Aerohive Networks Adds SVP of Worldwide Sales and VP of Operations to Executive Team to Manage Rapid Company Growth

Sunnyvale, Calif. —October 8, 2012 — Aerohive Networks, the leader in controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud-enabled networking, today announced that it is expanding its management team to support the company’s rapid growth in the hot cloud-enabled enterprise Wi-Fi space. Dean Hickman-Smith, formerly senior vice president of worldwide sales at Proofpoint, will be taking on the same role at Aerohive, while Raphaël Gernez will serve as vice president of operations, coming from his role as vice president of global sourcing and purchasing at SunPower.

News Facts

  • Dean Hickman-Smith takes on his position as senior vice president of worldwide sales for Aerohive with years of success multiplying sales for technology companies. He joins from data protection solutions provider Proofpoint. Prior to Proofpoint, he led worldwide sales for ConSentry Networks, Inc.
     
  • Dean has also overseen global sales teams at Juniper Networks and NetScreen where he drove 100 percent year-over-year growth. Dean also co-founded Congress Communications where he helped technology start-ups in Europe accelerate sales. He is a former commissioned officer in the UK Royal Air Force.
     
  • Raphaël Gernez brings more than 20 years of supply chain experience to his role as vice president of operations at Aerohive. He has led businesses across a wide range of sectors, including consumer electronics and solar industries.
     
  • Prior to Aerohive, Raphaël was vice president of global sourcing and purchasing at SunPower, where he and his team achieved 35 percent cost reduction on components. As vice president of product supply chain at Plastic Logic, Raphaël reduced the cost of goods sold (COGS) by 30 percent by implementing and managing outsourcing business models in China and Taiwan. Prior to Plastic Logic, Raphaël spent 19 years at Hewlett-Packard where he was general manager of the HP Flat Panel TV global business unit, growing the business from zero to $120M revenue.
     
  • These two new executives will help to shape strategy and scale Aerohive as the company continues to quickly grow market share and move into industry leadership. Aerohive recently secured 22.5 million in Mezzanine Equity financing and has almost tripled its customer base in the past year to over 5000 customers. The company expects to surpass an annualized sales run rate of $100M before the end of 2012. 

Comments

“The changing technology environment has created an explosive demand for Aerohive’s enterprise networking solutions,” said David Flynn, chief executive officer, Aerohive Networks. “We’re excited to welcome Dean Hickman-Smith as SVP of worldwide sales and Raphaël Gernez as VP of operations. Both are the best of the best and have decades of experience in leading technology companies to success. These two will provide us with invaluable insight, direction and execution as we continue to build on Aerohive’s market leadership.” 

About Aerohive Networks
People want to work anywhere; on any device, and IT needs to enable them -- without drowning in complexity or compromising on security, performance, reliability or cost. Aerohive's mission is to Simpli-Fi these enterprise access networks with a cloud-enabled, self-organizing, service-aware, identity-based infrastructure that includes innovative Wi-Fi, VPN, branch routing and switching solutions.

Aerohive was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. The company's investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Northern Light Venture Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). For more information, please visit www.aerohive.com, call us at 408-510-6100, follow us on Twitter @Aerohive, subscribe to our blog or become a fan on our Facebook page.

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