Karen Sigman VP OEM and Alliances, Nirvanix

Nirvanix announced the appointment of Karen Sigman as Vice President, OEM and Alliances, effective immediately. Sigman will report to Scott Genereux, President and CEO of Nirvanix.

 Sigman will be responsible not only for current partner relationships, but also for expanding the Nirvanix OEM and strategic alliances portfolio to include major global companies with deep reach into the enterprise storage market. As part of this effort, Sigman will design mutually beneficial programs such that Nirvanix and its partners will reap the rewards of the fast-growing cloud storage market, expected to reach US$7.5B by 2014 according to researchers at IDC.

"Partnering with major OEMs and forming strategic alliances to reach more Fortune 500 customers are key components of the Nirvanix growth strategy," said Scott Genereux, President and CEO, Nirvanix. "Karen has a long and successful track record of managing and growing partnerships at both QLogic and Hitachi Data Systems. I am confident that Karen’s extensive industry knowledge and working relationships across major technology companies, combined with Nirvanix’s battle-hardened cloud storage solutions, will enable us to further expand our market share in the enterprise cloud storage sector."

"With enterprises looking to cut costs in the face of a veritable avalanche of data, the economics of Nirvanix cloud storage makes a compelling argument to switch from conventional onsite storage," said Karen Sigman, Vice President, OEM and Alliances, Nirvanix. "Nirvanix’s cloud storage software is both hardware and file-system agnostic, which enables us to partner with storage hardware providers and deliver both private and hybrid cloud solutions using their platform of choice. This means our partners can simultaneously increase their storage system sales while staking a leadership position in the enterprise cloud."

Sigman has experience in networking and storage, having held OEM and channel management positions at QLogic, Hitachi Data Systems, Data Domain and IBM. At QLogic, Sigman secured major design wins for converged networking technology with OEMs such as Oracle and Sun. At Hitachi Data Systems, Sigman grew channel and OEM revenue from 10% to over 50% of total company revenue and grew the midrange storage business by 5X in only three years. Sigman has been recognized by VAR Business as one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women of the Channel several times as well as a Top 60 Channel Executive. The channel program she led at Hitachi Data Systems received the 5-Star Rating by VAR Business for three consecutive years.