, security, load balancing, content aware networking, and high-availability products at companies such as Alteon WebSystems, Wang Labs, and Proteon Networks. At Alteon, he managed several generations of product lines, from the initial launch of the Web Switch through the company’s IPO and acquisition by Nortel. In addition Dan has consulted to numerous Silicon Valley start-ups, developing business plans and product strategies.

Dan started his career as a hardware designer developing networking products. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland and an MBA from Boston University.

Mark Verbeck brings a broad range of experience in finance and operations at companies both large and small. Most recently he was a prominent Wall Street analyst covering technology companies for firms that included Cantor Fitzgerald, Citigroup, and Epoch Partners (acquired by Goldman Sachs). At Epoch partners he was a founding member of the firm and was a member of the executive committee. As an equity analyst, Mark obtained broad exposure to capital processes, successful corporate strategies, and effective merger and acquisition approaches.

Prior to Wall Street, Mark worked at Deloitte & Touche (now Deloitte), the global accounting and consulting company. In this role, he worked with many Fortune 500 companies on information technology strategy and implementation.

Mark started his career in a finance position that evolved into a leadership role in finance and information technology at a small Midwest land development company that experienced rapid growth during his tenure.

Mark has a BA in accounting from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Stefan Zuckut has 10 years of experience in the technology sector. As a member of the Garnett & Helfrich Capital team, he created the accounting, commercial, and legal infrastructure for BLADE Network Technologies when it became a company independent of Nortel.

His technology industry experience includes business development and corporate development roles with start-ups as well as Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies, and work as an analyst in the investment field with Bowman Capital, a technology-focused hedge fund. At Agilent’s Corporate Development group, Stefan led multi-functional project teams to evaluate and consummate more than three dozen M&A transactions and venture capital investments. He was instrumental in spearheading the successful strategic re-orientation and restructuring of Agilent’s storage technology group. Prior to his work at Hewlett-Packard / Agilent, Stefan co-founded and ran AP Technologies, a technology commercialization and management consulting boutique.

Earlier in his career, Stefan worked in finance, strategic planning, and treasury roles with Fortune 500 companies Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) and Mattel Toys, and in management consulting with McKinsey & Company.

Stefan holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Darmstadt Institute of Technology, Germany, and a Ph.D. in financial economics from the University of Cologne, Germany.