Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Dan Kelly named CFO of virtual server manager VKernel

By Mass High Tech Staff

VKernel Corp. has appointed Dan Kelly as its new chief financial officer.

Portsmouth, N.H.-based VKernal develops virtual appliances for managing virtual server environments. Kelly is responsible for the company’s worldwide financial strategy and execution, officials said.

Kelly brings to VKernel more than 20 years of financial management experience with software and services organizations. Previously, he was CFO of Woburn-based geoVue Inc., a provider of dynamic location optimization software. Before that, Kelly held CFO positions at Portsmouth-based Ecora Software Corp. and Bedford, N.H.-based Scribe Software Corp.

VKernel, which launched in January 2007, employs eight workers. The company is developing a suite of plug-and-play virtual appliances designed to solve systems management problems as organizations adopt virtual server environments. Its products are designed to provide IT groups with visibility into the capacity and resource consumption of each virtual machine.

In February, VKernel completed a $4.6 million Series A round of funding that the company planned to use to expand its product development and increase sales and marketing.

The funding was co-led by San Francisco-based Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Waltham-based Polaris Venture Partners. As part of the deal, Polaris general partner Dave Barrett and Hummer Winblad managing director Mitchell Kertzman joined VKernel’s board of directors.