Board of Directors

Nine Technology is proud to have Tom Gelson joined on the Board of Directors by these industry professionals imparting their vast and varied areas of expertise.

Tom Gelson

Tom is a serial entrepreneur with a track record of success in the data backup and recovery field.

Tom's career and entrepreneurial spirit have evolved with the technology leading up to the launch of Nine Technology, his fourth successful venture in the data storage industry. Previously, Tom founded Vault USA, a successful backup and recovery managed service provider that was acquired by NextVault, Inc on April 29, 2010.

Tom started his career in the data storage industry at EMC. He became Director of Sales and Support for Acknowledge, Inc., the first third-party manufactured, unattended tape backup drive company for IBM midrange and mainframe systems.

He then founded More Solutions, his first data storage company, which merged in 2001 with virtual tape storage software company Neartek, Inc. In 2004, he founded More Group Inc. as an employee owned and operated company led by a seasoned enterprise storage executive team that had worked with him at More Solutions. The More Group was a leading enterprise storage management integrator offering turnkey solutions and professional services. In 2008, More Group was acquired by Forsythe Solutions Group Inc.

Tom graduated from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA. He also served for 5 years in the United States Coast Guard at search & rescue stations on the NJ coast and Governor's Island, NY.

Check out Tom's vision for the company in this video.

Allen Deary

Allen is currently Senior Vice President at Sierra Atlantic, a $100 million IT services and technology development company which purchased ArrAy Inc. in August of 2007. Allen currently serves on the Board of Web Layers and CYA Technologies. Allen co-founded ArrAy Inc. in 1999 as a privately held company with no outside capital investment.

ArrAy was profitable since inception as they grew into a full-service software engineering firm, offering an innovative engagement model that maximized their clients' product delivery and quality at the lowest possible cost while minimizing their offshore development risk.

Before Array, Deary co-founded Peritus Software Services, Inc. in 1991. He served as both CFO and CEO of Peritus and led a highly successful IPO of the company in 1997. Prior to Peritus, he served as Director of Worldwide Product Development at Honeywell-Bull. Deary also worked at Apollo Computer, where he held a number of financial positions including Controller of Customer Support.

Jim Milligan

Jim has a deep history as a senior executive with 3M and Imation Corporation, a data storage company spun off from 3M in 1996. He brings extensive leadership experience with regard to developing complex global business relationships with OEMs such as IBM, HP, Sun and Dell, and channel partners such as Office DEPOT and Corporate Express.

Most recently, he served as general manager of the Americas region for Imation, where he was responsible for driving P&L results in the region, predominantly with and through OEMs and commercial channels of distribution. He was instrumental in leveraging Imation's dominant data storage media position into a broader portfolio of products and services including DataGuard Vault, an online backup service targeted for small to mid-size businesses.

Charlie Palmer

Charlie is currently a private investor and has served on the boards of numerous private, public and civic organizations. He was most recently with Sierra Atlantic, where he focused on the successful integration of ArrAy Incorporated. With fellow Nine Technology board member Allen Deary, Palmer co-founded ArrAy in 1999 as an outsourced product development (OPD) company and as co-CEO led the growth of ArrAy into a leading, international OPD services company with development centers in the United States, China, Ukraine, Bangladesh and India.

Prior to co-founding ArrAy, Palmer was president and CEO of Gentia Software Inc., where he transitioned the headquarters to the U.S. from the UK, tripled revenues and attained profitability, which led to a highly successful IPO. He also spent 20 years at Comshare, Inc. where he served in a number of senior executive positions the most recent being senior vice president of North American Operations. Palmer grew Comshare into the largest independent time-sharing company and then led its transition into an industry-leading business intelligence software and services company.

Richard Scannell

Richard is a seasoned industry veteran in the data storage marketplace. He co-founded Glasshouse Technologies in 2001. In his role as Senior VP of Corporate Strategy and Marketing, Richard is responsible for Glasshouse's go-to-market strategy and global marketing functions. Prior to working at Glasshouse, Richard served as COO of UpSource, a startup company providing outsourced CRM services. Richard has also worked as a senior IT infrastructure manager at Motorola. He holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc.) in Computer Science from University College Cork, Ireland.