Troika Networks' CEO jumps ship for Brocade |
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By Kevin Komiega, News Editor
21 Jan 2004 | SearchStorage.com |
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After just three months at the helm of startup Troika Networks Inc., Doug Rainbolt has left the company for switch maker Brocade.
Rainbolt was installed as Troika's president and CEO on Sept. 30. He was charged with developing partnerships, launching the company and promoting the benefits of its Network Storage Services Platform and the underlying technology. At that time, Bill Terrell, Troika's chief technology officer and founder, said that Rainbolt had the experience, talent and drive to "catapult" Troika to the top of the intelligent-switch market.
But Rainbolt saw a better fit for those talents at a larger, established storage vendor, and he capitalized on the opportunity, Troika reports now.
"Doug was presented with an opportunity that was in correlation with his skills, and he took it," said Steve O'Brian, Troika's vice president of marketing.
O'Brian said that Rainbolt's departure was not ideal, but he maintained that it won't affect Troika's product plans. "The timing was a little odd, in the sense that we're on the cusp of launching a very big initiative with StoreAge [Networking Technologies Ltd.], but there will be no change in plans because of his departure," O'Brian said.
Prior to his stint with Westlake Village, Calif.-based Troika, Rainbolt was vice president of McData Corp.'s switch product groups. While there, he was responsible for developing, overseeing and executing strategies for fabric switch products in the small and midsized business market.
Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst for the Enterprise Storage Group Inc., Milford, Mass., said that Rainbolt has likely taken a position as a vice president with Brocade. "[Rainbolt] is not a little-company guy," Duplessie said.
Neither Brocade nor Rainbolt could not be reached for comment.
Troika's product is a special-purpose storage appliance developed to accelerate and run storage applications like virtualization on the switch fabric, rather than on a host computer or within a storage subsystem. The company said its product is in field trials and is receiving positive out-of-the-gate response.
In November, StoreAge completed porting its volume management, snapshot, migration and replication software to Troika's Network Storage Services (NSS) Platform. According to the companies, StoreAge's SVM, MultiView, MultiCopy and MultiMirror applications now run successfully on Troika's NSS platform. The NSS platform integrated with StoreAge's management software is expected to be available to users within the next few weeks. O'Brian said that Troika is currently discussing product integration with other software vendors.
Terrell will act as Troika's interim CEO. He would not comment on possible candidates for the position.
Let us know what you think about the story; e-mail: Kevin Komiega, News Editor.
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