Barracuda Networks

Dean Drako
President and CEO

As president and CEO, Dean Drako is responsible for overall corporate strategic direction and product development. Prior to founding Barracuda Networks in 2002, Dean was founder, president and CEO of Velosel Corporation, where he successfully closed two rounds of venture financing. Dean hired his replacement so he could pursue his battle against spam at Barracuda Networks. Prior to Velosel, Dean founded Boldfish, a leading provider of enterprise messaging solutions that was acquired by Siebel Systems in 2003. Before Boldfish, Dean was founder, president and CEO of Design Acceleration, Inc. (DAI), maker of superior design analysis and verification tools, which was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 1998. He has served as an entrepreneur in residence for SoftBank Venture Capital as well as vice president of product engineering at the 3DO Company. Dean holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Michael Perone
Executive Vice President and CMO

Since the early 1990s, Michael Perone has been a visionary in delivering free Internet access to users worldwide. As Co-founder, Executive Vice President and CMO at Barracuda Networks, Michael is responsible for worldwide communications and marketing strategies, including corporate brand management and identity. Michael started his career as a systems engineer and spent several years working in corporate IT at both GE Aerospace and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories. As a consultant to Lockheed/Martin, one of his projects was to transition 70,000 email seats to a new email platform. In 1998, Michael co-founded Address.com, a leading free email and Internet access service with more than 2.5 million users. Prior to Address.com, Michael co-founded Spinway, Inc., the fastest growing Internet Service Provider (ISP) in history reaching eight million customers in just eight months, which was sold to Kmart Corporation in November 2001. In addition, Michael co-founded Affinity Path, the fastest growing private label ISP in the world, powering and supporting more than 5,000 ISPs throughout North America. Michael serves on the board of directors for Address.com and is an advisor to Kettera Corporation and Peerflix.com.

Zach Levow
CTO

Zach Levow is a pioneer in mail server development, remote access, and the free Internet space. As Co-founder, Vice President and CTO at Barracuda Networks, Zach leads the innovation and development of Barracuda Networks’ solutions. Prior to Barracuda Networks, Zach was Co-founder and Vice President of Engineering for Affinity Path, a self-service, private label and profitable DSL/dial-up ISP with more than 4,000 partners. Prior to Affinity Path, Zach was co-founder and CTO of Spinway, Inc., the fastest growing ISP in history reaching eight million customers in just eight months before being acquired by Kmart Corporation in November 2001. During his tenure at Spinway, Zach was the lead developer of the Spinway architecture, one of the world's largest client server applications at that time. He has also worked as a software development and architectural software design consultant for clients such as Sun Microsystems, Computer Sciences Corporation, Cadence Design Systems, and Motorola, Inc. Zach received a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh.

David Faugno
CFO

David Faugno brings years of global financial and business operations experience across a number of technology sectors. He previously served as director of corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions at Cisco Systems, Inc. where he supported the acquisition and integration of more than 20 companies with more than $9 billion in transaction value. Prior to that, David was CFO and vice president of operations of Actona Technologies Inc., a leading wide area storage vendor that was acquired by Cisco. He had also served as CFO of Soltima, Inc. a wireless infrastructure software company. In his eight years with AT&T, David held a variety of financial, sales and operations roles, including CFO of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, in which he restructured AT&T's portfolio of investments and joint ventures in the region. David holds a B.S. in accounting from Rutgers University and an Executive MBA from Duke University.

Blair Hankins
Vice President, Engineering

Blair Hankins is responsible for leading the development of the Barracuda Networks lineup of application security appliances. With more than 20 years of experience, Blair brings expertise in software development, technical product management and marketing. Prior to joining Barracuda Networks, Blair was senior vice president of engineering at Intellisync (acquired by Nokia) responsible for delivering wireless messaging products that offer the best possible user experience to mobile professionals. Prior to Intellisync, Blair was the vice president of engineering for Witness Systems, Inc, a leading provider of workforce optimization software for call centers. Previously as an executive at IBM, Blair was a recognized authority on Lotus messaging and application development products, and led the Lotus Notes and Domino product line. In this role, he was responsible for the market planning, business strategy, go-to-market strategy and market offerings for IBM's portfolio of messaging products including Notes, Domino, iNotes, the Lotus mobile and wireless product offerings. Blair earned B.S. in Mathematics at University of Maryland and an M.S. in Mathematics from Ohio State University.

Stephen Pao
Vice President, Product Management

In his role, Steve Pao is responsible for strategic product direction, definition and program management for all Barracuda Networks products. Steve has more than 15 years of experience in high growth technology companies based in both Seattle and the Bay Area. Prior to joining Barracuda Networks, Steve led program management and engineering efforts at All Star Directories, a leading Internet lead generation provider and the third-fastest growing private company in Washington in 2005.  Before All Star, Steve was vice president of marketing at AskMe Corporation, a leading enterprise knowledge management software provider and the Washington Software Alliance’s “Most Promising New Company” in 2003.  Prior to AskMe, Steve served as vice president of marketing at Latitude Communications (acquired by Cisco Systems in 2001), a leading voice and Web conferencing provider, where he helped distinguish the company as the fifth fastest-growing company in Silicon Valley in 1999. Steve also held product management positions at Visioneer (now part of Nuance), where he launched the award-winning PaperPort product and at Oracle Corporation where he led product management for Oracle’s line of decision support products.  Steve earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ezra Hookano
Vice President of Sales, North America

Ezra Hookano has more than a decade of upper-level sales management experience at numerous Internet security and high technology companies. As vice president of sales, Ezra is responsible for worldwide sales strategy and execution. Prior to joining Barracuda Networks in October 2004, Ezra was the director of strategic sales for FatPipe Networks, Inc., a manufacturer of WAN redundancy and load balancing products. Previous to FatPipe, Ezra held executive sales roles at U4 EA Group, maker of embedded software solutions for firewall and communication OEMs, Phobos Corporation, a manufacturer of networking hardware, firewall technology and SSL acceleration technology that was later acquired by SonicWALL, and Racore Technology Group, a manufacturer of Token Ring and Fiber Optic network interface cards. Ezra holds a B.A. in Marketing from the University of Utah.

Peter He
Vice President and Managing Director, China

In his role Peter He oversees sales strategy, marketing and channel development in China. Prior to joining Barracuda Networks, Peter was founder and general manager of Pandaguard Info Security Tech Corp., a joint venture between leading European anti-virus company, Panda Software International and China’s second-leading PC manufacturer, Founder Group. He helped Pandaguard grow to become one of the leading AV brands in the market, with more than 100 resellers located all more than China. Prior to Pandaguard, He was co-founder of Sync1Ware Alliance (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., a specialized management software and ERP solution company, as wells as various consulting positions with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He received a B.S. in International Politics and International Economic Law from Shanghai Fudan University in Shanghai, China.

Niall King
Vice President and Managing Director, APAC

At Barracuda Networks, Niall King is responsible for driving sales, market strategy and channel development for the Asia Pacific region, New Zealand and Australia. He has more than 20 years of experience driving sales and marketing in Asia Pacific for companies such as Ricoh and Cacheflow. Prior to joining Barracuda Networks, Niall was the APAC director of sales for Neoteris where he developed channel sales in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia and drove annual sales to nearly $3.5 million prior to Netscreen’s acquisition of Neoteris. Niall has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland.

José Luis Sanchez
Vice President of Sales, Latin America, Spain and Portugal

José Luis Sanchez has more than 17 years of International and domestic sales experience. In his current role at Barracuda Networks, José Luis is responsible for sales channel development in Latin America, Spain and Portugal. Prior to joining Barracuda Networks, José Luis was the sales director, Latin America at NetScreen. Under his leadership, the Latin America territory experienced 400 percent sales growth in a two year time period. Previous to NetScreen, José Luis held various sales management positions at Sun Microsystems, as well as domestic sales positions at Hewlett-Packard, General Electric and IBM. José Luis received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Paul Thackeray
Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA

In his role, Paul Thackeray is responsible for all marketing and sales operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Paul previously worked at SonicWALL as regional sales director for UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa. He brings more than 15 years of experience in information security and a strong sales management background having held a series of executive management positions with companies such as Global Secure Systems, Cylink, Zergo (which later became Baltimore Technologies), and Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). Prior to SonicWALL, Paul was at Global Secure Systems where he was director of consulting. Paul received a B.S. in Electronic Communication from the University of Salford in Manchester, England.