Egenera, the only provider of open converged infrastructure software for data center management, has appointed John Humphreys vice president of marketing. Humphreys will report to Egenera's president and CEO, Pete Manca. He held positions with Citrix Systems, a provider of virtualization, networking and cloud infrastructure technologies, and IDC, a global information technology research firm. Humphreys will be responsible for brand awareness, lead generation, sales enablement, product marketing, and channel development.

Humphreys most recently was senior director, Data Center and Cloud Marketing at Citrix Systems. There he led the revitalization of the XenServer virtualization platform and had responsibility for developing marketing strategy, defining packaging and pricing, leading program execution, driving customer engagements and pre-sales activity, and acting as a primary spokesperson. Prior to Citrix, Humphreys was vice president of the virtualization practice at IDC, a global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets.

"John brings relevant and virtualization software experience to Egenera's leadership team. As one of the first industry analysts to initiate coverage of the virtualization software market, he both watched the development of the industry and helped to shape it," said Pete Manca, president and CEO of Egenera. "Coupled with his accomplishments at Citrix, including his experience with channel development and forming strategic technology partnerships, John's talents map well to Egenera's business requirements and objectives."

"Egenera's data center management and automation software has continued to gain momentum as the service delivery platform for desktop virtualization, business continuity and cloud computing projects. These are top investment priorities for enterprise CIOs in 2011," said Humphreys. "I look forward to working with my colleagues to build on the recent partnership with HP and expand the company's market reach."

Egenera was founded in Massachusetts in 2000 and pioneered the blade server and converged infrastructure markets. Egenera's flagship product, Egenera PAN Manager Software, makes data centers more agile and reliable while reducing capital expenditures and operating costs. PAN Manager Software has 11 years of proven performance in production environments and is deployed in more than 1,600 data centers across the globe.