Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Last FalconStor CEO survived just six weeks before being replaced

New CFO too as data protection firm refuses to give in

+Comment It's all change at FalconStor, which has a new CEO and CFO just six weeks after the last chief exec was appointed.

Todd Oseth became CEO in June, replacing Gary Quinn. His interim CFO was finance EVP Dan Murale.

Now Oseth is out, moving sideways to become a strategic industry advisor, and in comes Todd Brooks as CEO and Patrick McClain as his CFO.

Brookes is an operating partner at Razorhorse Capital and was COO for Aurea Software from 2012 to 2016. Before that he was CEO for Update Software, a publicly traded company in Europe. McClain also has Aurea Software experience, being its CFO with previous experience in the role at other companies.

Murale has resigned to pursue other opportunities with a nod of thanks from the board and best wishes for his future.

Comment

The background to this is that once Oseth got a good look at what needed doing, he must have found it was much more than, and different from, what he'd expected.

He went to the board, which had hired him, and gave it the bad news. They could have sold the company – plenty of bottom feeders were circling around, we have been told. But they decided to bite the bullet and turn the company around, with two things in mind. They figured its IP was worth more than people realised, and the finances were not too bad.

A high cash burn rate had been stemmed and although the second quarter results showed a loss, there was money in the bank giving them headroom for bringing in a new CEO and CFO to punch through the changes needed to get FalconStor properly stabilised and growing again.

This is the backstory we have been told. The changes can't be sugar-coated, we hear, but they can be justified as the hiring of two turnaround specialists.

The storage software market is facing a hurricane of changes as the old legacy IP array and virtual tape library world has given way to separate array software and data management trends. Array software has to cope with SSDs, NVMe, Optane, object storage, containerisation, hyperconverged systems and backend cloud storage.

Data management software has splintered into myriad separate and huge business threads in their own right, such as data protection, disaster recovery, archiving, analytics, copy data management, replication, primary and secondary data management metadata-based abstraction layers, hybrid on-premises and public cloud storage, governance, file sync and share and more.

There is also a new superset data management application layer emerging, which combines there separate threads into a developing software platform.

The Brookes-McClain partnership will have to plot a strategy for FalconStor's products and IP to have valid roles in this seething storage software stew. That's going to need, we think, some swift paring down of products and organisational processes and the development of a realistic roadmap for the future. It's going to be more FalconStorm than FalconStor for a while. ®

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like