Aliso Viejo’s QLogic Corp., a maker of electronics for data storage networks, has been staffing up its sales operation in the past few months.
Last month, it hired Jim Rothstein as vice president of North America sales.
Scott Genereux came on as vice president of worldwide sales and marketing earlier this year.
QLogic’s most recent hire was Martin Darling, 47, who’ll head QLogic’s sales arm in the Pacific Rim.
Darling is set to grow market share for QLogic in China, South Korea and Japan. He’ll report to Genereux.
“The Asia-Pacific IT sector is growing at a faster rate than many other regions,” Genereux said. “Japan is the second largest storage market in the world, while China’s economy is performing better than expected in the current business climate. The opportunity for growth and market expansion is significant.”
Darling has spent the past decade in Asia leading the sales efforts of some of QLogic’s biggest customers, including EMC Corp. and Hitachi Data Systems Ltd. He’ll be based in Singapore.
Most recently, Darling held a sales post in Asia for Chatsworth-based DataDirect Networks Inc.
Linksys Cameo
I recently caught up with the top dogs over at Linksys LLC in Irvine, part of networking gear maker Cisco Systems Inc.
Workers at Linksys, which makes consumer-friendly devices for home networking, were getting ready to see summer action blockbuster “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”
A Linksys product has a small cameo in the film, which is the second installment of 2007’s “Transformers.”
If you aren’t a child of the 1980s, let me enlighten you.
Transformers are mechanical wonders,fearsome robots that transform from heavy machinery such as sports cars and 18 wheelers and back again.
Linksys’ Wireless-N Dual Band router, which looks like a miniature hovercraft, had a small role as a “kitchen bot” in the film.
There’s a scene in the movie where a small army of kitchen gadgets rise up to attack leading man Shia LaBeouf.
Parent Cisco rented out a movie theater in Costa Mesa’s Triangle Square a few weeks ago and invited workers to watch the film.
Solarflare Deal
Irvine-based chip startup Solarflare Com-munications Inc. recently inked a deal with a reseller in Hong Kong and China.
Hong Kong’s Eastele Technology Ltd. is set to manage sales and technical support for two of Solarflare’s controller chip products for makers of data center gear.
Solarflare makes chips that allow faster 10-gigabit networks to link with slower ones, helping companies save on power and replacement costs.
“The industry is beginning to experience mainstream adoption of 10-gigabit Ethernet across networks worldwide,” said Russ Krapf, vice president of sales and business development at Solarflare. “The most cost-effective, high-performance and power-efficient solutions are required to handle a growing number of users and bandwidth-intensive applications. The new distribution deal allows us to expand our business across China and provide a higher level of service to the tier 1 networking manufacturers located in that region.”
Solarflare has landed several design wins and started shipping chips to Dell Inc., Irvine’s SMC Networks Inc. and SMC’s parent, Taiwan’s Accton Technology Corp.
Solarflare, which has raised some $180 million in venture funding to date, could have an initial public offering in 2010.
LED Money
Tustin-based Permlight Products Inc., a maker of cooling engines for light-emitting diode, or LED, lights, has raised $750,000 in a venture debt round from Santa Barbara-based Agility Capital LLC.
Agility makes small loans to venture-backed companies that later convert to stock.
According to Agility, the debt will be used to support Permlight’s growth.
Permlight makes light engines and sells them to makers of residential and commercial light fixtures and illuminated signs on buildings.
Permlight’s technology allows LED chips to be directly attached to an isolated circuit board in order to reduce the amount of heat it produces. It buys the chips from Japan’s Nichia Corp.
Permlight has some 40 workers locally and does its manufacturing in Asia.
Spam Success
Irvine’s Sendio Inc., which makes software that seeks to eliminate e-mail spam, was given a recent nod by reseller industry trade publication Computer Reseller News.
Sendio was named an “emerging technology vendor” for its e-mail security product line.
CRN.com, the Web site of the trade magazine, picks out several companies each year that deliver products that have high profits for resellers.
Sendio’s software is different from other security software because it doesn’t rely on filters that glean bad e-mail from good based on content.
It instead relies on the e-mail sender to prove that he or she is legit.
The company sells servers loaded with its software to companies with 25 to 15,000 e-mail users. The software is sold in packs of 50 licenses on a subscription basis.
It is targeting law firms, casinos, governments, hospitals and financial services companies as customers.
The company has raised some $9 million in venture dollars to date.
