Roger Gerdes, Chief Executive Officer

Roger has more than 14 years of experience in sales, marketing, product management, consulting, and executive management working at and with start-up companies and large multi-national companies in the IT and publishing fields. Prior to co-founding Azaleos, Gerdes was the President of Business Marketing Group (BMG) an outsourced partnership development and business strategy firm, where he was responsible for client acquisition and partner strategy engagements. During his tenure at BMG, Roger worked with leading companies in Silicon Valley including: Network Appliance, Rational Software, and Sygate Technologies.

Prior to BMG, he spent 4.5 years at Microsoft Corporation, where he was responsible for defining and leading all business strategy for and management of the MSDN Subscription Services and MSDN developer training businesses. Before Microsoft, Roger worked for a subsidiary of the McGraw-Hill companies in product management. Gerdes has extensive experience in executive management, software channel development and sales, business development, partner development, small and medium business marketing, and Internet solutions for large enterprise companies.

Roger has sat on the board of two privately held software companies and has served as an interim restructuring CEO. Roger is an alumnus of the University of Colorado holding both a BA in Economics and a Masters of Business Administration in Finance.

Keith A. McCall, Chief Technology Officer

Keith has been leading the development and delivery of enterprise software products for over 16 years. Prior to co-founding Azaleos Corporation in 2004, Keith spent 4.5 years as the Director and Product Unit Manager for the Exchange Solutions organization in Microsoft’s Exchange Product Group, during which time he was responsible for ensuring the integrity of the complete end-to-end messaging solution through technology and business development activities to support the ecosystem of Exchange Systems Integrators, ISVs, and IT Professionals who deliver world-class messaging solutions to customers based on Microsoft technologies. Keith initially came to Microsoft to develop and deliver a departmental solution server based on Microsoft’s BackOffice technologies, which was delivered as the Team Productivity Update for BackOffice 4.5 in 1999.

Prior to Microsoft, he was the Senior Director for Lotus’ line of Domino.Applications, and was responsible for delivering Lotus’ Notes- and web-based collaborative applications on the then-new Domino Platform, shipping Domino.Action, a corporate web presence product; Domino.Merchant, a collaborative commerce product, Domino.Broadcast for PointCast, a push technology product, the Domino Intranet Starter Pack, a web presence solution-in-a-box for small and medium sized businesses, and the Domino.Merchant Server Pack, an internet commerce solution-in-a-box in a 2 year period.

Before joining Lotus, Keith invented Net.Commerce and built the team in 1996 that delivered IBM’s flagship Internet Commerce product, and was the architect and developer of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games Ticket server, which sold over $5 million of tickets in 3 months, one of the first successful internet commerce servers. Keith was also instrumental in designing and developing L.L. Bean’s first electronic commerce site at www.llbean.com. Before this, he invented and took to market IBM’s Net.Data product, which was the first product to join IBM’s DB2 relational database to web servers, and also held a variety of technical marketing and sales positions on the release of the first RISC System/6000 line of UNIX computers from IBM.

Keith holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Pete Higgins

Pete Higgins is a founding partner of Second Avenue Partners, one of Seattle’s most experienced teams providing management, strategy and capital to early-stage companies. Prior to founding Second Avenue Partners, Higgins spent 16 years at Microsoft Corporation. Higgins was a member of the Office of the President, reporting to CEO Bill Gates. He was group vice president of the Interactive Media Group at Microsoft from 1996 to 1998. As head of the Interactive Media Group, Higgins was responsible for Microsoft’s online and consumer software businesses, including MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, Carpoint, Slate, Internet Gaming Zone, Encarta, multimedia games, desktop finance product, and hardware products such as the Microsoft Mouse.

Pete also serves on the board of directors of Bocada, InSitu Group, Advanced Digital Information Corporation, and the advisory board of Digimine. He is an executive advisor for the private equity firm, Hellman Friedman and a strategic director of the venture capital group, Madrona Investments, LLC. Pete also serves on the Board of Trustees for Stanford University. Pete holds a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in economics and history from Stanford University.

Mike Slade

Mike Slade began his professional career at Microsoft in 1983 as a product manager. During his 7+ years there he introduced several successful products, including Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Works. Immediately before leaving he was the director of corporate marketing in the Microsoft systems software division. Mike then spent two years as the VP-Marketing for NeXT Computer, Inc, working for Steve Jobs. NeXT was eventually sold back to Apple, where Steve is again CEO. Mike then went to work for Paul Allen as CEO of Starwave, a multimedia and internet startup funded by Paul. As Chairman/CEO of Starwave, Mike was a key figure in the creation of the consumer internet, launching key sites ESPN.com, NBA.com, NFL.com, ABCNews.com, Mr. Showbiz and the Go.com network. Starwave was sold to Disney in late 1998, and Mike served as a consultant on Disney's internet strategy for one additional year.

Since 1998, Mike has been spending two days a week consulting to Steve Jobs’ executive team at Apple Computer, working on marketing and strategy. He is also a co-founder of Seattle-based venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners. Finally, in March of 2000, Mike and two other former Microsoft executives purchased and re-launched the Professional Bowlers Association, where he currently sits on the board of directors.

Mike Slade earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Colorado College in 1979. He graduated from Stanford University with a Master’s degree in Business Administration in 1983. He has two daughters and is active in public education and philanthropy in Seattle. Mike sits on the Board of Directors of Aquantive, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of Colorado College.

