Bret Costelow VP Global Sales, DDN

DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) announced the appointment of Bret Costelow as VP of global sales.

In his new role, he will oversee technical computing sales worldwide, and will leverage more than 25 years of sales and sales leadership experience to further boost visibility of DDN’s technical expertise and HPC storage platform offerings, develop new business strategies and drive revenue growth.

His experience spans leading technology companies, including Intel and Ricoh Americas.

“Bret Costelow is an inspiring sales leader with a clear understanding of our customers’ needs and a vision of how DDN’s technologies and solutions can best solve their toughest storage challenges,” said Robert Triendl, SVP, global sales, marketing, and field services, DDN. “Bret’s proven success in high-growth business settings, deep knowledge of the Lustre and HPC market, proven track record for generating traction with innovative, advanced technologies, and his broad experience with software sales make him a great asset to our team and a great resource for our partners and customers around the world.”

Costelow joins DDN from Intel Corporation, where he led a global sales and business development team for Intel’s HPC software business and supported Intel’s 2012 acquisition of Whamcloud, the main development arm for the open source Lustre file system, and its subsequent sales and marketing. He was instrumental in leading the Lustre business unit to expand into adjacent markets, reaching beyond HPC file systems to HPC cluster orchestration software. Under his leadership, the HPC software business unit opened new markets in Asia, launched a comprehensive, global software sales channel program and drove year-over-year revenue growth that averaged more than 30% in each of the past five years. He is also on the board of directors of the European Open File Systems (EOFS), a non-profit organisation focused on the promotion and support of open scalable file systems for high-performance computing in the technical computing and enterprise computing markets.

“DDN is the uncontested market leader in HPC storage, with a highly differentiated portfolio of solutions for technical computing users in all vertical markets. This portfolio, combined with aggressive investments in new technologies, positions the company incredibly well for continued growth and success as disruptive technologies, such as NVM, unsettle the storage market landscape and create exciting new opportunities,” said Costelow. “The current market dynamics and DDN’s agility to respond made this the perfect time to join DDN. I look forward to working with the incredible talent in DDN’s field team, product management, product development and software engineering teams to help drive DDN’s success and growth to new levels, and to help accelerate the success of DDN’s customers and partners around the world.”