ABOUT MANAGEMENT TEAM
Key profiles
Bob Farzami, Executive Co-Chairman of the Board
Bob Farzami assembled the investment syndicate and subsequently recruited the initial members of the Netuitive senior management team in 2002. He has since dedicated his time to assist the company in formulating its corporate vision and strategy, and helps the management team execute its business plans.
Most recently, he was Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Bessemer Venture Partners, and earlier at Venrock Associates, two of the country's oldest venture capital firms. Before that, he was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Breakaway Solutions Inc., and founding member of its senior management team, where he led the efforts in completing seven acquisitions. The company raised private equity and debt financing prior to completing an Initial Public Offering underwritten by Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers. Before. He was co-founder and Executive Chairman of Applica Corp., one of the industry's first venture-backed Application Service Providers (ASP) which merged with Breakaway Solutions within months of its inception.
Previously, Bob was Director of Technology at AT&T Local Services (ALS) and also led efforts in technology planning at Teleport Communications Group (acquired by AT&T) as well as ANS Communications (acquired by AOL and later UUNet). Earlier in his career, Bob conducted research on multimedia applications at the Center for Telecommunications Research (CTR), an industrial consortium sponsored by IBM, GTE and the National Science Foundation, and designed hardware and software while at Unisys Corporation and Formation Corp.
Bob holds a B.S. from Drexel University and an M.S. from Columbia University. He has been an investor or a member of the Boards of Advisors of a dozen start-up companies including Chromatis Networks (acquired by Lucent) and Sentient Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems).
Nicola Sanna, President & CEO
"The success of this company will come from listening to the users' most critical needs and responding with innovative and user-friendly solutions, developed and marketed by some of the brightest individuals in the industry. Additionally, what will make us successful is technology innovation that significantly improves the way companies analyze the performance of their mission-critical applications and services; a dedicated and experienced team; and supportive investors."
Nicola (Nick) Sanna was named President and Chief Executive Officer of Netuitive in September 2002. Under his leadership Netuitive released its first commercial products and implemented a go-to-market strategy that has established Netuitive as the leader in predictive analytics software for IT. In addition to counting an impressive list of market leaders among its 300+ customers, Netuitive has been recognized as one of the 100 most innovative private technology companies (Red Herring) and its products have won several awards such as the Morgan Stanley Innovation Award (2011), Best Systems Management (Codie 2010, 2011) and Best of VMworld (2007, 2009, 2011).
A proven executive with multi-disciplinary experience, Nicola has had many successes in growing software companies in the United States and abroad. Most recently, he was President and CEO of e-Security (acquired by Novell), which pioneered and led the security information management software market. He joined e-Security from Allen Systems Group (ASG) where he ultimately served as Chief Operating Officer. At ASG, he initially established and ran the company's business in EMEA, driving it to exponential growth via effective direct and indirect sales strategies and targeted acquisitions. During his tenure, ASG grew from $9 million to $150 million and Nicola participated in the acquisition and integration of several public and private companies such as Viasoft, Beta Systems North America, MSP, Emprise, SISRO and of assets of CA/Platinum.
Nicola sits on the North American board of the “Economy of Communion” Initiative, which promotes ethical and social entrepreneurship. He regularly lectures on the subject to undergraduate and graduate program students in business and economics at universities throughout the US.
Nicola has been named a 2008 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in the Greater Washington region. In 2002, he was recognized by the American Electronics Association as Entrepreneur of the Year for Florida. Fluent in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, Nicola obtained a doctorate in economics and trade from the University of Rome La Sapienza and a degree in business administration and strategic planning from the R.U.L.P. Foundation, Rome.
Jean-Francois Huard, PH.D., CTO
Jean-François Huard is Chief Technical Officer and Vice President of Research and Development at Netuitive, Inc. In this role he is responsible for leading the company’s vision and technology innovation effort.
Previously, Jean-François was Chief Network Architect and Vice President of Network Engineering at InvisibleHand Networks. A start-up company funded by Polaris Venture Partners, InvisibleHand Networks provides software that enables IP network service providers to dynamically price, sell, and allocate IP bandwidth. Earlier, he led the technology team at Xbind, Inc., a venture-backed start-up company that developed programmable middleware to enable service creation, deployment, and management of real-time services on multimedia networks.
Earlier in his career, Jean-François worked in network fault management at AT&T Bell Labs, focusing on decision-theoretic approaches for troubleshooting performance degradation due to software, hardware, and configuration problems. His experimental work was tested on XUNET BLANCA, one of the five Gigabit test beds sponsored by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). Jean-François was a member of the research staff at the Center for Telecommunications Research, a consortium funded by the National Science Foundation, where he conducted research in the area of data communications and network management sponsored by AT&T Bell Labs, IBM T.J. Watson, Hewlett-Packard and the Air Force Research Lab, among others.
Jean-François contributed to the definition of the international MPEG-4 standard, and was chair and technical editor of the IEEE P1520.2 working group. He has authored or co-authored many scientific papers published in technical journals and conferences, standard contributions, and has filed multiple patents. He was awarded a Centennial Scholarship by the NSERC of Canada, and co-authored an ASA Best Graduate Student paper award. Jean-François received the B. Eng. (EE) from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, the M. A. Sc. (EE) from Concordia University, Montreal, and the M. Phil. and Ph. D. (EE) from Columbia University, New York.
