Overland Storage gets new head marketeer

Recovering data protection vendor Overland Storage has recruited a new worldwide sales and marketing VP. The previous one, Ravi Pendekanti, is moving across to look after business development.

Eric Kelly became Overland's CEO in January. He had been instrumental in persuading Overland to buy the Snap low-end NAS business from Adaptec, a business which he had started with a buyout from Quantum a few years before. Snap was the volume leader in the NAS market with its appliances, and Kelly reckons there is scope for a possible repeat of that.

The incoming world-wide VP for sales and marketing is Jillian Mansolf. She has an interesting background, having been recruited from Data Robotics, the Drobo people, where sales growth has been impressive. She was SVP for sales and marketing there and has been persuaded to move from Drobo-land, where the skies are bright and blue, to Overland where the skies are damp, grey, overcast and misty. Kelly must have persuaded her that Overland's skies are lightening.

Ravi Pendekanti, recruited to be Overland's sales and marketing VP in April 2008, just fifteen months ago, becomes VP for business development, where he will focus on solutions marketing. He will be aiming for a repeat of Overland's success with its video surveillance system work, which twins Overland's Snap server with video surveillance gear.

North EMEA sales and marketing director David Spate says this is a strengthening and broadening of Overland's business development, marketing and sales capabilities.

Mansolf gets access to a share purchase inducement programme, as does Andy Walsky, recently recruited to head up EMEA sales.

If these appointments deliver the goods, then the skies over Overland could brighten with patches of blue, and hopefully see higher sales and a return to profitability. ®