Chris Russell VP of Engineering for Acronis

Nirvanix has hired Chris Russell, a longtime technology executive with extensive knowledge of IT in the motion picture and television industries, as its Vice President of Engineering. He reports directly to Nirvanix President and CEO Jim Zierick.

Russell has over two decades of executive hands-on technology experience at digital media and entertainment companies providing engineering and product development leadership for a wide range of software and service offerings. In his post of Vice President of Engineering at Nirvanix he will help continue Nirvanix’s success in providing a secure, scalable and efficient service for enterprises looking to preserve valuable data offsite, optimize their storage tiers, or enable collaboration within asset management or software-as-a-service applications.

He comes to Nirvanix from NextEngine, where as Vice President of Technology, he led all engineering and go-to-market activities for the company that produces hardware and software for 3-D digital scanning. Prior to NextEngine, he served as Chief Technology Officer and a General Manager of DivX Inc. where he helped analyze and direct the company’s technology, business and corporate strategies. There he led the development of all the company’s products, including hardware and software for digital video encoding, playback, online movie storefronts, media management, community websites and digital rights management. He was also part of the senior management team responsible for strategic planning, operations and corporate development.

Russell has also served as the Vice President of Internet Standards and Technology for the Motion Picture Association of America, Vice President of Technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Director of Software Engineering at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Technical Director and Lead Software Engineer at VIFX. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from Cal Poly Pomona and a Masters of Business Administration from Pepperdine University.
 
“We are extremely pleased to add someone with the talent and experience that Chris possesses to our management team at Nirvanix,” said Zierick. “His extensive background and years of experience within the entertainment industry will give us valuable insight into solving the business needs of one of our fastest growing industry segments. We have been very fortunate as of late to have had the opportunity to recruit an extremely knowledgeable and motivated executive group and we anticipate further extending the reach of our Storage Delivery Network to a variety of enterprises needing better flexibility and optimization of their storage infrastructure.”