Jean-Luc Chatelain EVP of Strategy and Technology, DDN

DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) announced the appointment of former HP Fellow and Information Optimization CTO, Jean-Luc Chatelain as its head of Strategy and Technology.

In this role, Jean-Luc will be responsible for leading the expansion of DDN’s product portfolio into a globalgrowth and innovation franchise, focused on maximizing the value of information for its customers.  

"The world is on the brink of an exponential growth in the amount of data and video created by mobile devices, social networkers, smart meters and other machines," said Jean-Luc Chatelain, EVP of Strategy and Technology at DDN. "DDN has long demonstrated an ability to stay ahead of this trend with the industry’s most successful and scalable information storage & processing platforms over the coming years, we will compliment this customer-focused product portfolio with a series of value-added software and services designed to enable unprecedented levels of insight, communication and real-time decision making."

"The coming big data explosion will make today’s volume of information look tiny by comparison," said David Vellante, co-founder and chief research advocate of Wikibon.org. "Companies such as DDN that have a proven scalable architecture are in the best position to provide infrastructure for the fastest growing segments of this pending content Tsunami. With the addition of Jean-Luc Chatelain, DDN has gained proven thought leadership, corporate governance and vision. The Wikibon Project is looking forward to tracking how storage companies generally, and DDN specifically, attack this opportunity and add value for users."

 Jean-Luc brings experience to this role, most recently as a Hewlett-Packard Fellow responsible for successfully leading HP’s Information Optimization strategy, steering the entry of HP in the ILM space, and winning the Infoworld archiving technology of the year award. Jean-Luc also founded Persist Technologies Inc., in reference information storage software, which was acquired by HP. Prior to that, Jean-Luc co-invented the SmartCell, the world’s first application-centric enterprise storage technology, and created a medical imaging workflow technology for Cemax-Icon, which experienced growth as a result of this innovation, before being acquired by Imation/Eastman Kodak.

"Jean-Luc’s demonstrated ability to successfully identify and implement breakthrough market-leading technologies will be invaluable to DDN’s continued market leadership," said Alex Bouzari, CEO and Co-Founder of DDN. "As unstructured data and big data are becoming increasingly critical to organizations worldwide, DDN’s decade long expertise in developing, architecting and deploying business enabling solutions in this field will become further enabled by Jean Luc’s vision and leadership skills."