Seattle, WA – September 28, 2009 – Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based IT labs, today announced the appointment of Sundar Raghavan as chief products and marketing officer and Chris Lawrence as vice president, east region sales. In their roles, Raghavan and Lawrence will lead Skytap’s product, marketing and sales efforts to further solidify the company’s position as an industry leader in the burgeoning cloud computing market.
Having worked at both start-up technology companies and large enterprise organizations over the last 18 years, Raghavan brings a wide range of technology marketing and product experience to Skytap. Prior to joining Skytap, Raghavan served as a senior member of the Google Enterprise team, responsible for marketing the Postini product line. As vice president of solutions marketing at Postini, he enabled the company’s growth and eventual acquisition by Google. Prior to Postini, Raghavan held various leadership roles in product management and marketing at Ariba, Trading Dynamics and Hyperion. In these positions, he conceived and launched a number of solutions that have since become market leading platforms including Ariba Sourcing, DynamicTrade and Hyperion Essbase.
“Skytap has been recognized time and time again for its innovative and secure cloud computing approach that runs enterprise applications natively in the cloud,” said Sundar Raghavan. “This distinct approach provides business users with instant time to value as they now have the best of both worlds – applications they are familiar with and cost effective IT resources at their fingertips. Based on this approach, I believe Skytap is uniquely positioned to accelerate its already exceptional growth and build upon its strong track record of success.”
With over 17 years of experience, Lawrence will lead Skytap’s East coast sales efforts. Prior to joining Skytap, Lawrence was the Northeast area director of sales at Quantum, a publicly traded storage company, where he led his team to double-digit year-over-year growth for more than 5 years. Prior to Quantum, Chris served in a similar sales management role at Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC) prior to Quantum’s acquisition of ADIC. At ADIC Chris won several global standards at Fortune 100 companies and achieved sales records as his team serviced regional and global accounts.
“Customers want to cut through the hype surrounding cloud computing and adopt services that have proven to deliver immediate value in the real world,” said Chris Lawrence. “Skytap’s customer base illustrates the immense market opportunity for cloud offerings that help organizations meet their business goals across testing and development, virtual training, sales and other critical areas of business. I’m confident that Skytap will see continued success based on the team’s keen awareness of customers’ needs and the significant level of TCO delivered by the company’s solution.”
“As the cloud computing space continues to evolve and new players emerge on the scene, it is increasingly important for Skytap to attract and retain the brightest talent in the industry,” said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. “Sundar and Chris bring a wealth of knowledge to their roles at Skytap. Their experience serving enterprises in early stage ventures will be essential to evangelizing the benefits of our cloud offering and guiding the company through its next phase of growth.”
