Past roles at Pure Storage, Seagate Cloud Systems, DDN, and Panasas make Burke an ideal fit for EMEA Expansion
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Dec. 13, 2018 – WekaIO, the innovation leader in high-performance, scalable file storage for data intensive applications, today announced the appointment of Derek Burke as sales manager for the UK. Burke will be responsible for identifying new business opportunities in the region, managing channel relationships and growing sales. He will report to Richard Dyke, VP of Global Sales at WekaIO. As part of the greater EMEA expansion, Burke will join the WekaIO team as the company looks to grow its presence within high performance computing (HPC), life sciences and artificial intelligence workloads.
Burke comes to WekaIO from Pure Storage, where he had primary responsibility for FlashBlade storage system sales in EMEA. He has also held senior sales and channel positions at Seagate Cloud Systems, DataDirect Networks (DDN), and Panasas where he also oversaw business development and marketing. He has a background in driving EMEA sales and strategic alliances and brings to this new position over 18 years of experience in high-performance computing (HPC) storage, scale-out NAS, parallel file systems, cloud and object storage solutions. Burke has also participated as a board member of the European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing [ETP4HPC], a public/private partnership advising the European Commission on its HPC strategy.
This appointment comes on the heels of several milestone events for WekaIO, including global partnership announcements with HPE, AWS and Cirrascale. This new role is key to the company as it looks to continue its momentum in EMEA by making its NVMe-native, shared parallel file system more accessible to organizations that utilize GPU- and CPU-based clusters for HPC, deep learning, research, and analytics workloads.
“We have been seeing an increased interest in EMEA for a modern, scalable file system that is optimized for Flash and which can support deep learning and analytics at scale. WekaIO has a great solution with Matrix – one that delivers the needed performance, scalability, and ease of use that organizations are seeking. I am looking forward to helping WekaIO grow its presence across EMEA,” commented Burke.
Dyke added: “Derek has a wealth of experience in HPC storage and file systems and we are delighted that he is joining the team. His appointment aligns with our strategy for market expansion and he’ll play an integral role in helping shape our business in EMEA, both for customers and partners.”
About WekaIO
WekaIO helps companies manage, scale and futureproof their data center so they can solve real problems that impact the world. WekaIO Matrix™, the world’s fastest shared parallel file system and WekaIO’s flagship product, leapfrogs legacy storage infrastructures by delivering simplicity, scale, and the best performance density per U, for a fraction of the cost. In the cloud or on-premises, WekaIO’s NVMe-native high-performance software-defined storage solution removes the barriers between the data and the compute layer, thus accelerating artificial intelligence, machine learning, genomics, research, and analytics workloads.
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