Panasas appoints Ken Claffey as CEO

With Claffey’s robust background and expertise in high-performance computing (HPC), cloud, and enterprise data storage technologies, the company is poised to seize new market opportunities under his leadership. Claffey replaces Tom Shea, who will remain on the Panasas executive leadership team as Chief Operating Officer.

“We made the decision to bring Ken in as CEO because we believe Panasas is well-positioned to build on its success over the last few years as it has moved to a software-defined architecture, increased its revenues, and is now ready to take a step function in its growth and scale,” said Andre A. Hakkak, CEO, White Oak Global Advisors, LLC.

Claffey brings an exemplary track record of visionary leadership, transformational change, and an astute understanding of the entire storage industry. With this leadership change, White Oak Global Advisors, LLC has also committed significant incremental funding that will enable Claffey and the Panasas team to execute significant business growth.

Prior to joining Panasas, Claffey was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Systems Business at Seagate Technology, where he consistently demonstrated a customer-centric approach while driving substantial revenue growth and operational efficiency. Claffey’s focus on fostering collaborative global teams, continual investment in product innovation, and commitment to operational excellence will be instrumental in solidifying Panasas’ position as a leader in the HPC and AI storage landscape.

The convergence of AI and HPC is driving significant change across all elements of HPC infrastructure, including the role and capabilities of parallel file systems. As Mark Nossokoff, Research Director at Hyperion Research explains, “The demands of modern AI and HPC workloads, including massive data requirements, high throughput, scalability, and concurrent access, are stressing traditional parallel file systems to their limits. File systems play a pivotal role within the overall HPC storage architecture to address those requirements to reliably and securely accelerate the time to results of the critical scientific research and advanced engineering work being performed on the systems.”

"I am honoured to join Panasas at this exciting juncture,” said Ken Claffey. “The company's unique core parallel file system data storage technology is central to enabling the secular growth of HPC and AI. These areas are driving the increasing need for the performance, scalability, and ease of use that is uniquely inherent to the Panasas PanFS® software platform. I am committed to capitalising on this momentum by spearheading a strategic agenda that improves software portability and enhances performance and ecosystem integration to fuel revenue growth. I am confident that Panasas will emerge as a preeminent leader in the HPC and AI storage realm.”

Claffey's tenure as CEO marks a new chapter for Panasas, and his strategic focus on driving advancements that deliver tangible customer value is set to define the company's growth trajectory in the coming years.