Board of Directors
Suresh Katta: Chairman
Mr. Katta founded Saama Technologies in 1997 with a clear vision: to make actionable intelligence more accessible, more useful and more specific to the business constituencies that need it most. Since the company’s launch, he has led the development of solution sets that blend technical expertise, functional knowledge and patented technologies to serve Fortune 500 corporations and public sector agencies.
Mr. Katta’s long history of launching startups that produced innovative solutions makes him uniquely qualified to the task of creating and building a company that helps organizations uncover the value in their operational data streams. He previously co-founded GVI, which developed groupware applications and was sold to Netscape in 1995. He also founded Multisoft, which developed and marketed high-end graphics products for the Indian market. He also spent several years at Silicon Graphics, a pioneer and innovation leader in high-performance computing solutions. His work has earned him industry-wide recognition, and he has been a discussion panel member and featured speaker at numerous IT conferences.
Mr. Katta earned his M.S. in Computer Engineering at the University of Southwest Louisiana, and his B.S. in Electronics Engineering at the University of Bangalore in India.
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Kenneth L. Coleman: Board Member
Mr. Coleman is currently Chairman of Accelrys, Inc. With over 500 employees and $80 million in revenues, Accelrys’s technology and services are designed to meet the needs of today’s leading research organizations.
Mr. Coleman was the founder and former Chairman/CEO of ITM Software, an enterprise software company. He has served as Executive Vice President of Global Sales, Service, and Marketing for Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), a $2.3 billion computer systems company. Mr. Coleman was also Vice President of Product Development at Activision, Inc. Earlier, he spent 10 years at Hewlett-Packard Co., where he held several management positions.
Mr. Coleman is also on the Board of Directors of City National Bank, MIPS Technologies, and United Online. He is a recipient of numerous honors, including the Ohio State University Distinguished Service Award, the National Alliance of Black School Educators Living Legend Award, the American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley Exemplary Leader Award, the One Hundred Black Men of Silicon Valley Lifetime Achievement Award and the Silicon Valley Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame.
Mr. Coleman earned a B.S. and an MBA from The Ohio State University. Mr. Coleman also served as a Captain in the US Air Force.
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William Binch: Board Member
Mr. Binch is highly respected as a champion of business intelligence applications and has successfully led sales teams at numerous blue-chip organizations in the IT industry. Mr. Binch has been a director at SPSS since the acquisition of ShowCase Corp. by SPSS in February 2001 and now serves as the Board's Lead Director. (He was also a director at ShowCase from 1999 until the acquisition.) Mr. Binch is a professional independent director with extensive experience in worldwide sales, enterprise applications and analytics. Besides Saama, he is on the Board of Directors at other Callidus Software Inc. and Medefinance, Inc. Earlier, he spent nine years in sales and sales management at IBM, four years as VP/General Manager at Intel, and three years as VP of Sales at Fortune. Mr. Binch was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations for Hyperion Inc., where he was responsible for over $430 million in global revenues. Before Hyperion, Mr. Binch was a senior executive for two companies, Business Objects and Prism, in the BI and data warehousing sector. Both went through successful IPOs during his tenure. He also spent five years at Oracle Corp. and received the most valuable employee award in 1992 while serving as Vice President of Strategic Accounts.
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Business Advisory Board
Alok Mohan: Advisor
Mr. Mohan’s 30-plus years in management roles in the IT industry comes with a strong focus on strategy formulation and financial planning, along with a special interest in growth through mergers and acquisitions. He served as CEO and then Chairman of SCO, Inc. and continued as Chairman after it was renamed Tarantella, Inc. Before joining SCO, Mr. Mohan was at NCR Corp., where he served as Vice President of Strategic Planning and Controller and Vice President and General Manager of the Workstation Products Division. Mr. Mohan is also the non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors at Rainmaker, Inc. (NASDAQ: "RMKR") and TechTeam, Inc. (NASDAQ: "TEAM") and he serves on the Board of Directors at Stampede Technologies, Inc. and CrystalGraphics, Inc.