Hunter J. Louis, CFO
Hunter Louis is Chief Financial Officer at Netuitive, Inc., responsible for all finance, legal, and administrative functions of the company.
Prior to joining Netuitive, Hunter served as Vice President of Finance and Principal Accounting Officer for OTG Software, Inc. in Rockville, Maryland, a publicly held software company acquired by Legato Systems, Inc. Hunter began his finance career as an auditor for Deloitte & Touche in Washington, D.C. Since leaving public accounting Hunter has built financial organizations and held financial leadership positions at several Washington, D.C.-area companies, including Robbins-Gioia, Inc., Columbia Capital Corp., and SpaceWorks, Inc.
Hunter has devoted his 20-year career to helping small companies build strong financial infrastructures and providing the financial guidance necessary for emerging companies to manage rapid growth. Developing business strategies, raising capital, negotiating contracts, managing expenses, and safeguarding corporate assets through the establishment of strong financial systems and controls are critical skills that Louis has applied in small and emerging businesses. Louis holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Virginia Tech.
Brian Spindler, Vice President Engineering
Brian is Vice President of Engineering at Netuitive. He leads Development, Quality Assurance, and Support and is focused on delivering enterprise quality products and support.
Brian started with Netuitive almost 10 years ago and his experience in a wide variety of R&D roles at Netuitive make him uniquely qualified to lead the engineering team. Starting as a Systems Integration Engineer, Brian then took on the Development Manager and Director roles in Engineering before being promoted to Vice President. In these roles he was instrumental in the evolution of Netuitive into the enterprise-class open analytics platform that it is today.
Prior to Netuitive, Brian held engineering and management positions with Ruesch International (now Travelex) and RAB Electric. His introduction and education in Information Technology comes courtesy of the US Navy and Brian is a big fan of the Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens.
Bob Patel, Vice President Sales, North America
Bob Patel is the Vice President of North American Sales at Netuitive. He leads a team of Sales and Technical Pre-Sales professionals that strive to deliver quantifiable business and operational value to our customers, while driving growth across the organization.
Bob brings a unique blend of technical acumen and sales leadership to Netuitive. His career experience has spanned all facets of the software business. He serves his current position using his past experiences as Developer, Architect, Systems Engineer, Account Executive, and VP of Sales. In his most recent assignment, Bob led a team to manage Microsoft’s holistic relationship with Verizon. In his tenure, the relationship between Microsoft and Verizon grew by over 100% and he was chosen for Microsoft’s Circle of Excellence. As VP of Sales at AmberPoint, he led the rapid growth of the startup sales organization, and built a partner ecosystem that drove the acquisition of AmberPoint by Oracle. Prior to AmberPoint, Bob led Sun Microsystems' NorthEast Software Sales division where he won numerous awards for sales and management excellence.
Previous to his Sales career, Bob led the development of several DoD/military applications, including a Systems Management Platform for Theater based Army Operations, as well as a Voice Recognition System used for Command and Control of Army’s Next Generation Helicopters.
Bob is a proud member of the Rutgers University’s Scarlet Nation. He holds both Masters and Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Rutgers University.
Nick Pike, Vice President of Sales, EMEA
Nick Pike is the Vice President of Sales for the EMEA Region at Netuitive. He leads Netuitive’s team of Sales and Technical Pre-Sales professionals and partner development as it continues to add large enterprise customers.
Based in London, Pike oversees EMEA business activity with a focus on driving revenue from the Global 2000, optimizing sales processes and maximizing partner relationships to streamline company execution. Pike will also work closely with Netuitive’s Professional Services organization ensuring successful customer deployments and realizing value from Netuitive predictive analytics solutions as part of large scale application performance management (APM) initiatives.
Previously, Pike spent more than five years at ITRS where he led direct and indirect sales teams growing existing business and acquiring new accounts across EMEA and key global accounts. Here he helped define and validate an innovative and successful customer engagement methodology. In the ten years prior to this, Pike was in senior sales management and account sales positions with CA, Infor and HP where he led the opening of key strategic accounts and helped develop their EMEA operations.
Pike holds an MBA from London Business School and a B.Eng in Engineering from the University of Bath.
Jason Simpson, Vice President of Professional Services
Jason Simpson is the Vice President of Professional Services at Netuitive, leading the services team that supports customers, sales and partners corporate-wide. With over 15 years of enterprise software experience on both the product and delivery side, Jason is distinctively suited to lead Netuitive’s services team.
Prior to joining Netuitive, Jason held leadership roles at top SI providers like Accenture and AMS, where he managed multi-million dollar engagements for both the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Defense. Jason has also held Director-level positions in Product Management at Software AG (formerly webMethods), where he successfully managed multiple product releases with a specialty on commercialization and product adoption. Jason strives to always strike the right balance between product, process, and resources to achieve customer goals and fiscal objectives.
Jason Simpson holds a BS in Biology from George Mason University.