News and Events

2005

FORCE10 NETWORKS NAMES DENNIS O’CONNELL VICE PRESIDENT OF U.S. CENTRAL REGION

MILPITAS, Calif., February 1, 2005 — Force10 Networks, the pioneer in Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet innovation, today announced that Dennis O’Connell has been named vice president of the U.S. central region. An industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience increasing sales revenue and market share, O’Connell will lead Force10’s efforts to further identify and develop new high-growth market opportunities in the region.

“Dennis brings an invaluable background and knowledge base for building brand and market presence,” said Mark Cooper, Force10 senior vice president of worldwide sales. “He will be a tremendous asset as we further extend our leadership in academic and research environments and into enterprise data centers.”

O’Connell has served in a variety of sales leadership roles, including as director for Cisco Systems’ central field operations, where he more than doubled the annual revenue of the sales organization to more than $400 million. He has also held senior sales and management leadership positions with Meridian IT Solutions, PictureTel Corporation and Wang Laboratories.

“Force10 is at an ideal point in its development with an established, loyal customer base and a product portfolio that is a generation ahead of the competition,” said O’Connell. “As 10 Gigabit Ethernet and cluster computing continue to move into the data center and large enterprises, Force10 is well positioned with the right combination of technology and service to expand its customer base into a wide range of new markets.”

O’Connell holds a BA in marketing from Western Illinois University and an MBA from Roosevelt University.

O’Connell’s addition to Force10 marks a continued expansion of the company’s sales team to better serve its growing and potential customer bases. Already, Force10 has a foothold in vertical markets such as media and entertainment, oil and gas, portals, research, education and service providers. With its growing sales team, Force10 is expanding its customer base both within these verticals as well as developing new markets and opportunities.

Contact:
Peter Ruzicka
Force10 Networks Inc.
408-965-5151
pruzicka@force10networks.com

Contact:
Jennifer Arculeo
Force10 Networks Inc.
408-965-5194
jarculeo@force10networks.com

About Force10 Networks
Force10 Networks is the pioneer in building and securing high performance networks. Based on a revolutionary system architecture that delivers best-in-class resiliency and massive scalability, Force10’s TeraScale E-Series switch/routers ensure predictable application performance, increase network availability, and reduce operating costs. Today, many of the world’s largest Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks depend on Force10 Networks. For additional information, please visit www.force10networks.com.

Force10 Networks and E-Series are registered trademarks, and P-Series, S-Series, TeraScale and FTOS are trademarks of Force10 Networks, Inc. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.