ACADEMIA

Panasas announced Donald McCoy Jr. has joined the company as vice president of global services. McCoy will be responsible for Panasas' product quality assurance teams and global professional services organization. In his position, McCoy will manage the aggressive growth of Panasas' professional services while further enhancing and promoting Panasas' unparalleled commitment to product quality and customer support. McCoy brings more than 14 years of management experience in the high tech service industry to the Panasas management team. Most recently, McCoy held multiple senior service management roles for Network Appliance after he joined the company via its 2004 acquisition of Spinnaker Networks. At Spinnaker, he was director of customer support and services, responsible for defining the scope and components of Spinnaker's global services offerings, setting service pricing and implementing an effective services marketing program. Prior to Spinnaker, McCoy served as vice president of enterprise engineering at FORE Systems, where he managed the development and support of new and existing LAN internetworking product technologies. McCoy delivered renewed customer focus, delivering high quality products across multiple engineering groups while instilling fiscal accountability and a culture of execution. "Donald's addition will help fuel our business growth as we head into the New Year and help Panasas continue to exceed our customers' expectations," said Victor Perez, president and CEO at Panasas. "His unique blend of operational, technical and business skills will be a tremendous asset to our organization." "Panasas is setting the industry-standard for high-performance clustered storage in government, academic and commercial applications through a commitment to excellence in product quality and global customer support," said McCoy. "My goal is to further strengthen Panasas' ability to deliver a best-in-class storage product and unparalleled customer support and professional services that exceeds the expectations of our global customers."