Brocade hires Christine Heckart as Chief Marketing Officer

Brocade announced the appointment of Christine Heckart to the position of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).  In this role, Ms. Heckart will be responsible for the strategic direction of Brocade’s global marketing organization, helping to position the company as the network provider of choice to the world’s data centers.  Ms. Heckart will report directly to Brocade’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Lloyd Carney.

In her new role, Ms. Heckart will be instrumental in driving the strategy to generate brand awareness and to develop and execute demand generation programs across the globe. These Marketing initiatives will align and support the company’s business strategy for growth built on leading the industry in data center fabrics and driving market penetration in the emerging Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) arenas.

“The data center must transform to meet the IT demands of the modern era that are driven by cloud, virtualization and mobility,” said Lloyd Carney, CEO at Brocade.  “With our focus and world-class innovation, Brocade is uniquely qualified to help customers through this important transformation. Christine’s marketing experience and expertise are well suited to help propel Brocade forward in the global marketplace to drive demand for our next-generation solutions.”

With more than 25 years of experience in the high-tech industry, Ms. Heckart has held a number of senior marketing leadership positions at networking and other high tech   companies.  Most recently at ServiceSource, a SaaS provider that helps drive recurring revenue she served as EVP Strategy, Marketing, People and Systems where she was responsible for establishing a new market around recurring revenue management.  Prior to that Ms. Heckart held CMO roles at NetApp and Juniper Networks, as well as being General Manager, TV, Video and Music Business at Microsoft.  Heckart serves on the Board of Directors at Lam Research, a leading provider of wafer fabrication equipment to the semiconductor industry.

“With the adoption of fabric-based networking, NFV, SDN, and cloud-based computing, end users are actively seeking technology partners that can help them drive business transformation,” said Christie Heckart. “I am excited by Brocade’s differentiated solutions, and believe we are well-positioned to drive the next wave of data center innovation.  Brocade’s 18 year heritage in the data center and its partner ecosystem is well-renowned and I believe it is an exciting time to join the company.”