Management
John Nicholson
Chairman and CEO
John Nicholson has a track record in advising emerging and high-growth technology businesses as a non executive director and chairman over the last 10 years, underpinned by more than 25 years international experience at a senior level in the information technology industry including serving as a Vice President of Compaq Computer Corporation and before that as a Vice President of Digital Equipment Corporation. He has experience of living and working in various parts of the world, including the USA, Europe and the Pacific region.
Steve Calkins
VP Worldwide Sales
Prior to joining Virtensys, Mr. Calkins served as Vice president of Worldwide Sales for Silverback Systems (acquired by Brocade in January 2007) where he was responsible for OEM and Channel sales. Before Silverback, Mr. Calkins was a Sales and Marketing Vice President for Adaptec, Inc., where he was instrumental in its OEM, distribution and reseller channels, and developed its reseller-partner program. Before Adaptec Inc., he served as Regional Vice President of Zenith Data Systems at which during his tenure reached the billion-dollar annual revenue mark. He has more than 28 years of sales and marketing experience. Mr. Calkins holds a bachelor's degree from Ferris State University.
Marek Piekarski
CTO
Before founding Virtensys in December 2005, Marek was a Product Architect of the Integrated Systems group in Xyratex Technology Ltd. In this role he was responsible for identifying applications and developments of the switching technology Xyratex acquired from Power X Networks. Marek was also the technical lead on the SIVSS consortium project developing novel storage and interconnect solutions for video server applications.
Paul Lombardelli
VP Component Engineering
Paul brings 19 years engineering and management experience to the Virtensys team. Prior to founding Virtensys he was a Senior Program Manager with both Xyratex and Cadence where Paul successfully executed number of multimillion dollar projects, establishing design and manufacturing flows, managing high value outsourcing contracts and delivering working silicon devices. Paul also held the position of Director of IC Design with Power X Networks, managing the ASIC design department and delivering to market the award winning TeraChannel chipset.
Stephen Spellicy
VP of Marketing & Business Development
Stephen Spellicy is considered a virtualization subject matter expert (SME) with over 16 years of marketing and business development experience in the storage/networking technology industry. Recently honored within the VMware community with the distinction as “vExpert”. He has been featured as a speaker for leading industry conference events such as VMworld, EMC World, Dell Knowledge Series, as well as a contributor for many industry webcasts and online publications -- on the subject of virtualization strategy/virtual data center design. Having worked for Lucent Technologies, EqualLogic, Njini, and EMC (formally the led the Technical Marketing team within the EMC VMware Alliance). He holds a BA in Composition from Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA.
Jeff Bonnington
VP of Operations
Jeff brings over 30 years of experience in Operations, Supply Chain, Business Development, Contracts Management and Licensing. Prior to joining Virtensys he spent 3 years as a Director of Operations at LSI Engenio Storage Systems. Before that he spent 20 plus years at Intel Corporation in a variety of management positions within Intel Technology Manufacturing and Intel Capital’s new business incubation. His last role at Intel was Director of Operations for the Digital Health Group. Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree from Southern Oregon University and an MBA from Marylhurst University.
