SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 5, 2016) - Big Switch Networks®, the leader in bringing hyperscale-inspired networking to data centers worldwide, today announced it has appointed Wendell Laidley as Chief Financial Officer and Greg Orr as Vice President of Sales for the Americas.
"Wendell will play a meaningful role in the continued growth and expansion of our global footprint. His appointment to CFO rounds out Big Switch's executive leadership and I could not be more pleased that he has joined our team," said Douglas Murray, CEO, Big Switch Networks. "Wendell's immense and varying experience with financials will lend itself well to Big Switch as we continue to build out our global financial, legal and reporting infrastructure."
As CFO, Laidley will apply his experience to support the company's continued growth. With a background that spans 20 years of financial leadership and equity research focused on the software industry, combined with having founded several companies, Laidley possesses an ideal skill set for this new role at Big Switch. Laidley was previously VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Treasury at AppDynamics, during a period when employee headcount tripled and annual revenue nearly quadrupled. His role included involvement in AppDynamics' fundraising efforts dating back to 2014 and more recently its Series F fundraising in November 2015, which totaled $158 million and put AppDynamics' valuation at more than $1.9 billion.
"Prior to joining Big Switch, I had been observing the adoption wave of SDN and hyperscale inspired networking and it became clear to me that BSN has assembled one of the most impressive engineering organizations in the industry, while also establishing a clear thought leadership position in the marketplace as measured by customer adoption, scale of deployments and resulting value proposition," said Wendell Laidley, Chief Financial Officer, Big Switch Networks. "I am thrilled to play a meaningful role in scaling the company in a disciplined manner to fulfill the truly global opportunity for Big Cloud Fabric and Big Monitoring Fabric."
Laidley's investment banking career included Equity Research roles with Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse First Boston, during which time he was voted to Institutional Investor magazine's All-America Equity Research team. He was awarded more than 40 software corporate finance mandates and was directly involved in multiple IPOs and M&A transactions with a collective value of more than $43 billion. This included involvement in the 1994 IPO of Veritas Software as well as the 1998 IPO of Micromuse, which provides Laidley with greater appreciation for Big Switch Networks' addressable market opportunity. After CSFB he subsequently joined RS Investments, where he was a Principal and Portfolio Manager with responsibility for public market, growth-oriented technology investments for a period leading up to the firm's acquisition by Guardian Life Insurance.
Scaling Big Switch's Go-To-Market Operations In June of 2016, Mike Hoffman was appointed as Chief Revenue Officer at Big Switch and since joining the company he has begun to further build out Big Switch's global sales organization. Hoffman has hired Greg Orr, a veteran of the networking technology industry, to run the Americas sales organization.
"Greg brings to Big Switch almost 20 years of experience as a technology sales professional as well as invaluable leadership experience," said Mike Hoffman, Chief Revenue Officer & Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Big Switch Networks. "Greg's depth of knowledge in the network visibility and security space will bring tremendous value to Big Switch and our customers. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Greg again."
Prior to joining Big Switch, Orr held VP of Sales positions at Arkin (which was acquired by VMware in 2016) and Gigamon, where he oversaw various teams during his tenure with the company. While at Gigamon, Orr led all enterprise and SLED revenue across 26 Central and Western states and under his leadership, his teams exceeded revenue quotas in 18 of 20 quarters, over five consecutive years. In 2015 Orr's team closed $90 million in sales, which totaled more than 40% of Gigamon's global revenue that year. During his first two years with Gigamon, as an individual contributor Orr was named the number one revenue producer world-wide for the company.
"I've spent the better portion of my career selling software technology and leading sales teams. I was drawn to Big Switch for its next-generation approach to networking, which enables our customers to experience significant CapEx and ongoing OpEx savings," said Greg Orr, Vice President of Sales, Americas, Big Switch Networks. "Big Switch has assembled a world-class team and what this company is doing is game changing. With Big Switch, our customers will experience a big difference."
In early 2016 Big Switch announced $48.5M Series C funding, which included participation from both new and existing investors and brings the company's total funding to $89 million. The company now has multiple customer deals in excess of $1M+, with customers based across the US, APAC and EMEA regions, in verticals including tech, financial services, government, telecom, and higher education. Customers include Verizon, the U.S. Federal Government, Intuit, Clemson University, CleanSafeCloud, U2 Cloud, 10 of the 15 largest telcos in the world, multiple global financial services firms, media companies, and a Fortune 5 oil & gas company.
About Big Switch Networks Big Switch Networks is the market leader in bringing hyperscale-inspired data center networking technologies to a mainstream data center audience. The company is taking three key hyperscale technologies -- OEM/ODM bare metal and open Ethernet switch hardware, sophisticated SDN control software, and core-and-pod data center designs -- and leveraging them in fit-for-purpose products designed for use in enterprises, cloud providers, and service providers. The company's Big Monitoring Fabric is a feature-rich next-generation Network Packet Broker to monitor and protect existing networks, Inline Mode is the industry's first security DMZ service chaining solution, and Big Cloud Fabric is the industry's most advanced open networking switching fabric intended for new data center pods such as OpenStack private cloud, VMware NSX, big data, and VDI. For additional information, email info@bigswitch.com , follow @bigswitch, or visit www.bigswitch.com .
Big Switch Networks, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Monitoring Fabric, Big Chain, Switch Light OS, and Switch Light VX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.
Media & Analyst Contact Kate Lehman kate.lehman@bigswitch.com
