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Sydney, Australia - Sep 12, 2012 – Nimble Storage, the Silicon Valley-based data storage specialist with the record of being the fastest-growing data storage company in history, has announced the opening of its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Australia, and the appointment of three local senior industry executives.  The local executive team includes Peter O’Connor, Vice President Asia Pacific; Gavin Cohen, Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific and Rob Barton, Director of Sales for Australia and New Zealand.

Nimble Storage was established in 2008 in Silicon Valley by two storage veterans, Varun Mehta and Umesh Maheshwari, on the foundation that enterprises should not have to compromise on performance, capacity, ease-of-management or price for data storage.  On that basis, they developed Nimble Storage’s patented Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL™) architecture from the ground up to effectively combine flash technology with high capacity drives to provide affordable, high performance storage with simplified disaster recovery and backup. CASL avoids the traditional data storage approach of using flash as a tier and provides the industry’s first genuine hybrid of flash storage and disk.

A New Region, a NewTeam

Suresh Vasudevan, CEO of Nimble Storage, said, “We’ve reached the point in our business where we’re in a strong position to expand into Asia Pacific, starting with Australia and New Zealand.  This comes off the back of our announcement earlier this week, regarding a new round of funding we’ve just received.  The hand-picked team that has come on board to run our regional operations has an outstanding track record of working closely with customers and the partner community to provide the technology solutions they need to do business successfully.  I anticipate a great year ahead for Nimble Storage in A/NZ and Asia Pacific, and look forward to working alongside this highly experienced and respected team.”

Peter O’Connor, Vice President Asia Pacific

As Vice President for Nimble Storage Asia Pacific, Peter O’Connor is responsible for leading and building the company’s business across the region.  O’Connor brings more than 20 years’ experience in senior technology management roles across A/NZ and Asia Pacific, most recently leading NetApp A/NZ for six years and South East Asia for two years. During his leadership, O’Connor oversaw revenue growth of 500 percent and achieved more than 2,000 new customer acquisitions

Prior to NetApp, O’Connor ran Macromedia’s (now Adobe’s) Asia Pacific business, a role in which he grew the business to be a significant contributor to global revenues.  Before Macromedia, O’Connor held senior APAC management roles with i2 Technologies, SSA and IBM.

O’Connor said, “I’m thrilled to be joining such a successful and innovative data management company.  This is an excellent opportunity to be leading the Asia Pacific Region for  a company whose senior executive team reads like a Who’s Who of the data storage industry. I am excited by the prospects that lie ahead for Nimble Storage in Asia Pacific, its customers and the local partner community. The team and I are looking forward to developing and driving a strong business for the company in this region.”

Gavin Cohen, Director of Marketing Asia Pacific

Nimble Storage’s first employee in Asia Pacific, Gavin Cohen is responsible for working in close collaboration with Nimble Storage’s customers and partners to position the company’s solutions.  He also works closely with Nimble’s corporate team to help define future product needs and strategies.

Cohen bring 20 years of data storage industry experience to the role, including most recently working as Director of Technology and Strategy for NetApp Asia Pacific – the most senior technical role in the region.  Here, he was responsible for developing the company’s product and technical strategy, driving key initiatives in the region and evangelising the company’s solutions. Before this, Cohen held other senior roles at NetApp’s US headquarters, including Director of Product Management and Technical Marketing.

Rob Barton, Director of Sales Australia and New Zealand

As Director of Sales for Australia and New Zealand, Rob is responsible for leading the sales team and building the Nimble Storage business in the A/NZ marketplace, working in close collaboration with channel partners.

Prior to joining Nimble, Rob worked at EMC for 12 years where he was most recently responsible for EMC’s mid-market business in Sydney and Melbourne, leading a team that grew revenue more than 50 per cent year on year. Previously, Rob managed one of EMC’s largest accounts and grew revenue more than five-fold over a three year period. Rob also spent three years working for EMC’s UK operation.

Local Strategy Focus on Partners

In A/NZ and across the APAC region, Nimble Storage is recruiting a team of dedicated partners to specialise in Nimble Storage solutions.

O’Connor said, “Data storage is a highly specialised area of technology that can become very complex, very quickly for customers.  We’re recruiting best-of-breed partners who work on the philosophy of providing simple, high-performance solutions for customers, with customer business goals always in mind.

“There are many key points that differentiate Nimble Storage technology from the pack, starting with simplicity.  Our solutions are simple to buy, install, use and support – a philosophy reflected across our entire organisation.  In addition, our scale-to-fit functionality allows you to flexibly and non-disruptively grow a system from small to very large at the lowest possible cost. Coupled with our hybrid approach to disk and flash, we have created the perfect sweet spot of both performance and capacity at a price point very well-suited to the local market.

“It’s this unique position in the market that has allowed Nimble to rapidly sell more than 1,000 deployments around the world to date.  We’re seeking partners who are keen to work closely with us to continue that trend in A/NZ and across Asia Pacific.”

What Local Partners Are Saying

Nimble has already signed with several key business partners in Australia.

Mark Kalmus, MD of Southern Cross Computer Systems, said, "Southern Cross Computer Systems is very pleased to be partnering with Nimble Storage in the Australian market. The combination of Southern Cross's award-winning technical expertise and Nimble Storage's CASL architecture will provide our customers with a highly scalable and efficient storage platform."

Sean Murphy, Principal of Nexus, said, "Nexus is extremely impressed with the Nimble Storage approach – where a hybrid of flash and disk are used to generate impressive efficiency, simplicity and performance. Being able to do more with less is a key deliverable to our clients and we look forward to partnering with Nimble Storage to achieve this."

"As a result of our IntelliSnap Connect Program, CommVault and Nimble Storage will make the benefits of snapshot technology for data backup and recovery more accessible and practical for customers across the Asia-Pacific market place," said Gerry Sillars, Vice –President CommVault APJ. "Together, CommVault and Nimble help organisations with too much data and too little time to back up and recover it, ensure their data is always available when they need it."