Ken Grohe VP WW Customer Ops, Virident

Virident Systems Inc. announced the appointment of the former VP and GM of EMC’s flash business unit, Ken Grohe, as the company’s new VP of worldwide customer operations.

Keith Carpenter was also brought in as VP sales, Americas; he was formerly with NetApp.

Grohe brings more than 25 years of storage-industry experience to Virident and will be responsible for the company’s customer operations strategy, worldwide sales, technical sales and sales operations. Carpenter will be responsible for managing the sales of Virident products and services as well as go-to-market in North America. He will report directly to Grohe.

"Virident is on a roll – adding big customers, big partners and big talent. They are absolutely one to watch in the flash space," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at ESG.

 Grohe joins Virident from EMC, where he led many of the company’s growth products, programs and divisions during a 25-year career. Most recently, he led EMC flash products division’s global customer operations, helping customers get SCM performance in microseconds from flash solutions. He helped EMC build its flash sales team; established many of the initial solid state, memory, storage and software solutions; and was responsible for many customer wins. He led the adoption and integration of the CLARiiON mid-tier product line from acquisition to present sales of more than $4 billion annually. He also created the Global xSP program and developed both the Velocity Partner Program and the Software Partner Program.

He graduated from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management in 1989.

"During my career, I’ve been fortunate to work with the biggest name in the storage industry from the very onset to build a global flash partnership and product program," said Grohe. "I look forward to expanding Virident’s market leadership and making it be the premier provider of flash-based storage-class memory solutions."
 
 Carpenter has more than 20 years of national and international sales and senior management experience. He brings knowledge and leadership experience. Most recently he was co-founder and VP sales for Cache IQ, an early-stage start-up developing flash-based technologies with software for accelerating demanding I/O applications. Cache IQ was acquired by NetApp in November 2012. Prior that, he was the VP sales for Storspeed, a private start-up based in Austin, TX. Earlier, he had been a sales director responsible for a $220 million business unit in the central United States. He has also held sales and leadership positions with Auspex Systems and EMC Corporation.

He received his BBA of Finance and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin.
 
"Ken and Keith join a team at Virident that is grounded in combining innovative technology and game-changing SCM solutions and that puts customers and partners at the core of our model," said Mike Gustafson, Virident CEO. "As VP of WW customer operations, Ken will team up with Keith to lead Virident’s worldwide and America’s sales operations. With demonstrated knowledge of the industry, plus deep sales experience and leadership across high-growth and disruptive markets, Ken and Keith are the perfect fit to take our company, customers, partners and relationships to the next level."