Enterprise Panel: Cloud Wars
David Fachetti - Moderator
Managing Director, Globespan
Dave is a Managing Director in Globespan’s Boston office and has been a member of the Management Team since the firm’s inception. He primarily focuses on investments in the Internet, Software and Energy sectors. Dave serves on the boards of CloudShare, expressor software, Luidia, OpenSpan and Q1 Labs. He previously led or served on the boards of Cloakware (acquired by Irdeto), Ingrian Networks (acquired by SafeNet), and Reflectent (acquired by Citrix). He also participated as a board observer at OpenPages (acquired by IBM).
Prior to Globespan, Dave was a Principal of JAFCO Ventures, where he focused on enterprise software opportunities. Prior to JAFCO, Dave was at Family Education Network (“FEN”) where he held the positions of Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing and Senior Vice President and GM of FEN’s distributed content management software business. FEN was acquired in 2000 by Pearson PLC (NYSE: PSO) in a cash transaction valuing FEN at $175 million.
Before joining FEN, Dave was at Trans National Group (TNG), where he held several senior management positions. He ran and then sold TNG’s Canadian credit card business to Bank of Montreal (NYSE:BMO). Dave was also a part of the founding team that developed TNG’s businesses in the UK, France and Germany. In addition to his operating responsibilities, Dave contributed to TNG’s venture investments group.Dave began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Dave received an MBA, with honors, from Boston University and a BBA, with honors, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is a CPA.
Ilya Fushman - Panelist
Business Development, Dropbox
Ilya built quantum computers at Stanford and Caltech, spent some time making the world’s most efficient solar cell, and took a turn in venture capital, but he always knew cloud storage and sync were the obvious next step. Now he’s working on getting more people into Dropbox and more Dropbox into people’s lives.
Alex Chriss - Panelist
Director, Intuit Partner Platform, Intuit Inc.
Alex leads Intuit’s platform-as-a-service strategy, uniting the company’s own connected services with third party offerings in a single ecosystem. The Intuit Partner Platform allows independent developers to create and deploy products that work in conjunction with Intuit’s popular QuickBooks financial management software. He also heads the Intuit App Center, the destination for small businesses to access apps connected to Intuit’s cloud. Previously, Alex helped lead Intuit’s QuickBase product to become the leading online database.
Prior to Intuit, Alex held executive positions at Kronos Advanced Technology and Youthstream Media Networks and was founder and CEO of CollegeWeb.
Alex received his degree in Economics from Tufts University and is based in Waltham, Mass.
John McEleney - Panelist
CEO, CloudSwitch
As chief executive officer at CloudSwitch, John McEleney brings over two decades of experience in scaling software businesses to market leadership. Prior to joining CloudSwitch, John was the CEO of SolidWorks Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dassault Systems S.A. (NASDAQ: DASTY). John’s rise to CEO was built on his strong record of results over a 20-year career in the CAD industry. During his tenure as CEO, annual revenues grew from US $100 million in 2001 to over $350 million in 2007.
Before joining SolidWorks, John held management positions at Computervision, where he was involved in a wide array of functions including marketing and product development. John has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Rochester, a master’s degree in manufacturing systems from Boston University, and a master’s degree in business administration and marketing from Northeastern University. He serves on the board of directors for Stratasys (Nasdaq: SSYS) a Minneapolis based manufacturer of 3D printers and Newforma ( a privately held software company in Manchester, NH).
Peter Coffee - Panelist
VP and Head of Platform Research, salesforce.com inc.
Peter joined salesforce.com in January of 2007, after 19 years as a senior contributor to the IT publications PC Tech Journal, PC Week and eWEEK. He has 29 years’ experience in application development tools and practices; he has been a keynote speaker or workshop leader at technical meetings, industry events, and academic conferences throughout the U.S. and in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America and western Europe.
Before he joined PC Week as a founding member of its testing labs, Peter served as the first manager of desktop computing integration at The Aerospace Corporation — where he also worked in space systems project management and in space-asset applications of AI techniques. Before that, he held project management roles in arctic oil development, polymer production, and alternative-fuels engineering for Exxon operations in New Jersey, Louisiana, and Alaska’s Beaufort Sea. He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University, where he also served as an instructor for core classes in IT management; he has held other faculty appointments in computer science (AI applications) at UCLA and in business analytics at Chapman College. He is the author of two books, How To Program Java and Peter Coffee Teaches PCs.
