Gary Smerdon Chief Strategy Officer, Fusion-io

Fusion-io, Inc. announced that Gary Smerdon has joined the company as chief strategy officer and EVP.

Former senior VP and GM of the accelerated solutions division (ASD) at LSI, he has expertise in architecting and executing growth strategies in flash memory solutions. He brings 30 years of technology industry experience to his role at Fusion-io, having led teams across sales, engineering, operations and marketing while serving in numerous executive roles.

“Gary is a flash memory industry leader who is able to define and capture opportunity while inspiring passionate teams to collaborate effectively as they work towards a common goal,” said Shane Robison, chairman and CEO, Fusion-io. “Given his invaluable experience and vision, I am excited to welcome Gary to Fusion-io as we continue to diversify our solutions to meet the needs of customers at all stages of adding flash acceleration to their datacenters.”

“From enterprise to consumer technology, mobile and cloud computing are igniting changes in IT that are reshaping the datacenter as we know it,” said Smerdon. “New solutions are emerging to meet today’s data demands, and Fusion-io is where innovation is taking place. I am excited to join this visionary company to help continue to expand its leadership in providing solutions that customers trust to accelerate their business in our information economy.”

Smerdon was formerly senior VP and GM of the accelerated solutions division (ASD) at LSI, where he was responsible for establishing and managing the company’s PCIe flash memory solutions across engineering, marketing and operations. Prior to his GM role at LSI, he established and led the company’s corporate strategy office. He served as CMO of Tarari Inc., a developer of packet inspection and content processing solutions for networking and servers, and was president and CEO of Greenfield Networks Inc., a developer of Ethernet switch technology solutions. He previously served in various leadership roles at Marvell Technology Group, RealChip and Advanced Micro Devices.

He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Duke University.