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Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Mover
New Terascala CEO Butler eyeing new markets for storage vendor
By James M. Connolly
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Steve Butler
CEO, Terascala Inc.
Education: Bachelor of science, computer engineering, University of Rhode Island
Previous position: Manage Soft Corp., Boston
It was a case of closing out a successful exit on one company and getting a whole weekend off before moving on to a new challenge, bringing yet another company to the next level.
Steve Butler made the move to chief executive officer at Avon-based Terascala Inc. a month and a half ago on a Monday, after the final closing papers were signed on the sale of his previous company, ManageSoft Corp. of Boston, which was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Flexera Software.
At Terascala, which produces storage appliances for data-intensive applications, Butler takes over the CEO role, replacing founder Larry Genovesi, who moves into the chief technology officer role. As CTO, Genovesi will work to drive the technology forward. As CEO of his fifth company, Butler is charged with building out a sales, marketing and distribution strategy.
“What I bring to the table is my sales and marketing background. I bring in a strong indirect channel experience, alliance building and business development experience,” said Butler. “The first two and a half years was all about the company getting its first customers. There are about 20 customers but they are pretty significant, including government locations that tend to put equipment into challenging situations. All that has gone well. So now it is time to take the technology into the commercial world.”
A big step into the commercial IT sector for Terascala was the recent announcement of a deal with Dell Inc. The computer maker is pairing Terascala’s Lustre appliance with Dell storage and networking products in the Dell/Terascala HPC Storage Solution for scientific and other high-performance computing environments.
Now, Butler said, his job will involve a lot of customer-facing work. In his first six weeks on the job, he was on the road for four weeks.
Butler’s self-avowed management style mandates that he still be available for meetings. “It’s about consensus building, especially among the senior team. I try to get everyone’s view in, and I really try to get everyone on the same sheet of paper on issue,” he said.
Another target: Bring in more venture money. Terascala, backed by Ascent Venture Partners in a $10 million Series A round, hopes to raise a $10 million Series B round before the end of the year.
Rhode Island native Butler has experience in both the Boston and Silicon Valley markets. Butler worked in California with computer-aided engineering firm Daisy Systems Corp., Quickturn Design Systems and Triquest Design Systems, the latter as CEO, before returning to New England as CEO of Seque Software. Seque sold to Borland Software after Butler left.
As for that weekend between jobs, Butler practically slept it away, getting six hours of sleep per day rather than his usual four.
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