Ronnie Lott: Advisor
Mr. Ronnie Lott is co-founder of HRJ capital, a private equity investment firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York, Zurich and Shanghai that manages approximately $1.8 billion in assets. Mr. Lott also is a member of Young President’s Organization, an exclusive network of the world’s most influential corporate presidents.
Mr. Lott began his investment experience as an early investor with Crosspoint Venture Partners and has extended it throughout the Sand Hill Road venture capital community. He has also built an extensive network of contacts within the financial services community at large, including the leveraged buyout and hedge fund sectors.
Mr. Lott is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he received a Bachelor's Degree in Public Administration. He was a first round draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers. He was elected to the NFL’s Hall of Fame in 2000.
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Customer Advisory Board
Andre M Boisvert: Advisor
Mr. Boisvert is a 30-year veteran of the software industry and a pioneer in the BI market. He began his career with IBM, where he spent 13 years in senior management positions across sales, marketing and R&D. He next went to Cognos and then Oracle, where he was senior VP of Worldwide Marketing and a member of the management committee. In 2000, Mr. Boisvert became president and COO of SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held software company. In 2003, Mr. Boisvert became chairman and CEO at Sagent Technologies (NASDAQ: SGNT) and in 2004 successfully completed the sale of the company to Group 1 Software (NASDAQ:GSOF).
In 2004, Mr.Boisvert co-founded Pentaho Corp., an open source BI platform. Boisvert also serves as chairman of Compiere, an open source ERP and CRM company, and Zenoss, the leading open source network and system monitoring company. Additionally, he is an outside director of UBmatrix Inc, Palamida Corp. and Odyssey Financial Technologies Inc.
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Jim Cates: Advisor
Mr. Cates has over 30 years’ experience in the IT field. He spent 20 years at IBM in various R&D management positions, developing a broad range of IT tools. He has spent 10-plus years in Silicon Valley as the CIO, VP/IT and Corporate Process Officer at four high-tech companies, each building over $500 million in revenue.
He also holds an MS in Computer and Information Science from the Ohio State University Engineering College. He is a recipient of Ohio State’s Distinguished Alumnus Award from the college of Engineering.
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Michael Graves: Advisor
Mr. Graves is currently the CIO and Vice President of Zhone Technologies, Inc., wanew breed of equipment provider with a vision of product development, delivery, and support for telecommunications carriers worldwide.
During his 30-year career, Mr. Graves has led teams at blue-chip companies in telecommunications, computer and semiconductor industries. As a true IT infrastructure architect, he has been instrumental in helping many well-known organizations build the infrastructure to meet market challenges. In his role as CIO with Applied Materials, a leader in semiconductor manufacturing equipment, his organization replaced an aging infrastructure to support the corporation's one-year spike from $4 billion to over $10 billion in annual revenues. He has been a pioneer in establishing new architectures and infrastructures at industry pioneers such as Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics.
He has been a keynote speaker at various gatherings such as the Fortune CEO Forum and Oracle user groups, and has made many TV appearances to discuss different aspects of the IT industry.
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Sanjay Poonen: Advisor
Mr. Poonen, currently the GM and SVP of the SAP Analytics Business Unit and previously senior VP at Symantec/Veritas, has extensive experience in sales, marketing, and R&D at various enterprise software companies. He also served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Informatica and was an officer of the company from 2001 to 200. In his marketing position, he was responsible for growing market leadership in data integration, putting Informatica squarely on the map with its BI product line, bringing new metadata management products to market, and helping to lead the acquisition of Striva Corp. Before running the marketing function, he was Vice President and General Manager of the Applications Business Unit, driving the business from its early stages to critical mass.
Earlier, he was on the founding team at Alphablox Corp., where he held senior management roles in product strategy, marketing and business development. He has also held strategy, marketing and engineering positions at Apple Computer, Taligent, Inc. and Regis McKenna Group. He started his career as a software engineer at Microsoft, working on early forms of Microsoft Exchange.
Mr. Poonen has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was named Baker Scholar, and a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics, summa cum laude, from Dartmouth College.
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Mark Roberts: Advisor
Mr. Roberts manages engineering—including R&D, professional services and partner engineering—at TiVo Inc. He was previously Vice President of Operations and CIO, overseeing the development and maintenance of TiVo's technology infrastructure, as well as service operations and customer service.
