Management

Egenera has assembled an executive team with a proven track record in building technology companies. Likewise, the Company's senior managers have an average 20-plus years' experience working with the industry's foremost providers and users of enterprise-class hardware and software systems. As a result, Egenera products and services are being designed based on first-hand knowledge of the challenges facing customers.

Executive Team

Mike Thompson
President and Chief Executive Officer

Vern Brownell
Founder and Chief Strategy Officer

Pete Manca
Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering

Don Peck
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Christine Crandell
Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer

Al Lanzetta
Executive Vice President of Operations and Worldwide Services

Executive Team

Mike Thompson: President and Chief Executive Officer

With over 25 years in enterprise technology sales and operations, Mike Thompson leads Egenera as President and CEO.

He joined the Company in early 2002 as COO, just as product shipments were getting underway. Since then, Egenera has evolved into one of the fastest-growing technology companies of the past 20 years, with sales, distribution and support worldwide. Prior to Egenera, Thompson was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Stratus Technologies, where he also served on the board of directors. During his Stratus tenure, Thompson managed a 400-person operation generating more than $700 million in annual revenues through direct and indirect channels.

Prior to Stratus, Thompson served as Director of U.S. Sales Operations for the financial line of business at Tandem Computers, directing sales and support to the nation's top 120 finance accounts. Earlier, at Burroughs Corporation, he focused on driving sales to the Fortune 50.

Thompson holds a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from Southern Connecticut University.

Vern Brownell: Founder and Chief Strategy Officer

Vern Brownell founded Egenera in March 2000 based on his experiences as the Chief Technology Officer at Goldman Sachs, where he and his staff of 1,300 were responsible for worldwide technology infrastructure including data centers, data networking, telecommunications and trading-floor operations. During his 11 years with the Wall Street leader, Brownell developed a keen appreciation for how the complexity of legacy server deployments both increased costs and compromised agility. Convinced that nothing short of a totally new approach to computing could solve the full range of problems he repeatedly encountered, Brownell devised the Egenera BladeFrame® system and its Processing Area Network (PAN) architecture, and formed Egenera to transform his concepts into reality.

Today, as Chief Strategy Officer, Brownell remains the visionary behind the business value that Egenera brings to customers through its breakthrough technology. He drives Egenera's strategic technology direction and counsels customers.

Prior to his tenure at Goldman, Brownell served as Manager of Engineering at Stratus Computer and Ztel Corporation. He began his career as a Principal Engineer at Digital Equipment. Brownell's background as both a developer and user of technology gives Egenera the ideal perspective for building the next generation of data center infrastructure.

He serves on the board of COPAN Systems and holds a master of business administration degree from Anna Maria College as well as a bachelor of engineering degree in electrical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Pete Manca: Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering

Pete Manca brings over 20 years' experience in enterprise computing to Egenera. His expertise spans a wide range of critical enterprise data center technologies including virtualization, operating systems, large-scale architectures and open standards. In particular, his leadership and experience in virtualization technologies has led to the continued progression of Egenera's advanced PAN (Processing Area Network) architecture. As CTO and EVP of Engineering, Manca leads product planning by working directly with customers to understand their most difficult challenges and guide Egenera's architecture, hardware and software engineering teams to translate those requirements into solutions.

Prior to Egenera, Manca served as Vice President of Engineering at Hitachi Computer Products America with responsibility for operating systems and enterprise middleware products—contributing to the development of the world's then-fastest commercial supercomputer. While a Software Engineer with Encore Computer, he began cultivating his specialty in distributed operating systems as a member of the team that built the first commercial system based on MACH technology. He has also held senior engineering and management positions with Prime Computer and Racal Interlan.

Manca holds bachelor of science and master of science degrees in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), where he has taught operating systems and networking at the graduate level. Long a champion of open standards, Manca also has actively participated in the X/Open and Open Software Foundation (OSF) consortiums.

Don Peck: Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Don Peck brings decades of financial and executive leadership experience to Egenera. As Executive Vice President, CFO and Treasurer, Peck oversees Egenera's global finance and legal organizations.

Prior to Egenera, Peck served as Executive Vice President and CFO at First Marblehead, an industry leader in providing outsourcing services for private, non-governmental, education lending in the United States. During his tenure, he grew the company's financial infrastructure, played a key role in its successful public offering and established business processes that helped drive the visibility and predictability of the business.  Prior to that, Mr. Peck was the President of Lenox Partners, a finance and legal advisory firm, and earlier, the CFO and General Counsel at Zeborg, Inc. At Zeborg he led financial, legal and operational initiatives, transitioning the company from a start-up consulting services model to a software technology provider. There, he grew revenues and reduced costs to achieve positive cash flow and profitable operations. He has also held the role of CFO and General Counsel at Marketmax, Inc. (acquired by SAS Institute) where he successfully completed bridge financing and private placement efforts during the down market and worked with senior management to set the company's product development strategies.

Mr. Peck spent 10 years as an attorney with Nutter, McClennen & Fish LLP in Boston before rejoining the commercial side of business.  He received his J.D. from Cornell Law School and B.S. in business administration from the University of Rhode Island.  He is also admitted to practice law before the Federal and State Courts in Mass. and R.I., and is a Certified Public Accountant in Conn.

Christine Crandell: Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer

With over two decades of marketing and strategy experience, Christine Crandell leads Egenera’s global marketing efforts to build its leadership position in the fast growing global market of data center virtualization solutions.

Crandell joined Egenera from Ariba, Inc., where she served as Vice President of Marketing, contributing to the company’s efforts to rebuild the brand, enhance market credibility and grow sales traction, worldwide.  Prior to Ariba, Ms. Crandell served as president of New Business Strategies, where she focused on providing market and corporate strategy to a diverse and global client base of technology companies.  She has also held senior marketing management roles with SAP and Oracle, and began her career as a management consultant with Price Waterhouse, now PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Crandell received a B.S. in Business Administration and M.B.A. from Florida Atlantic University and has completed doctoral studies at Golden Gate University.  She is a frequent speaker and has been published in numerous business and technology publications on strategy, enterprise technology and marketing.

With a wealth of knowledge and experience from over 30 years in operations, finance, manufacturing and customer service, Al Lanzetta leads Egenera's Operations and Services on a global basis.

Lanzetta joined Egenera from EMC Corporation, where he served as Vice President of Global Field Operations and Field Support for EMC Global Services guiding a worldwide staff of 3,000 professionals responsible for customer service field operations, field support, logistics and contracts administration. Prior to this, he was Vice President of Global Customer Service for the Data General division of EMC, directing the worldwide activities of a $250 million profit center and exceeding targets for customer satisfaction and revenue. Earlier, Lanzetta was Vice President of the Manufacturing Services Division and Repairiion Unit for Data General Corporation, where he created a business that marketed and sold repair and logistics services to third parties. During his career at Data General, Lanzetta held positions ranging from Corporate Manufacturing Controller to Director of the Manufacturing Services Division.

After serving in the United States Marine Corps, Lanzetta earned a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Clark University and a master of business administration degree from Babson College.