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posted on 17 March 2008 16:29

Isilon has got its new chief technology officer (CTO) at last, by promoting Paul Rutherford from his VP engineering spot. It's also hired Brett Helsel as SVP engineering.

The background is that Isilon co-founder Sujal Patel was CTO until October last year when CEO Steve Goldman was dismissed or resigned and Patel became the new CEO. He has now gained a new head of engineering and a new CTO in a neat 2-step deal.

Brett Helsel was most recently chairman and CEO of network security product company Lockdown Networks and, before that, CTO and SVP product development at F5 Networks, the application delivery networking company that bought Acopia recently.

Lockdown Networks is now chairman and CEO-less

The company was unable to immediately comment about this - one reason is that Dan Clark, its marketing VP being on his honeymoon!

On the face of it a transition from chairman and CEO to a mere (!) SVP is a demotion. It suggests there must have been a powerful motive for the move which leaves Lockdown Networks in such a lurch, lacking both a CEO to drive the company and a chairman to drive the board.

Paul Rutherford's move is more straightforward with part of it appearing to be the need to make room for Helsel. There was a CTO vacancy and Rutherford had been ADIC's CTO and left, it is supposed, around the time ADIC was bought by Quantum.

Sujal Patel said: "Brett Helsel is a proven leader with a deep history and passion for building highly talented, customer-focused organizations. With the addition of Brett to our executive team, Isilon is positioned to continue to drive the next phase of innovation and growth in clustered storage as it ascends as a game-changing storage architecture for the next-generation data center."

Brett Helsel said he was 'extremely excited' to be joining Isilon.