Software Industry Veteran Joins Backbase as VP Worldwide Marketing
Michel Gerin Brings Extensive Experience Marketing Open Source Framework and Development Tools; aims to accelerate Ajax adoption for Building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)
San Mateo, Calif. – June 20th, 2007 – Backbase, The Ajax Company™, today announced that Michel Gerin has joined the company as Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. Gerin previously spearheaded marketing efforts at leading software companies including Zend Technologies, Catapulse/Rational and Borland. At Backbase Gerin will direct the company’s market strategy, product marketing and corporate communications.
Gerin joins Backbase at a key point in the company's development, with Ajax emerging as an essential technology for rapid development and deployment of RIAs. Millions of developers are adopting Ajax, and corporate users and major technology companies like IBM, Oracle, Google and Yahoo are adding Ajax to their portfolio of development technologies.
As Zend Technologies' Vice President of Marketing, Gerin was instrumental in positioning the company as the leader in PHP. He led the successful introduction of two generations of PHP development tools and spearheaded the transition to the Eclipse Development Platform. Gerin also introduced to market the application management Platform as well as Zend’s open source Framework and certified PHP Zend Core --- all of which were widely adopted by customers and garnered the company many technology awards.
Prior to Zend, Gerin was Director of Business Development in charge of Platform Vendors at Catapulse, a Rational backed company. Previously he led product marketing at Borland International for eight years and introduced JBuilder to market.
"Ajax is at a tipping point and Backbase is recruiting the market’s best and brightest to ensure we’re delivering a full lifecycle solution,” said Jouk Pleiter, Backbase co-founder, president and CEO. “Michel is an important addition to the executive team and will be instrumental in guiding the company's long-term market strategy and ensuring the company's continued high growth."
According to analysts, the RIA market is a billion dollar opportunity.
"Platform vendors have been quick to penetrate the market with their own proprietary solutions. Ajax is the leading open standard alternative,” said Gerin. “Backbase is clearly the leading company in the Ajax Enterprise market with a vibrant community of users, contributors, customers and partners. It's exciting to contribute to Ajax's success in the enterprise and participate in creating the next great software company."
About Backbase
Backbase, Inc, The Ajax Company, is the leading provider of enterprise software for creating Ajax-based Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Medium to large enterprises and independent software vendors use Backbase to enhance the usability of their Web applications, migrate fat client applications to the Web, deliver next-generation online self-service applications, and create enterprise mashups. Founded in 2003, Backbase is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with international offices in Canada, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Additional information is available at www.backbase.com.
