ACADEMIA
scali strengthens board of directors
- Written by: Writer
- Category: ACADEMIA
Scali today announced that Klaus-Dieter Laidig and Richard Seibt have joined its Board of Directors. Both Laidig and Seibt bring extensive leadership experience and have held senior executive and supervisory board positions with organizations such as IBM, Novell, SAP, SUSE and HP. The wealth of experience that Laidig and Seibt bring to Scali is instrumental as the organization continues to develop and execute upon its strategic initiatives. Seibt has been a pioneer in commercializing the Linux operating system. As CEO of SUSE, he was instrumental in building international traction and adoption of the software, which ultimately led to the company being acquired by Novell in 2004. Laidig worked at Hewlett-Packard for 30 years, where he was instrumental in building HP´s European Computer Systems Business in the 1980´s and 1990´s. He also served on the supervisory board at SAP AG from 1996 to 2003. This gives Laidig a unique understanding of the enterprise systems market which will be important as Scali continues to develop their go-to-market and product strategies. “Scali is a company with substantial growth potential and exciting opportunities. As clustering becomes more common in the enterprise market, Scali’s software and hardware agnostic approach will make it the natural choice for companies looking for reduced risk and increased productivity in their datacenter,” said Klaus-Dieter Laidig. “I look forward to contributing to the ongoing success of the organization.” “As more organizations adopt Linux as a platform in the datacenter and incorporate clusters into their IT architecture, the need for an effective management solution becomes obvious,” said Richard Seibt. “With its solution, Scali is well positioned to help organizations take advantage of the cost and performance benefits of Linux-based clusters.” “Scali is fortunate to welcome such skilled professionals as Richard and Klaus-Dieter to our board of directors,” said Bjørn Skare, President and CEO at Scali. “Their extensive experience, connections and insightful market perspectives will be invaluable as we continue to implement our strategy and expand our business.” Additional background information on both Scali Board Members is provided below. Klaus-Dieter Laidig Klaus-Dieter Laidig worked from 1967 to 1998 at Hewlett-Packard. Laidig’s last position was General Manager (Geschaeftsfuehrer) of Hewlett-Packard GmbH. Laidig is currently managing partner of Laidig Business Consulting GmbH, a position he has held since 1998. Laidig serves on the board of directors at Agile Software Corp. (USA), Aldata Solution Oyi (Finland) and Comline AG (Germany). He also serves as the chairman of the board of Collax, Inc. (USA) and Heiler Software AG (Germany). Laidig received an M.B.A. from Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Richard Seibt Richard Seibt is currently focusing on open source projects including the OpenSouce Meets Business Conference and serves as an advisor to Open-Xchange, Inc. Seibt was most recently President, Novell Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) where his responsibilities included integrating SUSE Linux within Novell. Prior to that, he was CEO of SUSE Linux which was acquired by Novell under his leadership. Seibt began his career at IBM where he held a variety of positions in both Europe and North America. He graduated from the University of Hamburg and assumed the Diplom-Kaufmann degree.