New Kid on the Block

Russel Wilkinson, Director Field Product Management, Xangati

I joined Xangati as a field product managemetn director about one month ago. Despite being the new kid on the block, Xangati has made me feel right at home.

And what a great time to join the Xangati team! The timing of my coming on board practically collided with the introduction of the Xangati VDI Dashboard! The energy and excitement surrounding the launch of this breakthrough product has been incredible—and with good reason.

Xangati has once again raised the bar for virtualization and cloud computing management with the first infrastructure performance management (IPM) solution that can fully track and support VDI to operational scale. The response to the product has been phenomenal—especially in regards to its Health Engine.

I’ve been a strong proponent of Xangati’s solutions for some time now—another reason why being here at Xangati feels so right. I was first introduced to Xangati’s solutions as a Desktop Specialist at VMware, where I worked with both engineering and sales teams.

While at VMware, I had read a blog written by a former colleague about the Xangati solution. I was looking for a way to extract more performance data from some of our VMware View 4 pilots and decided to give Xangati a shot. After evaluating the solution, I was sold!

With Xangati’s live-to-the-second views, we could characterize PCoIP, its load on the network, and compare it to what other traffic was sharing in the same network infrastructure. Seeing how these resources were interworking across the WAN gave us incredible insight, so that we could more rapidly identify and troubleshoot potential performance issues.

Following that initial experience, I had the pleasure of engaging further with the Xangati team on a number of internal and external projects. VMware leveraged the Xangati toolset for several customer events, as well as to manage the hands-on-labs at both VMworld San Francisco and VMworld Copenhagen. The Xangati solution was key to allowing us to track all of the VDI lab sessions end-to-end as they traversed the network.

I enjoyed more than six amazing years at VMware—at a time of incredible change in the industry—and certainly had no immediate plans to leave. But sometimes you come across an opportunity that’s just too good to be true, and you have to grab onto it. That’s how I feel about my move to Xangati. It’s professionally invigorating to be on a forward-thinking team with the engineering prowess and agility to develop and quickly bring to market these innovative solutions that contribute so significantly to the successful implementation of virtualization technologies.

The Xangati engineering discipline is amazing!

What can you expect from me? For starters, my attention will remain highly customer-focused. I’ve always paid close attention to real-world business needs at VMware and before that at Citrix.

At Xangati, we want to be sure to keep a close look on how we can continue to add the most value for you. We’re doing a pretty good job already, so we have a head start, but there’s always room for improvement. We want to make it even easier for the VI administrator to understand everything that’s occurring in the infrastructure—to help you succeed.

With a home base in Detroit, I’ll be moving around a lot—working closely with the Xangati sales team wherever I’m needed—and meeting frequently with you—our customers and partners. I want to get to know your unique business requirements, so that we can provide you with the best technology solution to meet them. 

Feel free to contact me! I’d love to hear from you and see how Xangati might be able to assist with your particular virtualization initiatives. You can also follow me on twitter @VirtualRussel.

I’m thrilled to be here and adding yet another role in my life—Dad to two awesome girls, husband to a wonderful wife and—now—new kid on the Xangati block!