Martin Darling VP and GM of AsiaPac at DataDirect

Following closely on the heels of its investment in Japan of half a billion yen, DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) announced the appointment of Martin Darling to Vice President and General Manager of Asia Pacific. Darling, who multiplied storage sales at EMC and Hitachi, Ltd.’s Data Systems unit, will spearhead the company’s sales in Asia Pacific across all channels – direct, OEM and the newly formed XPath Partner Program, specifically focusing on the video gaming, Internet and entertainment sectors. He will report to Scott Genereux, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Support.

"As the world’s fastest growing region for storage solutions – including the rapidly developing markets in China and India, as well as Japan, the second largest market overall – Asia Pacific is an extremely important region for DDN," said Genereux. "Martin brings to DDN an established, successful track record of scaling storage sales in this region, having doubled channel sales for Hitachi in only three years and having materially increased EMC’s revenue and presence in Asia Pacific. We look forward to collaborating with Martin as he focuses on establishing DDN as the standard for extreme, high-bandwidth storage solutions in Asia Pacific."

Commenting on his appointment at DDN, Darling said: "The explosion of unstructured data in the Asia Pacific region may, indeed, be even faster than in other parts of the world. The extreme amounts of unstructured content that organizations are grappling with, along with the performance and service levels that are expected, have created a need for a new form of storage platform; one that is specifically optimized for encoding videos, music files and ingesting massive content streams – a technically elegant platform that is designed to thrive in throughput – intensive environments. DDN is extremely well-positioned to continue to deliver these next generation storage platforms. These are the systems that represent the future of storage and will be successful in meeting the pressing needs of customers across Asia Pacific."

DDN clients in Asia Pacific include over 100 broadcasters across China, including China Central Television, which successfully deployed DDN S2A platforms to broadcast the Beijing Olympic Games to over one billion people; Hualong Digital Film Production Company, which relies on DDN to power its real-time 2K post production environment, the most advanced in China, and the University of Tsukuba, which counts on DDN to power the largest Lustre file system in Japan.

Darling’s career spans a multitude of sales and general management roles over a period of 15 years in the storage industry. Most recently, he was at Copan Systems, where he was responsible for sales in Asia Pacific and increased revenue tenfold per quarter in only one year and established new vertical business operations in the video gaming, Internet and energy sectors. Prior to Copan, Martin headed up the Asia Pacific Dell Business Sales Unit at EMC where he materially increased the company’s revenue and presence throughout the region. Darling also worked at Hitachi, Ltd.’s Data Systems unit where he doubled channel sales in just three years.