Shawn O’Grady COO, Datalink

Datalink Corp. announced the promotion of Shawn O’Grady to the newly-created position of COO.

 He has served as Datalink’s EVP of field operations for the past four years, overseeing the company’s marketing, services, field engineering and sales initiatives.

In his new role, he will be responsible for leading the integration of Datalink’s core infrastructure business with the company’s growing Advanced Services business.

This announcement reflects the continuing expansion of Advanced Services portfolio to complement the company’s range of storage, network, compute and related data center products as well as its implementation and support services. Integrating the product and services sides of the business will help customers take advantage of offerings to reap the business benefits of data center modernization.

“Most Datalink customers who buy a storage array need data migration services. Many enterprises that purchase a unified compute platform will need strategy and plan development for deploying a private or hybrid cloud. It’s important for us to seamlessly link our product and services portfolios to be sure that our customers explore and understand the value of these kinds of opportunities,” said Datalink president and CEO Paul Lidsky. “Shawn is an ideal candidate to lead this effort because he has extensive experience in the data center field as well as in operating services businesses inside product companies. He will also play a pivotal role in expanding our product and services portfolios, including our Advanced Services, Managed Services and Customer Support offerings.”

“Over the past several quarters, Datalink’s investments in Advanced Services have yielded significant contracts to support customer initiatives ranging from data migration to cloud strategy and data center relocation. Clearly, being able to source these kinds of services from the same provider who designs and deploys your data center is a big advantage,” O’Grady said. “My job is to be sure that our sales force and our consultants work together to support the entire lifecycle – from strategy and design to deployment, support and managed services – so that we are educating customers about the optimal use of data center technology to achieve their business objectives.”

O’Grady’s 29-year technology industry background includes experience at Siemens ITS, where he spent five years in senior operational positions in the global outsourcing and consulting business units focusing on IT services in the data center. He joined Datalink in 2009 following the company’s acquisition of Incentra LLC, a data center infrastructure solutions and services provider, where he served in roles including president, CEO and COO from 2005 to 2009.

He came to Siemens through its acquisition of Entex Information Services, where he had been a senior executive since its founding in 1993. While at Entex, he was part of a leadership team that saw the business catapult to over $2.5B in revenue, and resulted in a strategic sale to Siemens, yielding a substantial return to their private equity backer.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Irvine.