Charles H. Porter

Azaleos Corporation: Board of Directors Azaleos provides a high performance, high availability Exchange messaging solution, which scales to meet the needs of even the largest Exchange environments. The Azaleos solution is a fully managed appliance offering greatly improved Exchange availability, significantly reduced operating costs, enabling customers to re-focus scarce IT resources upon other mission critical business applications.

Insight Ventures: CIO-in-Residence Insight Ventures brings together Fortune 1000 IT Executives, Early Stage Technology Companies, and the Venture Community driving mutual benefit and a higher probability of success for all.

Seattle University – Entrepreneurship Center: Board of Directors; Education Committee Seattle University is the largest independent university in the Pacific Northwest. With a wide range of academic programs, SU is ranked among the top ten master's-granting universities in the West by U.S. News and World Report.

Seattle University's Entrepreneurship Center fosters, educates and enables our students, alumni and targeted communities in the Puget Sound area to create and manage successful, ethical and socially responsible business ventures.

Accenture: 1974 – 2004 Managing Partner (Retired) Porter was the Managing Partner - CTO - Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services (ATIS). In this Global role, he was responsible for the architecture, technology direction and product definition for Accenture’s infrastructure outsourcing practice.

Previously, he was the Managing Partner – CIO – Technology Services. In this Global role, he was instrumental to Accenture’s embracing low-cost regional (near-shore) and global (off-shore) IT delivery strategies. He was also instrumental in reducing Accenture’s internal technology operations cost by over 40% over 3 years – while maintaining employee satisfaction and improving reliability.

He was a member of Accenture’s Global "Situation Management Committee," "Technology and Outsourcing Executive Committee," and "Outsourcing and Infrastructure Delivery Executive Committee."

Porter founded Accenture’s network of telecommunications solutions centers (Teleworks®) that provide application development, delivery, and support to Accenture’s Communications & High Tech clients. From 1993 to 2000, he led the largest of these centers in San Ramon, California and Madrid, Spain.

During his 30 year career with Accenture, he led some of the Firm’s largest and most technically complex projects. He often performed the role of Quality Assurance Partner for Accenture’s largest, most innovative and complex client engagements.

Porter joined Accenture in 1974 , became a partner in 1986, and has lived and worked on six continents serving primarily regulated utilities, communications and high tech clients.

Raised in Billings, Montana, Porter graduated from Gonzaga University in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics. In 1974, he received an MBA degree from the University of Michigan. He lives in Seattle with his wife of more than 30 years. Together they have two children employed in recreational equipment and computer games companies. Porter enjoys photography, exotic travel, piloting private aircraft, scuba diving and recreational computing.

Cameron Myhrvold

Cameron is a founding partner of Ignition Ventures. He invests in software and infrastructure companies.

Cameron represents Ignition as director on the boards of Seven, Cloudmark and Lockdown Networks. He also acts as Ignition observer on the board of RLX Technologies. He previously served on the board of Consera (acquired by Hewlett Packard).

Prior to Ignition, Cameron spent thirteen years with Microsoft Corporation, most recently as Vice President of the Internet Customer Unit, where he was responsible for building business relationships with network operators and a broad range of telecommunications providers. Cameron was responsible for setting strategy and building relationships with such global telecommunications providers as NTT, AT&T, MCI, Nortel, Cisco, Qualcomm, British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, GTE, US West and Bell Atlantic.

Cameron created the Developer Relations Group, which evangelized Windows and Microsoft's other operating system technologies to the independent software vendors and third-party developer community. Together with Brad, Richard Tong and Jonathan Roberts, this group initiated the "platform marketing" effort at Microsoft creating a virtual industry ecosystem of third parties, each independently incented to drive adoption of Microsoft Windows. This effort became a 320-member team with an annual budget of $65 million, and was responsible for revenue of over $400 million and recruited a community of 44,000 independent software vendors to develop Windows software.

Cameron co-founded Dynamical Systems Inc, to develop multitasking operating systems for the PC, which he sold to Microsoft in 1986.

Cameron received his Bachelors degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Richard Fade

Richard is a partner at Ignition Ventures. Richard invests in enterprise data and applications companies.

Prior to Ignition, Richard spent 16 years at Microsoft Corporation in several leadership roles including serving in the executive staff as a division level vice president for the past 10 years.

Most recently Richard served as Senior Vice President OEM division where he was responsible for Microsoft’s licensing business with PC OEM and embedded device manufacturers. Fade served as VP Desktop and Consumer Applications overseeing creation and launch of Office 97, Outlook and several Microsoft Office product line extensions including the acquisition of Microsoft Front Page.

Fade was Vice President of Advanced Technology Sales which later became the Internet Business Unit. Prior to that, Fade served as Vice President Far East Region where he was responsible for product development, sales, marketing and operations for Japan, China and Korea. Richard led the teams which produced the first successful double byte versions of Microsoft Windows followed closely by Microsoft Office applications.

Richard served in several management positions in 8 years at systems integrator Triad Systems. Richard received a B.S. in finance from Florida State University.

Richard and his wife Susan established the Fade Foundation to address the needs of children’s developmental disorders. The Fades co-founded the Autism Center at the University of Washington. Richard is a board member of the Autism Center, the Northwest Autism Foundation, and co-founder and chairman of the Autism Treatment Network.