Management

Sudhakar is a seasoned and successful entrepreneur. Before co-founding Kazeon in 2003, he co-founded Sanera Systems, a next-generation SAN technology company, where he served as president and board member. Sanera was started in 2000 and was acquired by McData in 2003. From 1996 to 2000, Sudhakar was lead architect and designer of CPU and server technology at Silicon Graphics, Inc. Sudhakar holds a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles and a BS from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He is widely published in industry journals and conference proceedings and has more than 10 patents in server, storage, networking, and software.

Fred has worked with venture-financed companies in the high technology sector for more than 25 years. As president, he successfully guided Current Networks , a communications company, from start-up to acquisition. Following Current Network's sale, Fred continued to work with in all aspects of finance with a focus on building early-stage companies to maturity. He brings his depth of experience and insight to entrepreneurs and their enterprises. Acting as CFO, he develops all aspects of business's finances, including everything from financial reporting to control and budgeting, as well as human resources, information technology, and all administrative functions. The companies he has worked (or is currently working) with include PathScale, Inc., Sanera Systems, Inc., Alien Technology Corp., New Technology Foundation, and Royce Instruments, Inc. Fred joined Kazeon in 2003. He holds a MBA from Stanford University and a MS and BS in Engineering from Stanford University.

Anurag is responsible for product strategy, architecture, OEM/ISV partnerships and management of the Advanced Development team. He was previously responsible for the development and delivery of Kazeon products. He comes to Kazeon with nearly 15 years of research and development experience managing and developing large scale software and hardware projects in the areas of data management, networking, and storage systems. Before co-founding Kazeon Systems, Anurag held various research and project lead positions at AT&T Labs, Cisco Systems, Erlang Technology, Sanera Systems and Growth Networks. Anurag holds several patents and has published several research papers on networking technologies in the areas of routing and network design. Anurag holds MS and PhD degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and he received his BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.

As senior vice president of sales at Kazeon, Ed is responsible for driving the worldwide sales operation, managing the growing sales force, and building a global partner channel. Bauer joins Kazeon with over 25 years of software sales management experience with focus in both the Enterprise Storage software and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) markets. Most recently with EMC Documentum, Bauer was responsible for building Documentum product sales via partner channel sales into the rapidly emerging small to mid-sized business (SMB) and state/local government markets of the U.S., as well as the development of worldwide Strategic Alliance partners for both commercial and SMB markets. Prior to that, Bauer was a group vice president for EMC Legato where he focused on the Storage Software market including the integration and management of OTG, a 2002 Legato acquisition.

Karthik is responsible for driving all marketing and business development activities, including setting the company's outbound marketing strategy as well as establishing a healthy partner ecosystem. Prior to Kazeon, Karthik spent some time providing independent consulting services to clients in the storage and related spaces and remains on the advisory board of two storage startup companies. Prior to that, he worked at Network Appliance for six years, his most recent role being Director of Product Management for the Archival and Compliance businesses. Karthik has over 15 years of high tech experience and has worked at Juniper Networks and Goldman Sachs prior to NetApp. He has an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from Louisiana Tech University and an undergraduate degree from BITS, Pilani, India.

Jay Desai, Vice President of Product Management, joined the company in February 2004 and is responsible for Kazeon’s overall product strategy and direction. Jay’s responsibilities include ensuring that the product strategy aligns well with the market and customer needs and is reflected in the Kazeon product roadmap. Jay brings more than 20 years of software and high technology experience to the Kazeon management team and has held senior roles for companies in the enterprise market. Prior to joining Kazeon, he spent 4 years at NetApp responsible for the backup, disaster recovery and nearline storage software products. Before his tenure at NetApp, Jay held various product management and engineering positions at SGI and Bechtel Corporation. Jay holds a MBA from University of California-Berkeley, Master’s degree in Engineering from University of California-Irvine and Bachelor of Engineering from Bombay University.

Nitin has more than 25 years of experience leading the development of mission-critical, commercially successful products in the storage and server industry. Most recently, he was the VP of Engineering and Customer Support at Intransa, where he oversaw the development of Intransa IPSAN products and their successful deployment at several global customers. Nitin has also held senior management positions at 3PAR, and Tandem Computers. He holds a MBA from University of California-Berkeley, MSCS from University of Wisconsin-Madison and B Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Ellis Ishaya leads Kazeon's Service and Support organization, including training, support and professional services. Ellis is also responsible for launching new service offerings based upon customer and market demands. Prior to joining Kazeon, Ellis was vice president of professional services at EVault, a Seagate company focused on online backup and recovery technologies. While at EVault he built a profitable consulting and managed services organization that grew from under two percent to over fifteen percent of total company revenue in less than two years. In addition, he has led professional services and support organizations for ePeople, Primus, and Imparto Software Corporation. Ellis also spent several years at PricewaterhouseCoopers where he was responsible for managing the west, Pacific northwest, and Rocky Mountain regions for its IAS consulting group. Ellis has over 15 years of industry experience and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He also holds an MBA from Santa Clara University, Leavey School of Business.

Christos has over 13 years of experience as a computer scientist and architect in both academic and industry arenas, and has led innovative research projects ranging from storage networking to multimedia networking and network security. Prior to co-founding Kazeon, Christos was a principal member of the Technical Staff at Sprint Advanced Technology Labs, where he was responsible for research and development in emerging networking technologies, such as video-on-demand, networked multimedia, and remote presence. Christos also worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories doing research and development in congestion control over packet-switched networks. He holds several patents in the areas of congestion control in packet networks, and traffic characterization of multimedia traffic for transport in broadband networks. Christos speaks regularly at international conferences and publishes widely on the subjects of high-speed networking, multimedia networking, and network security. He holds a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, and a MS and PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz.