Bright Computing has appointed Bill Wagner as its Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. As Bright Computing’s CEO, Bill succeeds Matthijs van Leeuwen, who founded the company and served as its CEO since 2009. Mr. Van Leeuwen will remain with Bright Computing as Chief Strategy Officer and board member. Mr. Wagner most recently served as CEO of Strongview, a top-ranked independent provider of enterprise marketing software. During his ten-year tenure at Strongview, culminating in his appointment as CEO in 2012, Mr. Wagner repositioned the company to generate impressive revenue growth and led the company’s acquisition by a Silicon Valley private equity firm in October 2015. Prior to Strongview, Mr. Wagner held executive roles at BEA Systems and Novell, Inc.
Privately held, Bright Computing is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), Prime Ventures, Draper Esprit and ING Bank. Bill Bryant, a DFJ Partner and Bright Computing board member, commented, “We are delighted that Bill has accepted this role and believe he is the ideal person to lead the company into its next stage of growth and success.” He added, “I want to thank Matthijs for taking Bright to its current stage, and for his ongoing commitment to the success of the company.”
Mr. Wagner stated, “Over the past six years, Bright Computing has built an exceptional product portfolio, a strong brand, and an enthusiastic and rapidly-growing customer base. Bright addresses the exploding demand to manage increasingly complex IT infrastructures with a simple yet powerful ‘single pane of glass’ management platform that can extend across the datacenter and the cloud. I am excited to join Bright’s talented team and eager to build on the company’s upward growth trajectory.”
Bright Computing provides a robust portfolio of management software for on-premise and cloud-based advanced IT infrastructure, including high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, big data clusters, and OpenStack-based private clouds. Headquartered in San Jose, California and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Bright is deployed in hundreds of commercial, government, and academic organizations worldwide.
According to Mr. Van Leeuwen, “Bright’s customers, employees, and shareholders will be in excellent hands with Bill Wagner in the role of CEO. Bill brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from his tenure at BEA Systems and StrongView that was compelling for all of us, and will be immediately applicable as Bright enters its next phase of growth. I look forward to working with him during this transition period and as an active, ongoing member of the Bright leadership team and board of directors.”
