Cloud Virtual Networking Company Pertino Moves a Step Closer to Launch With Expanded Executive Team

Pertino, a virtual networking solution for the cloud era, is moving a step closer to emerging from stealth with the appointments of Todd Krautkremer as vice president of marketing and Tony Wilder as vice president of operations.

"We believe the wide-area networking (WAN) is the next infrastructure to be revolutionized by the cloud and network virtualization," said Craig Elliott, CEO of Pertino. "The way organizations commute, compute and collaborate is being transformed by the cloud and mobility, yet WANs have remained essentially unchanged for the last decade. It’s time to reimagine and reinvent business networking and we have assembled a team of proven technology leaders and innovators with experience spanning cloud, networking, mobile and security to do just that."

Krautkremer brings more than 20 years of successful experience with startups and a passion for building early-stage companies into market leaders. Krautkremer secured his large-scale networking prowess early in his career with engineering and product roles at AT&T and Siemens. Later he partnered with Elliott as vice president of worldwide marketing at WAN optimization pioneer Packeteer before becoming CEO of Gearworks — a leading provider of SaaS-based, carrier-delivered mobile solutions for small to mid-sized companies. He has considerable experience in strategy, go-to-market execution, and channel development. Most recently, Krautkremer served as COO of Red Lambda where he led the effort to transform an innovative grid computing technology into an industry first-mover in big data security analytics.

Wilder is also a Packeteer alum where he established and ran the global systems engineering and customer service organizations. He brings to Pertino a proven track record in service delivery and technical and customer operations spanning over 20 years. Earlier in his career, Wilder was senior manager of worldwide channel systems at Apple where he managed Apple’s international online information and email service. Prior to joining Pertino, Wilder was the senior director of worldwide technical operations at security stalwart Blue Coat and senior director of technical marketing and operations at wireless innovator Trapeze Networks, now part of Juniper Networks.

"As the networks within cloud data centers are virtualized, the friction between cloud and legacy infrastructures shifts to the WAN," said Todd Krautkremer, vice president of marketing. "This friction is compounded by the expensive, hardware-centric and inflexible nature of today’s WANs as businesses of all sizes increasingly embrace mobility and cloud services. Pertino is leveraging the cloud and network virtualization to eliminate this friction and deliver a modern business network."

In April, Pertino closed an $8.85 million Series A round of venture funding with Norwest Venture partners (NVP) and Lightspeed Venture Partners.