Building on record financial performance by adding world-class executive as company enters next stage of expansion
OTTAWA and BOSTON – April 8, 2014
BTI Systems, an award-winning provider of cloud and metro networking software and systems to content and service providers around the world, today announced the appointment of 25-year global telecommunications industry veteran Colin Doherty as president and chief executive officer. In his new role, he is responsible for all corporate, business and product operations worldwide.
Reinforcing its standing as the leader in cloud networking solutions, Doherty will guide BTI during its next stage of rapid customer and revenue expansion. He assumes BTI’s top executive role from Steve Waszak, who has served as the company’s president and chief executive officer since 2010. Under Waszak’s leadership, BTI enhanced its solutions portfolio, secured top-tier global customer wins and developed a suite of new systems, software and support offerings. Waszak is transitioning from BTI for personal reasons.
“Business and consumer demand for cloud services, mobility and video content is forcing the re-architecting of content and service provider networks – particularly in metro and regional areas, where the most substantial changes are occurring,” said Deepak Sindwani, partner at Bain Capital Ventures and BTI board member. “This is a ‘step-function’ transition and it’s unfolding at unprecedented speed. BTI identified that shift several years ago and moved aggressively to capitalize on it.”
“BTI is experiencing the best growth and performance in the company’s history, delivering category-defining cloud networking solutions to some of the world’s fastest growing, most innovative and most demanding cloud and service provider customers, such as Equinix, Digital Realty, VK and a rapidly expanding list of others,” said Neil Ferris, chairman of BTI’s board. “We’re thrilled Colin is joining as CEO because he has a unique understanding of our market opportunity, the networking software space and top-tier carrier, cloud and data center customers. He brings an excellent track record of scaling growth businesses and we’re very excited that he’ll lead BTI’s next phase of growth.”
During his 25-year career in the global telecommunications industry, Doherty has held a range of customer-facing executive management, operations, business development, sales and marketing roles. He has served in those positions with multinational publicly held leaders and venture-backed startups alike, both in the US and abroad. Notably, he has established a strong profile as a CEO with demonstrable success in the carrier, cloud, enterprise and data center market sectors.
Doherty joins BTI from Arbor Networks. As the company’s first vice president of worldwide sales, he delivered first-to-market security solutions to some of the world’s largest carrier, data center and enterprise networks. Promoted to CEO in 2009, he guided the company through its acquisition by Danaher in 2010 to give it more resources, followed last year by Arbor’s acquisition of Packetloop to expand and differentiate its solutions portfolio. Earlier in his career, he served as CEO of Mangrove Systems and held senior management, sales and operations roles with NMS Communications and Nortel Networks.
“I’m thrilled to be joining BTI at such an exciting time for the company and the market,” Doherty said. “It’s a terrific match with my experience and expertise. I look forward to working with the tremendous team as well as its customers and partners.”
BTI is experiencing strong growth and momentum. Highlights include compound annual revenue growth of 33 percent between 2007 and 2013; more than 40 percent of revenues coming from top-tier content, colocation and service providers; and doubling revenue growth in the Asia-Pacific region. Last year, the company marked an industry first with the announcement of Intelligent Cloud Connect, an open Software Defined Networking (SDN)-enabled converged networking platform now in deployment in cloud and metro networks around the world. Intelligent Cloud Connect uniquely integrates routing and optical scale with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)-based applications and analytics software to allow content, colocation and service providers to scale new cloud services rapidly and cost effectively while simplifying operations and management.
In December, BTI closed a $27 million financing round, bringing to $60 million the amount of growth capital the company has raised since 2011. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, BDC, Covington Capital, GrowthWorks and additional strategic investors.
Doherty’s appointment is the latest addition to BTI’s leadership team. In the past year, the company has added former VMware co-president and current Heroku CEO Tod Nielsen to its board, along with industry veterans Ken Taylor from March Communications as chief financial officer and Tom Nolette from Crossbeam Systems as senior vice president of global operations.
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About BTI Systems
BTI delivers solutions that transform the economics, performance and innovation of global networks through intelligent networking software and systems. Leading content, cloud and service providers choose BTI to drive improved operational efficiencies and profitably deliver high-value services to businesses and consumers around the globe. With more than 380 customers, BTI is headquartered in North America, and operates regional sales, marketing, and R&D centers of excellence throughout the world. For more information, visit www.btisystems.com.
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