Board of Directors
Nigel W. Stokes, Chairman
Nigel Stokes is a software entrepreneur and venture investor.
He was CEO and co-founder of DataMirror, a pure play real-time data integration company. Under his leadership, DataMirror was a Deloitte Fast 500 company, and he was recognized as Emerging Entrepreneur of the year by Ernst & Young. DataMirror was publicly listed for 12 years and completed a series of financings and strategic acquisitions. The company was sold to the Information Management division of IBM in September of 2007.
Nigel also co-founded, and was President of, Nidak. Nidak ranked as the eleventh fastest growing company in Canada and was purchased by SHL Systemhouse.
As a venture investor, Mr. Stokes has co-funded a range of software and technology companies including DataMirror, Pointbase, Visible Decisions, DMTI, iPeak and Gedex. He currently manages a Private Equity fund focused on software enterprises and has served on the Board of private and public technology companies.
He holds an M.B.A. from the U of T, an M.A.Sc.(System Design Engineering), from Waterloo and a B.Sc. from Queen's University.
Simon Crosby, Board Member
Simon Crosby is an industry innovator/entrepreneur and authoritative thought leader.
Co-founder of Bromium, Simon was most recently CTO of Citrix's Data Center and Cloud Division. He went to Citrix when the company acquired XenSource, of which he was founder and CTO. At Intel, Simon was a principal engineer leading strategic research in distributed autonomic computing, platform security and trust. As founder of CPlane Inc., a network optimization software vendor, he held a variety of executive roles. Prior to CPlane, Simon was a tenured faculty member at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he led research on network performance and control, and multimedia operating systems. He is author of over 35 research papers and patents on a number of datacenter and networking topics including security, network and server virtualization, resource optimization and performance.
Joseph Alsop, Board Member
Joseph Alsop has more than 30 years of experience in technology.
As CEO and co-founder of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), a supplier of e-business application development, deployment, integration and management products, Joseph led Progress Software Corporation to a position as a recognized global software industry leader with over $500 million in annual revenue.
Joseph graduated from MIT with a BSEE degree and is currently investing in and working with companies in Massachusetts, applying information technology in various areas.
Greg O'Connor, President & CEO
Pioneering the Virtual Application Appliance approach to simplifying application-lifecycle management, Greg O'Connor is responsible for translating Appzero's vision into strategic business objectives and financial results. Greg has over 25 years of management and technical experience in the computer industry. He was founder and president of Sonic Software, acquired in 2005 by Progress Software (PRGS). There he grew the company from concept to over $40 million in revenue. At Sonic, Greg evangelized and created the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) product category, which is generally accepted today as the foundation for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Greg earned a B.S. in Computer Science at Purdue University. Follow Greg O'Connor on Twitter @gregoryjoconnor.
Management Team
Greg O'Connor, President & CEO
Giovanni Boschi, CTO
As Chief Technology Officer, Giovanni Boschi is responsible for AppZero’s product direction as well as for working with customers and partners to implement effective solutions. Giovanni is a veteran in the software industry with years of experience developing innovative products for application development and deployment. He comes to AppZero from BMC Software, where he served as Chief Architect for BladeLogic and the Data Center Automation product suite. There he helped drive the technical vision for the BladeLogic products into middleware automation, cloud lifecycle and virtualization management.
At Progress Software, Giovanni lead Engineering and Product Management for the Sonic products after the company’s acquisition of Sonic Software in 2005, and served as Director of Technology in the corporate CTO office. Prior to the acquisition, Giovanni was the lead architect of all Sonic products from product inception thru the acquisition. He has actively served on boards and expert groups of standards organizations such as W3C, OSGi Alliance, OASIS, and OMG. Giovanni studied Mathematics and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin and Boston University.
Valerie O'Connell, VP Business Development
Charged with spearheading AppZero's Business Development and Marketing initiatives, Valerie O'Connell brings extensive experience in all aspects of high tech marketing and sales execution. She has served industry leaders such as Microsoft and EMC in a longstanding consulting practice, also enjoying engagements with growing innovators such as AppZero, Northern Light, and SPI research. O'Connell was Vice President of Product Marketing at CA (formerly Computer Associates) and Managing Director, Systems Management Practice at Aberdeen Group. She holds an MA from Boston College and a BA from the University of Massachusetts, which was punctuated by exchange programs at Oxford University, England and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.
Jim Noschese, VP Global Sales
As Vice President of Global Sales, Jim Noschese combines strategy, staffing, and customer satisfaction levels to drive AppZero revenue growth and customer loyalty. Jim comes to AppZero with more than 25 years of experience in technology-based solution sales management experience spanning companies such as CIMTEK, Inc, Open Ratings, Emptoris, and Parametric Technology (PTC). His record of success is marked by consistent and frequently explosive growth in key regions for which he was responsible. Jim holds a BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Dallas.
