Steve Papa Chairman, Infinio

Infinio Systems, Inc., provider of downloadable storage performance software, announced that investor and entrepreneur Steve Papa has agreed to chair its board of directors.

 Papa is best known as the founder and CEO of Endeca Technologies, acquired by Oracle in 2011 for $1.1 billion. Several members of the Infinio executive team helped build Endeca, including Infinio VP engineering Fritz Knabe as well as Infinio co-founder and CEO Arun Agarwal.

"We’re honored to have Steve as our board chairman, and are excited about the value he brings as an advisor," Agarwal said. "Steve has been a mentor and friend for many years, and his success speaks for itself. His counsel will be invaluable as we scale and grow."

Papa founded Endeca in 1999 and was CEO until its acquisition by Oracle in 2011 – at the time, Oracle’s 6th largest acquisition. Endeca enjoyed five consecutive years of 100%+ growth, culminating in $750 million in cumulative worldwide revenue and 700 customers.

Prior to Endeca, he was part of the original MIT $50K team that created Akamai, a member of the early team at Inktomi in charge of creating the company’s infrastructure caching business, and spent time at Teradata and also at Venrock, the Rockefeller Family’s venture capital arm.

"Infinio is in its early days, but I believe the company is poised to disrupt the storage industry with an easy-to-try, easy-to-buy downloadable storage performance product for virtualized environments," Papa said. "The first product launch will be later this year, and I look for great things from this team."