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Pliant Technology Appoints New CEOMar 24, 2011 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- Pliant Technology announced the retirement of CEO Amyl Ahola, who will remain on the company's Board of Directors. The company has named Richard Wilmer as the new CEO. As the company's first CEO, Ahola played a leadership role in successfully guiding the company strategy and fund raising efforts. Under Ahola's direction and management, Pliant released its first family of high-performance, high-reliability single level cell (SLC) and multi-level cell (MLC) Lightning Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs). Pliant Lightning EFDs are based on a controller design and software architecture that delivers dramatic I/O performance and reliability improvements over existing solid state drive (SSD) technology under demanding enterprise workloads. The drives also offer exponentially higher performance and lower energy consumption than traditional high performance hard drives. In addition, Lightning EFDs fit into existing infrastructures without requiring changes to current storage management solutions. Pliant has secured several OEM partnerships with storage industry leaders, including Dell, LSI and Teradata, and has helped solutions partners develop infrastructures and achieve performance levels not possible with traditional storage devices. The company has also been recognized with several industry awards including the 2010 Gartner Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies, the 2009 Red Herring North America 100 Award and the 2009 Network Products Guide Hot Company Award. "Amyl's leadership, experience and innovative vision have enabled Pliant to grow tremendously over the past four years," said Jim McCoy, chairman of the board, Pliant Technology. "The company is now in an ideal position to address the rapidly growing demand for more efficient storage solutions across the globe." Richard Wilmer brings more than 25 years of industry experience to Pliant, significant experience in managing businesses, and knowledge of the needs and requirements of OEMs, channel solutions partners and enterprise IT organizations. Prior to Pliant, Wilmer served as COO and acting CFO for Santur Corp., and previously as its VP of global operations. Wilmer also served as VP of business operations and VP of engineering at Aruba Networks, and has held several executive management positions at Seagate, Maxtor, 2Wire, Procket Networks, and Terastor. "Richard Wilmer's blue chip industry experience allows for a seamless transition of the CEO role," said McCoy, "His positive management style, technical acumen and strategic wherewithal provides him with the skills necessary to continue to drive Pliant's rapid growth." More Information: www.plianttechnology.com ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) |