Three Executives Joining Panasas

Panasas, Inc. announced that Todd Ruff, VP marketing, and Brian Reed, VP of product and alliances, have joined the company’s senior management team. Richio Aikawa has also joined Panasas as director of vertical solutions, a key role as the company looks to expand its focus for financial services, trading and manufacturing customers.

All three executives will report to COO Brian Peterson.

“Our current growth trajectory, coupled with the addition of three great senior leaders, reflects today’s demand for an enterprise-grade, high-performance computing experience,” said Peterson. “Todd and Brian are exemplary leaders who will help expand our diverse customer base – a base whose diversifying workloads increasingly requires adaptable HPC storage solutions. Richio meanwhile will leverage his expertise in critical industries to help us create a stronger set of vertical solutions.”

Brian Reed is focusing his efforts on expanding the company’s ecosystem, including strategic alliances and partnerships. Working with the engineering and development teams, he will provide guidance on the company’s high-performance computing storage roadmap. He brings more than 30 years of sales, product management and business development experience, including product lifecycle, market expansion and strategic customer negotiations. Prior executive positions include global VP of product management at Packsize, VP marketing and product management for the Emulex Division at Broadcom, and various executive positions at Emulex, Vixel and IBM. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Southern California.

Todd Ruff brings a range of marketing expertise. Most recently, he served as VP and MD of CRM and Loyalty at Austin-based T3, where he represented brands such as YUM!, HBO, 7-11 and Boston Consulting. He also helped build Dell‘s in-house agency, Dell Blue, and led the agency team for Dell at Young & Rubicam. In these roles at Dell, he worked on various Dell storage products including those which came in via acquisition, such as Ocarina and Isilon. In his 20-plus years in marketing, he has also served in leadership roles at Contravent, Razorfish and McCann. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Utah.

Richio Aikawa, in addition to his vertical duties, will be working with Panasas partners, OEMs and end users throughout Japan. He is a professional with more than 20 years of experience in the enterprise storage, software, networking, server, OSs, and cloud platform markets. Previously, he held senior positions at Netlist, Solarflare and Emulex. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics-system science from the University of California at Los Angeles; a master’s degree in electrical engineering from California State University, Fullerton; and an MBA from the University of Redlands.