John Josephakis VP WW Sales, Cray

Cray Inc. announced the appointment of John Josephakis to the position of VP of WW sales.

With nearly 20 years of sales experience in the HPC industry, including 14 years at DataDirect Networks (DDN), Josephakis will be responsible for leading Cray’s sales efforts across the world.

"John has a strong, proven track record, and his successes in the HPC and storage markets will be immensely valuable to Cray as we work to scale our business and extend our leadership position in supercomputing to the big data analytics, storage and cluster markets," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO, Cray. "He is a customer-focused sales executive and highly regarded in our industry, and I am thrilled to have him be a part of our team at Cray."

 Prior to joining Cray, Josephakis served as SVP of global HPC sales at DDN. A Cray partner, DDN provides performance, capacity scalable storage systems, solutions and services. He held several positions at DDN, having most recently managed the company’s worldwide HPC sales teams, leading more than 50 account managers working with customers across five continents. His prior experience includes operations and sales roles in various technology companies.

He earned his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from St. Edwards University.

"As customers look to redefine their businesses by embracing the convergence of compute, data infrastructure and analytics, Cray is in an ideal position to apply its deep expertise in scalability and high-efficiency systems to address a tremendous market opportunity," said Josephakis. "I am delighted to be joining the Cray team and extending a rich legacy of innovation and supercomputing leadership."

Cray also announced that Larry Hoelzeman has been named VP of Americas. As part of this new position, he will oversee sales and customer support across an expanded Americas region, including Central and South America.

"Integrating sales and service in our largest geography will allow us to build on the strong customer service that our customers have come to expect from Cray," said Ungaro. "Larry has been instrumental in expanding our business across the Americas and is an obvious choice to take on this important new role for us."