John Thompson CEO of Virtual Instruments

Virtual Instruments, 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.