Niel Viljoen
Chief Executive Officer
Niel Viljoen has been active in the computing and networking equipment industry for the past 20 years. Primary areas of focus include IP, ATM, security and system design. Before becoming involved with Netronome Systems on a full-time basis in July 2003, Niel was an active business angel, investing in, amongst others, Nujira, Intune and Azuro. He serves on the board of Nujira.
Between 2000 and 2001, Niel was CTO of the Marconi group. Niel joined Marconi after the acquisition of FORE Systems, where he was part of the management team. At FORE, Niel's roles included Senior VP & GM of the Service Provider Division, Senior VP Product Marketing, VP Engineering, Senior Director and GM of the Adapter group. Niel joined FORE through the acquisition of Nemesys Ltd, where he was the CEO. Nemesys developed a range of video encoding devices for broadband networks. Prior to that, Niel developed and created a number of businesses, developing products like network security devices and large distributed memory processor complexes.
Niel has received a number of industry awards. He attended the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and Cambridge University in the UK.
Jim Finnegan
Senior Vice President, Silicon Engineering
Jim Finnegan has over 20 years of senior management experience in the networks and communications business. His career has included extended periods based in Ireland, the UK and Santa Clara, CA, where he now resides.
Jim has had a career-long commitment to the development of an engineering culture that expects first-pass success using disciplined software and silicon development methodologies. This focus has most recently been demonstrated in Intel Corporation where he oversaw the development of Intel’s entire portfolio of network processors, several of which went into production in first-pass silicon. Jim began his career at Miles-33 in the UK and subsequently worked in senior engineering and management positions with Digital Equipment Corporation, Tellabs and Racal Data Group. Following Racal, he built the engineering organization at Basis Communications and was a key member of the executive team that negotiated the acquisition of Basis by Intel Corporation in 2000. At Intel, Jim became General Manager of both the Network Processor Division and the Communication Infrastructure Group’s Technology Office.
Jim has Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Electronic Engineering from The Queens University, Belfast.
Mike Benson
Senior Vice President, Platform Engineering
Mike has more than 20 years experience in the design and architecture of networking products for both service provider and enterprise networks. He has successfully led teams focused on advanced networking systems development and component design. His systems design experience includes hybrid ATM/Ethernet switches, packet over SONET products, network processors, ATM network interface cards, multiservice SONET-based transport products and cellular infrastructure equipment. His component design experience includes 10+ ASICs in the areas of signal processing, bus interface designs including PCI, ATM SARs, network processors, queuing devices and other networking system ASICs.
Mike has held positions as director of engineering at Mangrove Systems, as founder of Inviscid Networks (a network processor startup), as both systems architect and director of hardware engineering at FORE Systems’ Broadband Routing and Switching Division, and as Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs (now Lucent). He was an early member of FORE Systems’ engineering team and was the first US-based employee of Netronome Systems.
Mike holds several patents in the areas of packet networking and network interface card design and has presented at numerous industry events. Mike received an M.S. degree from Stanford University and graduated summa cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.
Gary Brunner
Senior Vice President, Finance & Operations
Gary has over 22 years of senior financial and operational management experience in both private and public companies. This experience includes helping a company grow from an early stage start-up to an industry leader with annual revenue in excess of $600 million. His background includes an Initial Public Offering, a successful follow-on public stock offering, acquisitions of more than ten smaller companies, sale of private and public companies and expansion into international markets.
Prior to joining Netronome, Gary was the Vice President of Finance at Precise Technology Inc., which was recently acquired by Rexam PLC in 2005. Prior to that, he was a Partner at G4 Partners LLC from 2000 through 2002. From 1993 through 1999, Gary was Vice President, Treasurer and Corporate Controller at FORE Systems Inc. which was sold to Marconi Group in 1999. From 1984 through 1992, he held various senior financial positions at public and private companies. He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Robert Morris University.
Jarrod Siket
Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Jarrod brings 18 years of experience in the data and telecommunications industry to Netronome Systems, including product management, strategic planning, sales, business development and executive management. In his current role, Jarrod is responsible for the product management, product marketing and marketing communications for Netronome’s entire product line of network flow processors, network flow engine acceleration cards and flow management software.
Prior to joining Netronome, Jarrod spent two years as Vice President of Marketing at Tollgrade Communications, a leading supplier of hardware and software network and service assurance solutions for global telecommunications and cable broadband service providers that offer VoIP, IPTV and IP VPN services over Ethernet and IP networks. Jarrod also spent ten years at FORE Systems, subsequently acquired by Marconi Communications, as a senior director of product management and, later, strategic planning, where he directed the companies’ product planning and marketing efforts for Ethernet and IP solutions targeting enterprise networks, services providers and mission-critical government networks.
Jarrod has been an active participant in the evolution of the networking industry. He served for three terms (2000-2005) as the vice chairman of the IP/MPLS Forum technical committee; has been a regular featured speaker at industry events; served as an advisory board member for other companies and industry consortiums; and has authored numerous publications on Ethernet and IP product, technology, service and application trends in high-speed, next-generation networking.
Jarrod holds an MBA from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh and a BS in Information and Decision Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.
LL Cheok
President, Asia-Pacific Operations
Lay Leng Cheok (LL) has over 20 years of business, R&D and senior management experience in the electronics industry. He was the President of Flexcomm Limited, a networking and communications system solutions developer with offices in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia. Prior to his tenure at Flexcomm, LL was General Manager of Asia Operations, Communications Infrastructure Group (CIG) at Intel Corporation, where he managed over $550M business with development centers across Asia, focusing on Intel IXA™ products and Embedded Intel Architecture platforms for the communications and embedded market segments. From 2003 to mid-2004, LL was also responsible for CIG’s Shannon Business Center, Ireland.
LL has worked as a design engineer for the Intel x86 microprocessors and MCS-51 microcontrollers, where he later co-led the development of Intel MCS®251 architectures. He was a member of the Intel team that developed USB v1.0 and a co-manager responsible for enabling worldwide peripheral vendors adopting USB technology. LL helped set up Intel Malaysia’s first chip design center in 1991 for microcontroller designs and initiated the second design center for low- and mid-range Intel IXP network processor design in 2003.
LL has degrees in Computer Technology & Electronics from University of Science Malaysia, where he also did post-graduate research in device physics. He attained an MBA from Nottingham Trent University, UK and holds one US patent related to USB technology.