Management Team
Ken Gardner
Executive Chairman
Kenneth Gardner is a software industry veteran with more than 35 years in the enterprise software industry. He is currently the Founder and Executive Chairman of SOASTA, Inc. SOASTA has harnessed the power of cloud computing to become the leading provider of cloud testing, which businesses use to test the real-world performance of their web applications. From 2002 until June 2005, he was the Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Istante Software (originally Iteration Software) which was sold to Oracle Corporation in December 2004.
Prior to founding Istante, Mr. Gardner co-founded Sagent, a business intelligence software company, in June 1995, and served as the company’s President and CEO through the company’s 1999 IPO on NASDAQ. Prior to Sagent, Mr. Gardner was Vice President of Products at Borland International from March 1994 to March 1995. Previously, he was President, CEO and a Founder of ReportSmith, Inc., from February 1992 until the company was purchased by Borland in 1994. From 1988 to 1991, Mr. Gardner was President, CEO and Founder of Viewpoint Systems. From 1985 to 1988 he was the Vice President of Technology at Tesseract. From 1978 to 1985 he held various research and development positions at Tymshare.
Mr. Gardner has been a board member at each of his own startups and has served as a board member at Commerce One, Kabira, DataSage, Everdream and The Application Group. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Accept Software.
Mr. Gardner is a 1972 graduate of the University of Louisville and holds a BS degree in Finance. In 2000, he was named an Alumni Fellow of the University of Louisville College of Business. Mr. Gardner holds many patents for inventions in business intelligence and real-time analytics.
Tom Lounibos
President and CEO
Tom Lounibos, CEO for SOASTA, brings more than 30 years of experience building early stage software companies, leading two companies to successful IPO’s. Tom is a regular speaker at both Cloud and testing events, and has become a leading advocate in using the Cloud to empower individuals and accelerate changes in how applications are built, tested and deployed. Most recently, Tom served as President and CEO of Kenamea. Prior to Kenamea, he was CEO of Dorado Corporation, a financial services software provider. Previous to Dorado, he was EVP of Sagent Technology through its 1999 IPO, entrepreneur-in-residence at Crosspoint Venture Partners, and held executive positions at Digitalk Corporation, Knowledgeware (KWI) and Encore Financial Services. Tom also serves on several boards in the Silicon Valley.
Dan FitzSimons
Senior Vice President Worldwide Sales
Dan FitzSimons, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Soasta, brings 20 years of global enterprise & start-up sales leadership experience in the technology sector. Prior to Soasta, Dan was the Chief Revenue Officer for Kyte, a leading media SaaS platform, where he led overall revenue generation and global customer acquisition efforts. Kyte was acquired by Kit Digital (Nasdaq: KITD). Before Kyte, Dan served as Vice President of North America Sales for Limelight Networks, where he led their transition from an inside sales based organization into a field based operation, helping the company reorganize to focus on the largest brands on the internet. Dan’s efforts contributed to a more than 100 percent increase in revenue over the course of 2007-2009. Prior to Limelight, Dan led regional sales efforts for Symantec in the enterprise software market, delivering significant growth in the company’s roster of Fortune 1000 customers. Dan also held several sales and operational leadership roles across the U.S., Europe and Latin America with Gartner, Inc. During Dan’s tenure at Gartner, the firm saw annual revenue grow from $400 million to $1 billion. Dan holds a bachelors degree in political science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Dave Murphy
Senior Vice President of Delivery
Dave Murphy, Vice President of Delivery for SOASTA, has enjoyed a varied career as a Silicon Valley executive with high tech hardware, software and distribution companies. Prior to SOASTA, Dave was Vice President of Professional Services at TIBCO Software. Pre-revenue startups include Cybrant, which was acquired by Blue Martini (now Escalate Retail) in 2002, and Businessland, where Dave served in a variety of management roles as sales grew to over $1.4B. With over 25 years of experience, Dave has led pre-sales and professional services teams at Baan and Borland, and has written articles and been a featured speaker at industry events on topics ranging from networking and communications to software development best practices.
Betsy Zikakis
Senior Vice President of Marketing
Betsy Zikakis, Vice President of Marketing, brings years of experience in both marketing and product development to SOASTA. Most recently, as the head of marketing at RightScale, Betsy established the company’s first marketing organization and helped create RightScale’s strong leadership position in the burgeoning cloud computing market. Prior to RightScale, Betsy was Senior Vice President of Marketing at Workscape, Avaki, and Internet ad network Engage where she drove significant awareness and revenue growth through re-branding, strategic product direction, and aggressive, global lead generation programs. Earlier in her career, she served as an IT strategy consultant at Arthur D. Little and member of the software engineering staff at Hewlett Packard and Bell Labs. She holds an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business Administration and a BS in Computer Science with honors from North Carolina State University.
Brad Johnson
VP Product and Channel Marketing
Brad Johnson, Vice President Product and Channel Marketing for SOASTA, brings over 15 years of IT experience spanning development, operations, strategic alliances and sales with a passion for helping global customers continually improve the quality and value of their IT projects. Prior to Soasta, he led Product Marketing for Borland Software’s quality business, driving 36% annual growth. Prior to Borland, Brad led Product Marketing for Mercury Interactive’s core testing business leading up to Mercury’ acquisition by Hewlett Packard and managed strategic global partnerships. Before Mercury, Brad held senior Business Development and Product Management roles with Compuware Corporation, started and ran a technical services company, and co-founded a successful Silicon Valley executive recruiting firm. Brad is a graduate of the University of Phoenix with a Bachelors Degree in Management Information Systems.
Tal Broda
Vice President of Engineering
Tal Broda, Vice President of Engineering, brings over 10 years of development and engineering experience to SOASTA, Inc. with exceptional expertise in defining technology strategy and developing software architecture. Most recently, Tal was the Director of Development for Oracle’s Business Activity Monitoring (Oracle BAM) engineering team. In this role was responsible for the architecture and development schedule of the BAM product line, determining the go-to-market strategy, and evangelizing it to customers. His efforts increased the customer base by twelve-fold in one year. He also drove the acquisition of Sunopsis, Oracle’s next generation ETL tool and delivered its integration to the BAM product line in one month’s time. Prior to Oracle, Tal served in a number of management roles for Istante Software, Inc., moving from Lead Engineer to Server Architect to Chief Architect in his first year. He was ultimately responsible for the entire product architecture and drove the acquisition of Istante by PeopleSoft (Oracle) from the technical evaluation perspective. Tal has also held senior engineering positions at NewChannel and Elemental Software in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Tal has four patents pending and one granted in the area of real-time business intelligence and analytics. Tal holds a B.A. in Computer Science from the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo in Tel-Aviv, Israel, an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York City, with honors.
