Leadership Team

Michael Tso

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder

Jon Ash

Vice President, Worldwide Sales

Jon leads Cloudian’s WW sales and professional services teams. Prior to Cloudian, he led the WW Sales organization at Nexenta, a pioneer in software-defined storage, where he grew the user base from zero to over two thousand customers. Jon has strong experience with direct, OEM and channel sales models and has successfully grown revenue at multiple storage companies both large and small. Jon holds a BSC from Warwick University in the UK.

Carlo Garbagnati

Vice President, Engineering

Carlo Garbagnati leads Cloudian’s global Engineering team, with operations in Silicon Valley, Milan, Tokyo, and Beijing. Prior to Cloudian, he spent 25 years leading R&D organizations at companies ranging from early-stage start-ups to larger industry players such as HDS (now Hitachi Vantara), Pivot3, BlueArc, Quantum and Meridian Data. Carlo has driven the development of hybrid cloud, big data analytics, network-attached storage and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions. Carlo holds an M.S.E.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. from Northrup University in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

Fadel Hamed

Vice President, Customer Success

Fadel Hamed is responsible for strategic and tactical delivery of exceptional customer outcomes for Cloudian. As Vice President of Customer Success, Fadel leads all aspects of global technical support and Cloudian programs to drive a customer success culture. Prior to Joining Cloudian, Fadel was Vice President Customer Success for Siemens Healthineers, covering North America. At Siemens, he was responsible for service operational excellence, service quality, and customer advocacy. While at Siemens, Fadel led a global strategy and practice to leverage machine data analytics for predictive support. Fadel was also senior director at NetApp responsible for customer quality and advocacy where he established corporate programs, metrics and goals focused on customer success. Fadel held progressive leadership roles at Roche, Genentech, Amgen and IBM. Fadel has a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Michael Morgan

Chief Financial Officer

Michael Morgan leads Cloudian’s finance, human resources, adminstration, legal, and operations departments. Morgan brings more than 25 years of experience in managing all aspects of finance and administration for private and publicly held technology companies, building companies from start up through IPO and leading M&A transactions on both the buy and sell sides. Most recently, Morgan served as CFO of Tegile Systems, where he raised several rounds of debt and equity funding, and lead the successful sale of the company to Western Digital. Before Tegile, Morgan was CFO of cloud storage company Panzura, where he established the company’s financial infrastructure and led the company through rapid growth and fundraising. Other prior experience includes finance leadership roles at Model N, Skybox Security, BackWeb Technologies, Talarian Corp. and Enlighten Software Solutions. Morgan began his career at KPMG, LLP, leaving as manager. He is a CPA and holds a BS in Accounting from San Jose State University.

Gary Ogasawara

Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder

Gary Ogasawara is Cloudian’s Chief Technology Officer, responsible for setting the company’s long-term technology vision and direction. Before assuming this role, he was Cloudian’s founding engineering leader. Prior to Cloudian, Gary led the Engineering team at eCentives, a search engine company. He also led the development of real-time commerce and advertising systems at Inktomi, an Internet infrastructure company. Gary holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in uncertainty reasoning and machine learning.

Jon Toor

Chief Marketing Officer

Jon Toor leads Cloudian’s inbound and outbound marketing teams. Prior to Cloudian, Toor served as vice president of digital marketing and demand generation at Brocade. He also served as the vice president of marketing at Xsigo Systems where he led the outbound marketing team, a group he led from company launch until the company acquisition by Oracle. Prior to Xsigo, he served at ONStor as vice president of marketing. Toor holds an MBA, bachelor of science in mechanical engineering, and a bachelor of arts in economics all from Stanford University.

Brian Burns

Vice President, Sales - APAC

Brian Burns leads Cloudian’s efforts in Asia Pacific Including Japan where he is responsible for sales, marketing, and partnering efforts. Brian comes to Cloudian from Hashicorp, where he was General Manager of Japan, and from Hortonworks where he was Regional Vice President of North Asia. He spent his career focused on strategic market entry and expansion in Asia for American technology companies like Cybersource (VISA) and Microsoft. He earned his MBA and BS in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and attended Keio University. Brian is based in Tokyo.

Sean Coughlin

Vice President, Sales - North America

As VP of Sales for North America, Sean is responsible for leading the North American and Federal Sales Teams in accelerating growth and adoption of Cloudian’s Object Storage Software platform. Sean brings over 23 years of technology sales experience directing and managing Regional Sales and Channel and Business Development for companies that include SwiftStack, Nexenta, Xsigo Systems, Softek, Hewlett Packard, and Dot Hill Systems.

Carsten Graf

Vice President, Sales - EMEA

Carsten leads the EMEA sales team at Cloudian. Before Cloudian, he was a Managing Director of Code42, a leading Enterprise Data Protection company, running their Central Europe team. Carsten also worked a long time at Verizon Business, where he was head of the Security sales team. Carsten holds a Bachelor of Administration and Engineering from the Hochschule of Mannheim and MBA from the University of St. Thomas (Texas).

Tetsuaki Goto

Vice President, Technical Support

Laura Kelly

Vice President, Corporate Marketing

As VP of Corporate Marketing at Cloudian, Laura’s team encompasses Creative and Brand, Marketing Ops, Inside Sales, Web, Demand Gen, and Events. With over 20 years of experience in high tech marketing, Laura has covered all facets of the marketing spectrum, driving strategy and execution for a variety of companies in Silicon Valley. Prior to Cloudian, Laura held marketing leadership roles at a startups including Panzura, a multi-cloud data management startup, Axcient, a cloud-based backup and DR startup, and Riverbed, a provider of WAN optimization solutions. Previous companies also include Zone Labs, Exodus Communications, Walt Disney, Miramax, and Warner Brothers.

Larry Meese

Vice President, Products & Solutions

Larry Meese leads Cloudian’s Product & Solutions teams and is responsible for the product management, technology alliances and solutions marketing functions. Prior to Cloudian, Larry held various leadership and management roles spanning professional services, product management, strategic planning, emerging technologies, and the CTO office at Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Limited and Hitachi Vantara. He has over two decades of enterprise storage experience, including 15 years in product management and strategic alliances. Larry holds a BS in Accounting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Master in Management from the University of Phoenix.

Neil Stobart

Vice President, Systems Engineering

Fred Smith

Vice President, OEM Sales

Fred Smith is the Global VP of OEM and Alliance Sales. He has been involved in the evolution of the Software Defined Datacenter from concept to reality – from compute at Sun Microsystems to networking at Xsigo to storage at Nexenta and Cloudian. Prior to Cloudian, Fred headed up the global OEM, Business Development and Alliances team at Nexenta. Prior to Nexenta, Fred held a number of leadership roles in sales and product management at Xsigo Systems (acquired by Oracle) and Sun Microsystems. Fred holds an MBA and Bachelor in Science from Vanderbilt University.