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Violin welcomes new grand master flash flogger

Steven Rose to help shift upstart's arrays in EMEA, Latin America

Flash array startup Violin Memory has hired Steven Rose to head up both the EMEA and Latin America operations.

Rose's appointment was announced on 16 May, and he will, Violin said, "lead regional market awareness [and] go-to-market strategies".

Rose comes to Violin from Informatica, where he was the SVP for EMEA and LATAM. Before that he ran EMEA and APAC for CommVault through its IPO and for six years afterwards.

Meanwhile, Garry Veale, the man at the top of Violin Memory's EMEA management stack, looks to have played his last tune at the company, at least according to chatty channel people. We have yet to obtain confirmation from Violin, however (see update below).

The flash array startup did confirm that Rose, former Informatica senior veep for EMEA and Latin America, had joined the business to lead those regions for Violin.

"The storage industry is shifting monumentally and flash is at the centre of this shift," said Rose in a canned statement that also trumpeted his arrival at the vendor.

But the missive failed to acknowledge Veale.

Sources told The Channel that Veale, who joined Violin Memory in from HP in July 2011, where he had been veep and GM for the StorageWorks division for EMEA, is now on gardening leave.

One source suggested channel conflict was at the root of his exit, claiming some partner-initiated deals had been taken direct and this had led to mistrust among some partners.

"There is no channel buy-in because they didn't support the channel," said one particularly harsh critic.

Mark Walker, UK country manager at Violin distributor Commtech Solutions, said Violin reserved the right to sell directly to global accounts or take major opportunities direct, but said conflict was not systemic.

He said he was "sorry" to see Veale leave the role as he had "established Violin Memory in EMEA" but added that Rose was a "channel-friendly guy" who had worked well with partners while an exec at Commvault.

Updated A Violin spokesman has been in touch to confirm that Veale "has decided to leave the company by mutual agreement to pursue other interests outside the company. ®

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