Vincent “Vinny” Smith, the longtime chief executive of Irvine-based Quest Software Inc., promoted company insider Douglas Garn to president.
Smith said he wanted to focus more on company strategy and less on the day-to-day operations of the company by elevating Garn.
It’s been a while since Quest has had a president. The last one was David Doyle, who founded Quest and then brought in Smith in 1997.
Smith started his career in the Bay area with Oracle Corp. In 1992, Smith got to work on his first big payoff by starting San Francisco-based Patrol Software with an Oracle colleague. Patrol was bought by BMC Software Inc. in 1994.
His interest in Irvine-based Quest grew through an investment his venture capital firm, Insight Capital Partners, made in 1995.
Smith took a seat on the company’s board and gradually became more involved, eventually becoming chief executive in 1997 and chairman a year later.
Doyle left the company in 2002.
Garn was the vice president of Quest’s worldwide sales. Smith credits Garn with deriving much of the company’s sales growth in the past year.
“Vinny and I will continue to collaborate closely with the executive management team on product roadmaps, company strategy and ramping up for growth around the world,” Garn said in a statement.
Quest makes database management software. It allows corporations to more easily manage data in databases made by Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp.
