GAMING

Sistina Software, the premier storage infrastructure software company delivering data-sharing solutions for enterprise and technical computing customers, today announced the appointment of Dale Royal as executive vice president of field operations. Royal brings more than 22 years of experience to Sistina after leading successful software sales teams at companies such as VERITAS Software Corp. (NASDAQ: VRTS), Evolve Software and Sequent Computer Systems. Royal, who will be based out of Sistina's corporate headquarters in Minneapolis, will be responsible for creating complementary direct and channel sales strategies at a global level. "The Linux storage infrastructure market is growing at a rapid pace, and it's gratifying that a seasoned veteran with undeniable experience in the storage software space has chosen Sistina from all the other opportunities out there," said Ian Bonner, president and CEO of Sistina Software. "Dale's track record of sales experience and market intelligence in parallel industries, plus his understanding of the importance of standards-based computing, will help Sistina meet the needs and goals of our expanding market." "Sistina Software is one of the most innovative storage infrastructure companies in the market today," said Royal. "With a commitment to the growth of Linux clusters in combination with storage area networks (SANs) and blade-based computing, Sistina is in a position to take the market by storm. This is an exciting opportunity and invigorating challenge to spearhead the sales efforts for a company at the leading edge of these expanding markets." Prior to joining Sistina, Royal led the sales teams at companies such as VERITAS Software and Evolve Software. At VERITAS, Royal was vice president, expanding the revenue stream over a period of eight years from zero to $250 million in the central United States. As one of the company's first field office representatives, Royal entered the storage market in its infancy and quickly established a sales and associated management infrastructure of more than 200 individuals. Royal also established VERITAS' direct end user strategy, as well as a multi-channel, multi-tiered distribution strategy for the implementation of storage management solutions. After VERITAS, Royal was vice president of worldwide sales for Evolve Software, a professional services automation vendor purchased by Primavera Software in March 2003. Prior to his work at VERITAS, Royal was regional sales manager for Sequent Computer Systems, where he increased district sales from zero to $120 million. Sistina GFS, the industry's most scalable, mature cluster file system on Linux, enables multiple computers to share a single, common view of storage data. This allows companies to consolidate server and storage resources onto a single management domain, linking thousands of diverse data storage repositories into a massively scalable, secure and stable storage area network (SAN). Sistina's Logical Volume Manager (LVM), which is included in the Linux kernel and every major Linux distribution, provides tens of thousands of end-users worldwide with high-performance, ease of management and key features enabling crucial backup applications. Sistina is already working closely with leading value-added resellers and OEMs, such as Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu Systems Europe, IBM and CommVault Systems.