Company

Our Leadership Team

Experience, vision and rebelliousness to translate breakthrough technology to customer solutions.

Jacob Cherian

CEO

Jacob Cherian

CEO

Jacob is responsible for ionir’s overall vision and strategy, and brings over 20 years of industry experience in storage and data center technologies. Jacob was instrumental in driving the transition of Reduxio’s technology from legacy enterprise storage to software defined, and building the business strategy based on cloud storage and data management. Prior to that Jacob spent 14 years at Dell leading multiple product and architectural initiatives in storage and other data center infrastructure. Jacob was named a Dell Inventor of the Year in 2005, and holds 50 patents in the areas of data storage and networking.

 

He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the Cochin University of Science and Technology, a MS degree in Computer Science from Oklahoma State University, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

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Or Sagi

Chief Architect & VP, Technology

Or Sagi

Chief Architect & VP, Technology

Or Sagi is Ionir’s VP Technology and Chief Architect, and has over 20 years of industry experience in storage, networking, and virtualization. Since its inception, Or has been responsible for Ionir’s architecture, design, and core technology. Or is also responsible for driving Ionir’s intellectual property, technological vision, roadmap and innovation.

 

Prior to Ionir, as Chief System Architect at Reduxio, Or was responsible for the transition of technology from Reduxio’s appliance-based product to Ionir’s software defined cloud native storage. Or was a Principal Engineer with IBM XIV, where he founded the NAS development team. Prior to that, Or was also responsible for developing the OS infrastructure for Texas Instruments’ next-generation cable modems, developing PCI device pass-through virtualization for Qumranet (acquired by Red Hat), implementing Infiniband based message passing systems at Voltaire, and introducing high availability into the Exanet distributed file system. Or holds several patents and patents-pending in the areas of storage architecture, encryption and data consistency in distributed systems.

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Barak Azulay

VP, Engineering

Barak Azulay

VP, Engineering

Barak Azulay is an experienced R&D executive with over 20 years of experience in development and management of complex enterprise-grade software systems, specializing in management of virtualization, cloud, containers, network, storage, and communication. Prior to ionir, Barak was Head of R&D at Neokarm (acquired by Zadara), that developed an on-premise AWS compatible cloud platform. Barak was one of early members of Qumranet’s technical core team that eventually brought to the world the KVM hypervisor. After the acquisition of Qumranet by Red Hat, he led development of multiple infrastructure projects including RHEV (oVirt) and some core components of RedHat OpenShift. Barak holds a BS of Computer Science and LLB from Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

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Dror Haiblum

VP, Finance

Dror Haiblum

VP, Finance

Dror brings deep experience leading finance, accounting, legal, and operations of early-stage to global companies in various business sectors. Before joining ionir, Dror served as Director of Finance at Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), one of the largest venture capital funds in Israel leading its incubator operational and financial activities, M&A transactions and financing rounds. Before that, Dror served as Director of Finance at RadView Software. Prior to Radview, Dror was a senior auditor at KPMG.

 

Dror is a Certified Public Accountant and holds a BA degree in Economics and Accounting from Bar-Ilan University and an MBA from the Business School of Tel Aviv University. Dror’s passion is teaching and during his free time he teaches at the business school of the College of Management Academic Studies.

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Barak Nissim

Director, Product & Solutions

Barak Nissim

Director, Product & Solutions

With almost two decades of IT and Cloud experience, Barak leads ionir’s product and solutions portfolio, engaging with customers, partners, and acts as Kubernetes-Native Data advocate. Prior to Ionir Barak worked at VMware, the leader of cloud and virtualization technologies, in multiple customer-facing roles covering EMEA, and as a Service Director leading the virtualization practice at Glasshouse Tech (System Integrator). Before that Barak served as System Architect in the IDF 8200 Unit. Barak holds a BA in Business and Marketing, and MA in Law Studies for Bar-Ilan University.

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Nir Peleg

CTO & Co-Founder

Nir Peleg

CTO, Advisor

Nir advises the Ionir on its strategic technology roadmap. Prior to ionir, Nir founded Reduxio and led the transition of its technology from Reduxio’s appliance-based product to ionir’s software defined cloud native storage. With over 30 years of industry experience, Nir was CTO and co-founder at Montilio, an innovative file server acceleration company, and founder, EVP R&D and CTO at Exanet, which built one of the world’s first distributed NAS systems.

 

Nir was the first employee and chief architect of Digital Appliance, Larry Ellison’s massively parallel computing venture that eventually became Pillar Data Systems (acquired by Oracle). Nir holds over 20 U.S. patents and patents-pending in the areas of computing, distributed storage, data deduplication and encryption.

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Board of Directors

Our board is made up of industry leaders with broad & deep experience

Fiona Darmon

General Partner, JVP

Fiona Darmon

General Partner, JVP

Fiona is an integral part of the leadership team at Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP). As a General Partner, Fiona serves on the boards of numerous portfolio companies, in addition to facilitating strategic partnerships with multinational corporations. Repeatedly recognized as one of the 50 most influential women in Israel by both Forbes and Globes magazines, Fiona brings twenty years of experience in investing, venture capital, strategic planning and capital raising in public and private companies.

Fiona previously held multiple executive roles at the investment conglomerate, Koor Industries, and served as a founding member of the first Israeli corporate VC – Koor CVC. Fiona is passionate about supporting the next generation of female leaders, serving as a mentor in the Facebook SHESHE program and IDF 8200 technology unit’s Women2Women program. Fiona holds a BA in Finance and IT, and an Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

André Pienaar

CEO & Founder, C5 Capital

André Pienaar

CEO & Founder, C5 Capital

André Pienaar is a Managing Partner and the Founder of C5. André serves on the boards of ionir and Panoply in Israel, IronNet Cybersecurity in USA, the Haven Group in Luxembourg, and ITC Secure in London. He previously served on the boards of Omada, Balabit and Shape Security which C5 exited successfully. André started his career at Kroll Inc in 1996 where he became the youngest managing director until the sale of the company to Marsh & McLennan.

In 2004, André founded G3, an international cybersecurity consulting firm which he sold to a leading investment holding company. André advised the 6th Duke of Westminster on the establishment of the DNRC in the UK for the rehabilitation of British veterans. He is a member of the U.S. Government’s Institute of Peace (USIP) International Advisory Council and the President’s Council of the International Crisis Group. André is a lawyer and an expert on cyber law and cybercrime.

Shai Schiller

General Partner, JVP

Shai Schiller

General Partner, JVP

Shai brings to JVP his rich experience in the venture capital industry, leading tech companies to the next level from inception to profitability and growth. He raised over US $700 million for companies and ventures in Israel, USA, APAC and Europe, and was responsible for annual revenues of over US $220M.

In past positions, Shai served as Managing Partner to two prominent VC’S- Concord Ventures and Capital Nature- and was the active investor of a prestigious single-family office. He served as CEO to multiple leading organizations in Cyber, Web Intelligence, Telecom, Venture Capital, Enterprise Software, Security, Mobile, and Medical Technology. Shai has a rich intelligence background and has taken the active role of Director at a variety if high-tech companies, ranging from semiconductors, AI, security, cyber and more. He was a founding member of a large scale project for the Israeli government, spanning many years, that won a prestigious award from the prime minister.

Praise for ionir

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