Position: Director, Strategy and Business Development

Smart Solutions for Distributed Networks
Remote monitoring, access and control from anywhere anytime

The Company

Opengear (www.opengear.com) is a profitable, double-digit annual growth technology provider that enables technical staff to provision, maintain and repair infrastructure from anywhere at any time, as if they were physically present, drastically reducing both operational costs and the risk of downtime.

Opengear solutions deliver true out-of-band management, always-available wired and wireless secure remote access, proactive monitoring and automated response capabilities.

Opengear designs, manufactures, and delivers remote infrastructure management solutions. It offers data center infrastructure management solutions, such as console server solutions that provide secure in-band and out-of-band access to manage data centers and colocation sites; manage serial, USB, and network console ports; monitor environment; control UPS systems and PDUs; and alert and auto respond. The company also provides remote site management solutions that allow users to monitor, access, and control various infrastructure, such as applications and computers at the local or remote site; networking equipment, security cameras, and power supplies; and down to door sensors, and temperature and digital I/O. In addition, it offers environmental monitoring and alerting solutions for managing changes in environmental conditions in computer rooms and remote sites; and central management solutions, including virtual and physical appliances to securely manage distributed infrastructure, and access locations without public IP. The company sells its products through its online stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and internationally; and distributors worldwide. Opengear, Inc. was founded in 2004 in Brisbane, Australia and has operations in Sandy, Utah, and sales offices in Slough, United Kingdom. Currently, R&D operations remain based primarily in Brisbane, Australia.

The Position

The Director, Strategy and Business Development will spearhead business development initiatives which identify market, technology and partnership opportunities in infrastructure management that match Opengear’s strengths, work internally with the executive, product and marketing teams to refine the company’s strategic direction, and translate this direction into growth actions that create long-term value.

Highlights of the new Director, Strategy and Business Development’s track record and experience will include the following:

Detail of Responsibilities

The Director, Strategy and Business Development will develop and implement growth strategies for Opengear, with responsibilities including:

• Working with key customers and prospects to understand their current and future needs and identify problems and new opportunities
• Connecting with analysts to understand and anticipate market and technology trends
• Monitoring competitor strategies to identify and profile key gaps
• Driving the development and management of strategic industry partnerships to accelerate the company’s market growth and leadership
• Developing Market Requirements Documents (MRDs) with a high-level definition of the problems to be solved, the value proposition for the customer, the business case and paths to market
• Acting as an internal and external evangelist for the company’s unique abilities to deliver value to the market

Requirements

• 5+ years of product strategy, and partner development experience
• Solid technical background in data centers or networking (MS/BS an advantage)
• Experience working in distributed teams spanning multiple continents is mandatory
• Ability to work independently and in a team environment
• Detail oriented with excellent organization and planning skills
• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Strong desire to make a difference and a willingness to roll up your sleeves and get things done

GENERAL

Finally, this individual should have as many as possible of the traits required to succeed in any Director, Strategy and Business Development position:

• High levels of intelligence, analytical strength and conceptual ability.
• The ability, and willingness, to set and communicate demanding standards for professional staff and to hold people accountable for their performance; at the same time, sensitivity to, and insight into individuals’ capabilities and development needs.
• Decisiveness when necessary, coupled with a willingness to seek input and build consensus as much as possible.
• Unquestioned honesty and integrity; also, loyalty to colleagues and to the organization, and the ability to inspire loyalty. This person should have the ability to identify and focus on the Company’s best interests, rather than the agenda of any individual or group within the firm.
• A very high level of energy and commitment, combined with enthusiasm and a positive attitude.
• Excellent writing and speaking skills; this individual must be able to communicate complex ideas and information clearly and concisely.
• Outstanding planning and organization skills.
• Good strategic instincts and long-term vision; the ability to address both big-picture issues and detailed, day-to-day management concerns.
• In general, the business and personal skills, and the absolute commitment, required to make a major contribution to The Company during the coming years.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The following diagram illustrates the intersection of competencies critical in the Director, Strategy and Business Development position:

The Market Opportunity

Opengear, across the last decade, has evolved its products and services, addressing bigger companies and larger markets in each successive year.

Opengear’s initial target was on Fortune 100,000. Not as small as SMBs but an average F100,000 company that has 377 workers, 3-6 offices and 2-3 IT administration staff. In 2007 only 10% of these companies used packaged management solutions, the other 90% mainly preferring manual processes. This is contrasted to 75% of Fortune 1000 businesses rely on network management systems. As Opengear added products including SDTConnector, embedded Nagios, and added Solarwind with integration as remote technology monitoring via MSPs. Opengear’s new Fortune 1000 customers like Regus and Avis have very different needs regarding scalability and interoperability.

Opengear customer targets all have mission critical infrastructure operating in central (data center) and remote (branch office, data closet, remote site) installation environments. Current targets include:

• Hosting, Cloud Providers & ISP
• Network Managed Service Provider
• Distributed & Multinational Enterprise (Financial, Broadcast, Government, Military & Defense, Telco & Cellco)
• Typical organizational roles for purchasing is responsible for the operation of a variety of business critical infrastructure from a variety of vendors (Network Engineer, IT Security Analyst, Systems Administrator, IT Manager, CIO)

Products
Opengear technology consists of a series of smart appliances deployed in state of the art data centers, distributed wiring closets and harsh remote environments worldwide, alongside critical IT, communications, network and power infrastructure.

Data Center Solutions
High density in- and out-of-band infrastructure management for manned and lights-out data centers and co-location sites.

• Highly available, highly secure
• More cost effective, efficient and feature rich

Remote Location Solutions
Opengear location solutions create the ability to monitor IT, network, power & environment. Secure remote control is possible even when the network is down. Automatically detect & repair issues. With the integrated 3G or LTE, Opengear solutions extend 5 nines uptime to distributed sites.

Staff

The total Opengear team is currently approximately 60.

Financial Backing

Opengear has raised very little capital since 2004, preferring to bootstrap the company and retain the majority of enterprise value for the executive team and a select few angel investors, including David Martirano, General Partner of Point Judith Ventures in the US, and John McNulty, former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Secure Computing Corporation, a NASDAQ company acquired in November 2008 by McAfee Corporation.

Compensation

Compensation is competitive with the marketplace. In a performance-based environment, this will include base salary, bonus structure based on qualitative and quantitative metrics, and equity stakeholder position.

Articles of Interest and further resources

Opengear Named “Cool Vendor” by Gartner
http://mw.newsblaze.com/story/2013050706004400019.mwir/topstory.html

Key Executive Management Team & Board Directors

For complete list see, http://opengear.com/management-team

Resume and cover letter should be posted to the BSG website. No phone calls please.