Steve Kucker VP Sales, Astute Networks

Astute Networks, Inc. has added storage industry veteran Steve Kucker as VP of Sales to lead Astute’s sales and channel initiatives as the company accelerates its footprint to capitalize on the multi-billion flash market.

His appointment follows the company’s recent appointment of SVP of Marketing, Len Rosenthal, and the completion of its $12 million Series B funding.

Astute Networks’ patented DataPump Engine and Networked Performance Flash (NPF) architecture found in its ViSX appliances were designed to deliver tightly fused, high-performance, low power solutions that significantly accelerate VM and application performance. Together, these patented advances help companies overcome virtualization challenges of limited VM counts per physical server, VDI boot storms, and constrained deployments of virtualized business-critical applications due to lack of confidence in predictable sustained performance.

ViSX operates with virtualization platforms including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and Red Hat RHEV. By complementing existing SAN or NAS infrastructures, with additive optimized flash-based datastores, ViSX satisfies the performance requirements demanded by critical applications. The ViSX Networked Flash-based appliances deliver up to 100,000 sustained random IOPS, that is shareable by all virtual machines on all hosts over standard 10GbE or 1GbE networks in an affordable, small footprint, multi-terabyte, and easy-to-deploy rack mount device.

The addition of Steve Kucker is a direct response to the growth the company has seen as it delivers game changing high-performance VM storage appliances that break the performance, complexity, and cost barriers for virtual server and VDI environments. Steve will oversee the company’s expanding sales, pre and post-sales support, and service teams.

"We continue to see deepening demand and growing traction as customers embrace the benefits and value of ViSX to overcome the performance and ease of use barriers plaguing virtualized environments," said Steve Topper, CEO, Astute Networks. "Steve brings a strong track record in building and scaling highly effective sales organizations for some of the industry’s largest storage players. We are delighted to have him join our management team as we extend our reach and drive continued momentum throughout 2012 and beyond."

Steve Kucker comes to Astute from VMware, EMC, and Cisco partner AdvizeX, where he was responsible for revenue doubling business unit P&L. Prior to that, he was regional director for LeftHand Networks, which was acquired by HP. At LeftHand, he spearheaded a channel sales model which helped to drive the company’s business from $250,000 to a run rate of $80 million. He has also held key sales positions with EMC and MTI Technology.

He holds degrees from the University of Lowell and Wentworth Institute. He is also a veteran of the United States Navy.

"In my many years working in the storage industry, I can’t think of a technology opportunity more properly aligned with a market need as what we are delivering here at Astute Networks to our channel partners and, ultimately, end customers," said Kucker, VP of Sales, Astute Networks. "With virtualization becoming the foundation of nearly every enterprise data center, ViSX high-performance VM storage appliances are helping enterprises finally realize the full potential of their virtualization investments. I’m pleased to join the Astute team and look forward to expanding our market presence and position as the market leader for virtualization-optimized storage appliances."