GNi Names Alan Etterman New CEO

GNi, a leading provider of IaaS hosting solutions, today announced the appointment of Alan “Al” Etterman as the company’s new chief executive officer. A 25-year veteran of the technology industry, Etterman has a proven ability to grow organizations, drive sales and generate revenue.

“GNi is firmly established in the market with a clear growth trajectory, so it’s the right time to make a major push to take the company to the next level,” said Doug Hickey, managing director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and a GNi board member. “Al combines a very long and successful management career with deep knowledge of infrastructure technologies, making him the perfect choice to lead GNi at this time.”

Etterman has a strong foundation in IT operations and infrastructure technologies. He has held executive positions in high-growth companies in both the software and hardware manufacturing industries.  Most recently, Etterman was the executive vice president and chief administrative officer at JDSU, a diversified technology company. Prior to JDSU, he was the senior vice president of corporate infrastructure and chief information officer at Openwave Systems.

From 1993 to 2001, Etterman held leadership positions at Cisco Systems. At Cisco, he served as the senior director of global communications and technology services, leading the implementation of the world’s first large-scale VoIP communications systems. During this period, he was also responsible for leading Cisco’s internal Networking, Information Security and Engineering Computing Services organizations. He created Cisco’s Cisco On Cisco program, which successfully deployed Cisco’s emerging technologies in a production environment. Etterman has also held management positions at 3Com Corporation, IBM, InteCom and GTE Automatic Electric.  He holds CIO Advisory Board positions for Panorama Capital, newScale and Telwares, Inc.

“GNi has the right technology at the right time, and we need to prepare for an extended period of accelerated growth as the combination of the economy and our proven infrastructure drive more and more companies to rely on our platform to offer new products and services,” said Etterman “We will be moving quickly to expand our executive team and make targeted investments to ensure we continue to offer not only the most reliable and secure infrastructure, but also the best deployment experience for our clients.”

About GNi

GNi is the leading dedicated hosting provider for more than 200 companies in online games, Software-as-a-Service, Web 2.0, and Online Digital Media. GNi’s infrastructure supports more than 12.8 million registered users, 425,000 concurrent connected users at peak capacity, and more than 27 online game titles. GNi delivers rapid scalability with uncompromised performance. GNi solutions thrive in the most demanding online environments and offer a variety of smart systems including rapid on-boarding and deployment. GNi is headquartered in San Jose, California, with infrastructure facilities and support offices located across the globe. For more information please visit www.gni.com.

Francine Martel
GNi (408) 850.3663
fmartel [at] gni [dot] com