Company Overview

DataGardens changes the way businesses provide IT services across multi-site data center environments. Its products reduce the cost of IT provisioning and administration, while increasing productivity, utilization, and resiliency. DataGardens software systems extend conventional virtualization services including virtual machine migration, high availability, and load balancing, so they can be leveraged across multiple distributed sites. This unique capability enables DataGardens to offer solutions for remote IT provisioning, multi-site resource sharing, business continuity, and consolidated multi-site backup. Based in Edmonton, Canada, DataGardens is a privately funded company.

Based in Edmonton, Canada, DataGardens is a privately funded company.

Executive Management

Geoff Hayward, President and CEO.
Geoff Hayward has served as President and CEO of DataGardens since 2007 when he founded the company. Prior to this, Geoff served as President of Newance Solutions, a business and technology development company headquartered in Edmonton, Canada. While at Newance, Geoff helped his clients forge partnerships with major software and hardware system vendors such as VMware, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Google, and Juniper. Before Newance, Geoff served as Director of Product Management with the New Ventures Division of Platform Computing Inc.. While at Platform, Geoff led development of a new product, Enterprise Grid Orchestrator (EGO), through to launch and early customer adoption. Before joining Platform, Geoff held several leadership positions over the course of his six years at YottaYotta Inc. In particular, he led an advanced business and technology development team that developed and sold the world's first Gbps wide area storage network system. Geoff holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Alberta and has nine awarded patents with two additional patents pending.

Reg Joseph, Vice President Finance and Operations.
Before joining DataGardens, Reg was an equity research associate analyst with Leerink Swann & Co., where he was involved with the initiations on such companies as Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. Helicos BioSciences, Sequenom Inc., and Applied Biosystems. In 2002, Reg joined Invitrogen and served in a variety of roles with his most recent being the business area manager responsible for Invitrogen's bioproduction segment ($50MM P&L) with an emphasis on designing novel products and services targeted to the early stage process development market. Reg holds a B.Sc. in Physiology and an MBA in Finance from the University of Saskatchewan.

Rob Handlovsky, Vice President of Sales.
Prior to joining DataGardens, Rob was Director of Marketing at YottaYotta Inc., where he was responsible for marketing, managing key channel partners, direct sales activities in selected target markets, and strategic investment. Before this, Rob was the Director of Business Development at RightsMarket Inc., where he was responsible for building a revenue generating user base, developing channel partners, and managing sales, marketing, and systems engineering. Prior to RightsMarket, Rob held various marketing, product management, and sales positions at HARBOR Systems Inc., including Hitachi Data Systems Channel Manager, a position Rob took ownership of following the acquisition of HARBOR Systems by Beta Systems Software AG. Rob holds a B.Comm with specializations in Operations and Marketing from the University of Calgary.

Ian Hardman, Director of Software Engineering.
Prior to working with DataGardens, Ian was a Software Architect with Intuit Canada. During his 12 year tenure at Intuit, Ian held a number of software development positions and contributed to multiple releases of QuickBooks and QuickTax. Ian has a M.Sc. degree in Computing Science from Imperial College, London, and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Alberta.

Shubhankar Chatterjee, Director of Product Management.
Prior to joining DataGardens, Shubhankar worked at Newance Solutions, providing IT consulting and technology direction to various companies. Before Newance, Shubhankar worked at Infosys, a leading software services company providing consulting services for an optical networking product developed by Cisco. During this time he served in a variety of roles including that of a Programming Analyst responsible for product requirements, functional specifications, and project scoping. In addition, he served as a liaison between the client and the consulting team based in India. Shubhankar holds a BE from Mumbai University and a Masters degree from the University of Alberta, where he designed algorithms for detecting and reacting to changes in high-speed Internet traffic.

Advisory Board

Bart Shigemura was most recently the President and CEO of YottaYotta Inc. Prior to YottaYotta, Bart was Chairman and CEO of Alidian Networks, a layer 2 grooming and aggregation platform in the metro optical market. Prior to Alidian, Bart was Vice President of worldwide Marketing for all data products at Lucent Technologies. He joined Lucent via their acquisition of Yurie Systems for $1.1b dollars in an all cash transaction. Bart served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and was a member of their Board of Directors, helping to take Yurie public in 1997. Before joining Yurie, Bart was Vice President of Marketing and Services for Premisys Communications, joining that organization prior to their IPO. Earlier in his career, Bart held executive sales and marketing positions at Nortel Networks, General DataComm and IBM. Bart has been on the board of a number of public and private companies including Tellium, Yurie, Cibernet, and YottaYotta, Inc. Bart has a B.S. degree in Marketing and Finance from the University of Southern California.

Jim Godsell is CEO of Chartwell International. Jim has over 20 years of technology experience, specializing in taking new companies and technologies to market, and has been a co-founder and director of several international software ventures. Mr. Godsell is responsible for all commercial and business related functions in the Chartwell group including Sales, Marketing, Account Management and Support. Mr. Godsell is also responsible for all Chartwell's overseas operations. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Computer Science and Mathematics, as well as Diplomas in Business and Operations. Most recently, Jim was Vice President - EMEA and Asia Pacific of DISC Storage Inc. of Santa Clara, CA., responsible for all aspects of international business and line management. He has also held the position of Chief Operating Officer with Rightsmarket Inc. and was responsible for technology, developing strategic business relationships, sales and marketing. Prior to this Mr. Godsell was Vice President and Storage Business Unit Manager for Beta Systems Software AG, of Berlin, Germany, responsible for worldwide Sales and Marketing. He was also Vice President of Sales and Marketing, member of the Board of Directors, and a founder of Harbor Systems Management Ltd., a Calgary, Alberta-based storage management software company. His career also includes senior-level responsibility for development and product management at several international technology companies including Digital Communications Associates (DCA) in Switzerland and Germany.

Dr. Mike MacGregor is the Chair of Computing Science at the University of Alberta. Professor MacGregor holds two patents and has more than 60 refereed publications. His research focuses on architectures and algorithms for routing and switching. He is interested in the design, analysis and performance of the components used to create networks. He is also interested in the architecture of networks themselves and efficient algorithms for near-optimal design.