SolarFlare Communications Names Russell R. Stern President and Chief Executive Officer
Irvine, Calif., January 6, 2004 –SolarFlare Communications Inc., a
developer of high-performance semiconductor products for physical layer
connectivity and the leader in 10 Gbit/s Ethernet over copper development, has appointed Russell R. Stern,
48, as President and Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Stern succeeds Ron Cates, SolarFlare’s Vice President of Marketing,
who served as interim CEO for the past six months.
“We are pleased to welcome Russell to Solarflare”, said
Ron Cates, “he has exhibited a solid track record of leadership, and has a deep
understanding of product development and company building”.
“Ron has done an excellent job as interim CEO and leading
the successful search process”, said George Zimmerman, SolarFlare’s founder and
CTO, “We are all looking forward to working with Russell. His experience in manufacturing
operations, product development, strategy and organizational development will
benefit our shareholders and our future customers.”
Mr. Stern has over 25
years of experience in the electronics industry and was most recently President
and CEO at JNI Corporation (was Nasdaq:JNIC) in San Diego, California, where he
orchestrated a successful turnaround and sale to industry leader AMCC (Nasdaq:AMCC). Prior to JNI, Russell served
as General Manager and COO at Quantum Corporation (NYSE:DSS) and CEO at
Escrow.com. Prior to that, and for over
13 years, Russell held a number of increasingly responsible positions in the
disc drive industry including five years at Western Digital Corporation (Nasdaq:WDC) in Irvine, CA where he served as Co-Chief Operating Officer. He
has also been with Seagate Technology (Nasdaq:STX) and Adaptec (Nasdaq:ADPT). Russell started his career at IBM (NYSE:IBM) after obtaining his
Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Rochester Institute
of Technology in Rochester, NY.
SolarFlare Communications is a
developer of high-performance semiconductor solutions for system connectivity.
SolarFlare’s communications architectures and algorithms improve data rates,
costs, and distances and enable existing networks to migrate to next generation
speeds without replacing the physical infrastructure. The company’s products enable enterprises to migrate local area
networks (LANs) to next generation speeds without costly upgrades to the
infrastructure. SolarFlare’s first
products address the operation of Ethernet at
10Gbps over installed structured copper wiring (Cat 5e or better) in the
enterprise.
SolarFlare is headquartered in Irvine, California, and may be contacted at 1-949-581-6830 or at info@solarflare.com. Additional company information is available at www.solarflare.com.