We’re the Data Activation Company

Length of tenure

Appointed 11 May 2012 (Chairman from 6 October 2016)

Skills and experience

Since co-founding the Company in Silicon Valley in 2005, David has led WANdisco on a course for rapid international expansion, opening offices in the UK, Japan and China. David spearheaded WANdisco to a hugely successful listing on the London Stock Exchange (WAND:LSE) and, shortly after, the acquisition of AltoStor, which accelerated the development of WANdisco’s first products for the Big Data market.

A passionate advocate of entrepreneurship, David has established and successfully exited several highly successful Silicon Valley technology companies. David was the founder and CEO of Librados, an application integration software provider, and led the company’s acquisition by NASDAQ-listed NetManage, Inc. in 2005. David is a frequent commentator on a range of business and technology issues, appearing regularly on Bloomberg and CNBC. David holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Huddersfield.

After Paul Walker, the former Chairman, stepped down from the Board in October 2016, David took the role of Chairman. In 2017 David was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Sheffield Hallam University in recognition of him being a champion of British technology and a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship.

David and his wife Jane founded the David & Jane Richards Family Foundation with the purpose to educate, empower and improve the lives of children through hands-on programmes and targeted assistance. They aim to encourage children to fulfil their potential and make a positive impact on the world around them. The first programmes commenced in 2018 in some state schools in the UK, where they will use new methods to teach computing skills and install beehives as part of a wider teaching curriculum.

In the 2022 Queen’s New Year Honours List, David was awarded an MBE for his services to the Information Technology Sector and to Young People, particularly during COVID-19.

External appointments

With over 20 years of executive experience in the software industry, David sits on a number of advisory and executive boards of Silicon Valley start-up ventures.

Length of tenure

Appointed 23 February 2017

Skills and experience

Dr Aahlad is a recognised worldwide authority on distributed computing. He is named in 73 WANdisco patents, including US and international patents, continuations and divisionals. It was Dr Aahlad’s vision and years of persistence that led to the invention of technology that many thought was impossible – that of Active-Active replication (WANdisco’s patented DConE technology). Prior to WANdisco, Dr Aahlad served as the distributed systems architect for iPlanet (Sun/Netscape Alliance) Application Server. At Netscape, Dr Aahlad joined the elite team in charge of creating a new server platform based on the CORBA distributed object framework.

Prior to Sun/Netscape Dr Aahlad worked on incorporating the CORBA security service into Fujitsu’s Object Request Broker. Dr Aahlad designed and implemented the CORBA event services while working on Sun’s first CORBA initiative. Earlier in his career, Dr Aahlad worked on a distributed programming language at IBM’s Palo Alto Scientific Center.

Dr Aahlad has a PhD in Distributed Computing from the University of Texas, Austin, and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras.

External appointments

None.

Length of tenure

Appointed 5 December 2016

Skills and experience

Erik was the Chief Financial Officer of Envivio, Inc., a NASDAQ-listed provider of video transcoding software, from February 2010 to January 2016, following its acquisition by Ericsson AB.

From January 2008 to July 2009, Erik served as Chief Financial Officer at SigNav Pty. Ltd., a component supplier to the wireless industry, where he was responsible for finance and administration functions.

From March 2006 to January 2008, he served as Chief Financial Officer at Tangler Pty. Ltd., a social networking company, where he was responsible for finance and administrative functions. Erik received a BS degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.

External appointments

None.

Paul Scott-Murphy, Chief Technology Officer at WANdisco, is responsible for the company’s product and technology strategy, including industry engagement, technical innovation, new market and product initiation and creation. This includes direct interaction with the majority of WANdisco’s significant customers, partners and prospects. Previously VP of product management for WANdisco, and Regional Chief Technology Office for TIBCO Software in Asia Pacific and Japan, Paul has a Bachelor of Science with first class honors and a Bachelor of Engineering with first class honors from the University of Western Australia.

