Mark Potter, HP Senior Executive, Joins Solarflare Board of Directors
Solarflare today announced the appointment of Mark Potter — senior vice president and chief technology officer of HP’s Enterprise Group (EG) — to the firm’s Board of Directors.
As a member of Solarflare’s Board of Directors, Potter brings decades of experience in the technology sector and a proven track record of building and managing multi-billion dollar businesses. His experience will help guide the rapidly growing company through its emergence as a leading player in high-performance network acceleration, monitoring and security. In his current role at HP, Potter works across the $28B EG portfolio of businesses (including HP Servers, HP Storage, HP Networking, Technology Services and HP Converged Systems) to accelerate innovation, align strategy and to ensure HP is viewed as a strategic partner to the company’s customers.
Solarflare’s business relationship with Potter began several years ago. “I’ve personally had the pleasure of working with Mark in his role as a senior executive at HP since 2007,” said Solarflare CEO Russell Stern. “He has proven to be an enthusiastic advocate for Solarflare during that time. As we continue to develop the critical technology for faster, safer and more reliable cloud computing, gaining access to Mark’s expertise and counsel will be invaluable.”
“I’ve witnessed firsthand Solarflare’s ability to transform server performance and functionality with continuous innovation and invention, and their ability to accelerate applications has been really impressive,” said Potter. “Their industry leading technology is now being adopted by enterprises outside of the financial sector, helping to further fuel the company’s growth.”
Current Solarflare board members echo Potter’s sentiments. “This is an exciting time to be engaged with Solarflare,” said Oak Investment Partners Managing Partner and Solarflare board member Bandel Carano. “I’m particularly encouraged by the company’s emergence in the network security area, since the protection of network data is the number one concern for enterprises worldwide. Solarflare’s server-based security solutions are absolutely unique in the marketplace, providing strong defense capabilities while simultaneously boosting application and network performance.”
Potter has held numerous senior business leadership positions since joining Compaq Computer, now a part of HP, in January 1989. Before HP, Potter served in leadership and engineering roles in the aerospace industry. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M University.
