DataCore, a leader in software-defined storage, today announced the opening of a new Silicon Valley area office located in San Francisco and an expanded team to build upon the company’s growing presence and momentum. A diverse and experienced team of storage and virtualization industry executives has been assembled together to help propel DataCore’s marketing and strategic alliance initiatives. The team includes, Sushant Rao, Haluk Ulubay and Devi Madhavan, who will lead company-wide product marketing, demand generation and field readiness initiatives. Phil Williams, who will target and develop OEM partnerships and strategic alliances; Peter Thompson, who will oversee the growing DataCore Asia-Pacific (APAC) Sales Operations; and DataCore’s west coast regional sales team, will also utilize the new facility.

“The storage industry is undergoing major disruption and the time is right for DataCore to breakthrough and seize the larger market opportunity,” said Steve Houck, COO of DataCore. “DataCore started the software-defined revolution in storage, has thousands of customers worldwide, and now is well positioned with a presence and a high-caliber team in Silicon Valley to amplify our industry impact.”

The expanded DataCore team in the Bay Area will advance the company’s visibility in the industry and further the software-defined storage leader’s ability to increase strategic alliances and develop local customer and partner relationships. Recent examples include companies announcing new DataCore Ready partnerships with DataCore such as SANdisk, PureStorage, Fusion-io, Commvault, Microsoft, VMware and Dell. Another example is the latest announcement of Nexus as a DataCore Premier Partner, a Dimension Data company well recognized as a leading IT solution provider and award winning Cisco Partner of the year. DataCore’s presence in the Silicon Valley region will help bolster these types of partnerships and provide the proximity needed to strengthen and increase DataCore’s growing ecosystem of strategic alliances.

The DataCore team in Silicon Valley

The San Francisco office boasts multiple talented new additions to the leadership team, including Sushant Rao who joins DataCore as the senior director of product and solutions marketing. He previously worked as director of product and solution marketing at PernixData, and before that at Virsto and VMware. Haluk Ulubay, also joins as the senior director of marketing, responsible for leading a team of integrated marketing campaigns, with a sharp focus on lead generation and conversions. Previously, Ulubay has held marketing roles at Cisco and most recently served as director of enterprise networking at Juniper Networks, where he led the global campaigns team that builds, implements and executes global demand generations campaigns on cloud, data center, security and network infrastructure. Additionally, Devi Madhavan will serve as vice president of global field readiness. She previously worked at Red Couch Interactive, Cisco and Brocade. Devi joined DataCore in May of this year, with a focus on defining, building and scaling the Field Readiness and Sales Training functions for the company globally.

Phil Williams, a high-tech executive with over 25 years of experience in the storage and software industries across both VC-backed startups and large multi-national companies, also joins DataCore as senior director worldwide OEM and strategic alliances. He previously worked at Kaminario, Dell and NetApp. Peter Thompson, the vice president of DataCore’s Asia/Pacific Operations, has been with the company since 2000, where he started operations in Japan and now directs and oversees DataCore’s entire APAC operations from San Francisco and in country offices within Japan, China and Australia.

Meet the DataCore team

The DataCore team will be attending and sponsoring VMWorld 2014, taking place on August 24-28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Multiple DataCore members will be there to meet with attendees, customers and partners to showcase the company’s latest advancements in software-defined storage.