Keith previously spent nine years with TIBCO Software in Asia Pacific including serving for over five years as Regional Vice President and Managing Director of Australia and New Zealand. Keith worked at Librados as Vice President EMEA, where he was part of the founding team from start-up until the acquisition by NetManage. He was a Regional Director at Reuters Plc, where he was responsible for Reuters’ $100m+ software solutions business. Keith holds an MA in Management Science and Information Systems Studies from Trinity College, Dublin.

Peter was a member of the sales management team at Empirix’s Web Business Unit, which was acquired by Oracle. He was also part of the sales management team at Vecta Software, a CRM and business intelligence software vendor. He began his career with Sales Dynamics, helping early stage venture-backed technology companies establish sales processes that enabled them to achieve aggressive revenue targets. Prior to his career in technology sales, Peter spent six years in the British Army with the Royal Engineers.

Chris has deep expertise in modern B2B technology marketing and connecting brands with buyers through powerful messaging, content, demand gen, and digital experiences. He has led content strategy with Gartner and Charles Schwab as well as digital marketing and demand gen programs for Persado AI, SANS Institute, and NextHealth Technologies. He delivered double-digit traffic, lead, and revenue growth for GU Energy Labs and Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.

Chris spent years advising C-level technology executives while at the Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner) and holds an MBA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies as well as certificates in advanced digital marketing analytics.

Anne was the VP HR of Envivio. She was also the VP HR for Harmonic, Inc. as well as the Director General of Harmonic Europe. She has also held senior level positions at Quantum (Seagate), Schlumberger Limited and Computer Sciences Corporation (“CSC”). Anne earned her BA at Clarke University and completed graduate studies in Linguistics at Emory University and postgraduate studies at L’université Paris-Sorbonne. She has a Master of Arts degree in Business Leadership and Ethics from St. Mary’s College of California.

Justin has successfully built and led high-performance technology teams capable of delivering unmatched customer experiences for over 20 years.  Justin was a Director of Product Management at Dell-EMC, where he developed an extensive knowledge of replication and migration technologies.  During his leadership of EMC’s $500M Global Data Migration practice, Justin spearheaded multiple initiatives to drive efficiencies into the core storage platform technologies and tools used to reduce customer cost associated with migrating data between platforms. Justin pursued his undergraduate degree in Business Information Systems, later focusing on project management, process improvement and business operations, obtaining his MBA from St. Mary’s of California.

Ian joined WANdisco in 2009, having spent the previous 10 years as part of the management team of a UK based telecom, supporting the company from startup through IPO and acquisition. While there, Ian operated in various technical and customer leadership roles. Upon joining WANdisco, Ian oversaw the growth of their UK-based engineering operation before relocating to California in 2014 where he now owns Customer Experience as part of the Product Management group.

Larry previously worked at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a large California-based law firm, where he provided advice and services both to large corporations and emerging growth technology companies. He also had roles in Gunderson Dettmer, another Silicon Valley firm, and Hughes & Luce, a Dallas law firm. He started his legal career at telecommunications giant Northern Telecom in Texas. Larry holds a JD from Brigham Young University, a BSc in Business Management and a BA in Asian Studies, also from Brigham Young University.

Dr. Konstantin Boudnik, is one of the veteran developers of Apache Hadoop, co-author of Apache BigTop, the open source framework for creation of software stacks and operation of data processing projects used by all commercial vendors of Hadoop-based platforms including Amazon EMR, Google Cloud Dataproc, and other major distributors. With more than 20 years of experience in software development, big- and fast-data analytic, distributed systems and more, Dr. Boudnik was awarded with sixteen US patents in distributed computing, and contributed to a dozen of open source projects in the field of distributed computing and data processing. He has championed a number of successful open-source projects including Apache Ignite, Apache Groovy, Apache Zeppelin. During his carrier Dr. Boudnik hold engineering and leadership positions at Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, Karmasphere, WANdisco. Dr. Boudnik has co-authored “Professional Hadoop” book. and serves on the advisory board for a number of Silicon Valley and international firms. Over the years, Dr. Boudnik’s has founded a number of technological startups, and his consulting business delivers solutions for companies like FINRA, EMC, Pivotal, Gridgain, Canonical, and more.