Earlier, he served as Vice President of Information Technology at Acuson Corp., a leading manufacturer of medical diagnostic ultrasound products, where he was responsible for the company's worldwide information technology systems. Before that, he was Director of Information Systems at SGI. He also spent seven years with the San Francisco office of Andersen Consulting, serving high\-technology clients including Apple, Sun Microsystems and Tandem.
Mr Roberts holds a BS in Economics with a minor in Business from the University of Santa Clara.
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Technical Advisory Board
Yorgen Edholm: Advisor
Mr. Edholm is a Silicon Valley veteran, with over 24 years of enterprise software expertise. He is currently President and CEO of Accellion, Inc., a developer of enterprise solutions for e-mail attachment management. Prior to joining Accellion, he was President and CEO of analytical applications company Decision Point Applications. He previously co-founded Brio Software, and during 12 years as CEO took the company public, growing the firm to over $150 million in revenue with more than 700 employees and a customer base exceeding 5,000 organizations.
Trained as a concert violinist, Mr. Edholm has also earned an MBA from the Stockholm School of Economics and a Masters in Engineering Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
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Bharath Kadaba: Advisor
Mr. Kadaba is VP of Product Development at Intuit. Before that he was VP of Media Engineering at Yahoo, which he joined in June 2004. Earlier, from 2001 to 2004, he was was Vice President and General Manager at Siebel Systems, where he spearheaded a cross-functional initiative to create and bring to market the Universal Application Network Product.
Prior to joining Siebel, Mr. Kadaba was Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Managed Application Services, at AritaSoft. He spent two years at this enterprise Application Service Provider startup and was responsible for building and managing the engineering, operations and customer support functions. He previously worked at News Corp., eventually serving as President of the News Internet Services business unit. His longest tenure was a 14-year stint at IBM Corp., primarily at the T.J. Watson Research Center.
Mr. Kadaba has a Ph. D. in Computer Networks from the University of Hawaii. He also holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and a MS degree in Computers and Control from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.
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Atique Shah: Advisor
Mr. Shah is an executive known for turning enterprises customer-centric by architecting emerging frameworks and building the supporting technology infrastructure that supports such complex undertakings. He has led the way in adopting advanced customer analytics as a strategic tool.
Mr. Shah most recently served as Vice President, CRM and Technology Solutions at Churchill Downs Inc., home of the famous Kentucky Derby. He spearheaded the strategy, design, architecture, development and rollout phases of a multi-tier consumer marketing initiative. He formulated the CRM strategy and was responsible for the technical foundation required to better identify and market to CDI’s customers.
He previously led an enterprise-wide customer marketing initiative for GSI Commerce, a leading e-commerce solution provider. As a result of the design, architecture and execution of its CRM systems, GSI won the prestigious 2003 Gartner CRM Excellence Award. Mr. Shah implemented a league-wide customer relationship program at the National basketball Association, with customer analytics focusing on fan profitability and retention. He also developed a unified customer communications strategy and put into place various retention and conversion techniques at Uproar.com, part of the Flipside Network.
Mr. Shah is a graduate of Wittenberg University. He holds a Master's degree in business administration with a focus on international marketing and operations management from St. Thomas Aquinas University, in addition to Direct Marketing course work at New York University.
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James Karis: Advisor
Mr. Karis has had a 30-year career in the pharmaceutical, healthcare services, technology and medical device industries. In addition to his experience as an entrepreneur and a Board member, he has held a variety of senior executive positions in public and private companies.
From 2000 until 2009 he served as President, CEO and Director of Entelos, Inc. and prior to joining Entelos, he held senior positions in the contract research industry. He was the Chief Operating Officer and President of Parexel International, and also served as Chief Operating Officer of Pharmaco International. Earlier, he was the Vice President of international operations for Baxter International and is the founder of KMR Group Inc., the leading pharmaceutical R&D analytics firm.
Currently, Mr. Karis is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NASDAQ listed company Marina Biotech, Inc., and is also the Chairman of the Board, of Schulman IRB Holding Company, a private equity owned services firm. He holds a B.S. in management and economics from Purdue University and a M.A. in applied economics from The American University.
