SCOTTS VALLEY, CA--(Marketwire - May 6, 2010) - Virtual Instruments, a leader in storage area network (SAN) and virtual infrastructure optimization solutions, today announced that John W. Thompson, Symantec Board Chairman and former CEO, has taken on the role of CEO of Virtual Instruments. Thompson joined Virtual Instruments as an investor and board member in 2009.
"We are thrilled to welcome John Thompson as CEO," said Jim Davidson, Co-CEO of Silver Lake Partners and Virtual Instruments board member. "With over 100% year-over-year growth in 2009, Virtual Instruments is very fortunate to be able to leverage John's proven leadership, tremendous industry experience and deep understanding of the needs of enterprise customers."
"Successfully applying virtualization to business-critical applications remains a tremendous IT challenge," said John W. Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments. "I am truly excited to join an exceptionally talented team that has created a breakthrough solution for providing deep visibility into virtualized infrastructure."
John W. Thompson is replacing Mark Urdahl. Urdahl remains a director and a large shareholder of the company.
During Thompson's 10-year tenure as CEO of Symantec, he grew revenues from $600 million to over $6 billion. He transformed the company into a leader in security, storage and systems management solutions, delivering world class products to a global customer base, including both individuals and large-scale enterprises. Beyond his role at Symantec, Thompson served on the National Infrastructure Advisory Committee (NIAC), making recommendations regarding the security of critical US infrastructure, a role to which President George W. Bush appointed him. Before joining Symantec, Thompson spent over 25 years at IBM in various senior sales and marketing management positions, most recently as general manager of IBM Americas. He holds a bachelor's degree from Florida A&M University and a master's degree in management science from MIT's Sloan School of Management.
Virtual Instruments had a record setting 2009 with sales increasing more than 100% over the prior year. The company significantly grew its customer and employee base, expanded its European sales and support presence, and added new international and US channel partners, including Dell and most recently, Hitachi Data Systems. The company recently introduced the SANInsight TAP Patch Panel System, the industry's first pre-Tapped fiber-optic patch panel solution, which lowers the cost and simplifies the deployment of network TAPs into Fiber Channel SANs and virtualized infrastructure.
Virtual Instruments will be showcasing its SANInsight and VirtualWisdom virtual infrastructure optimizations solutions next week at EMC World in Boston from May 10-12.
About Virtual Instruments
Virtual Instruments offers the award-winning NetWisdom and VirtualWisdom virtual infrastructure optimization solutions that provide deep monitoring and analysis of how the virtualized IT infrastructure and the SAN affect business-critical application performance. Customers such as Barclay's Card Services, Kaiser Permanente, Lloyd's Bank, and Unilever achieve significant cost savings in virtualization and SAN deployments by optimizing availability, performance and utilization of IT resources. Leading system and storage vendors including IBM, HP, HDS, Dell and EMC leverage Virtual Instruments to design and optimize SAN solutions for enterprise customers. The company was founded in June 2008 via a spin-out from Finisar Corp.; it has headquarters in Scotts Valley, Calif., and can be found online at http://www.virtualinstruments.com.
Contact Information:
Media Contact
Melissa Lang
Voce Communications on behalf of Virtual Instruments
(330) 401-9220