Avid Hires Top Cloud and SaaS Talent to Accelerate Next Phase of Strategic Growth

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID) today announced it has begun to reshape its executive leadership team to drive the next phase of its strategic growth, including the company’s rapidly expanding subscription software business. The company took a number of steps including hiring top business and technology talent with strong cloud & SaaS expertise, sharpening its focus on its core audio and video business areas, and repositioning customer-facing functions to elevate the company’s go-to-market performance and ensure success for every customer.

Welcomes New Cloud & SaaS Talent
Avid named accomplished cloud business and technology expert Lior Netzer as SVP & GM of Media Platform & Cloud Solutions. Lior leads the strategy to further expand and grow Avid’s enterprise media platform portfolio and its overall cloud & SaaS business. He previously served as CTO for IoT and Mobile at Akamai, a leading cloud services provider. Lior has more than 25 years of experience in management, business development, engineering and sales of technologies including cloud, SaaS, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics and networking.

Avid also named Kevin Riley as Chief Technology Officer and SVP of Technology & Innovation. Kevin brings unique expertise to the leadership team with specific experience in SaaS and subscription business and delivery models as well as cloud architectures. Kevin is responsible for Avid’s technology vision and innovation strategy and is helping to steer the company’s top-to-bottom technology strategy to support its digital transformation. Kevin has more than 25 years of experience anticipating and capitalizing on technology inflection points. He most recently served as CTO and EVP of Advanced R&D at Ribbon Communications.

Focuses Expert Leaders on Core Audio & Video Business Areas
Throughout the second half of 2020, as part of Avid’s realignment of its products organization, the company also repositioned key leaders to accelerate innovation and consistently improve performance around its core audio and video business areas. The company has appointed longstanding executive team member Dana Ruzicka to the new role of SVP & GM of Audio & Music Solutions with responsibility for key products including Pro Tools music creation software and solutions for music recording, audio production and live sound. Dana had served as Avid’s Chief Product Officer since 2015. He has more than 25 years of experience in media technology product management, business development, customer service and marketing.

Additionally, the company appointed Avid and industry veteran Tim Claman to the newly created role of SVP & GM of Video, Post & Storage Solutions with responsibility for products including Media Composer video editing software and NEXIS media storage. Previously, Tim was Avid’s CTO and VP of Software Engineering and had served in several product management and technology leadership roles during his 20 years with the company.

Strengthens Commercial and Customer Experience & Success Functions
Avid created a new commercial organization under Tom Cordiner, Chief Revenue Officer, to optimize go-to-market performance across all end markets, products, delivery models and market channels. The commercial organization unites all market-facing revenue-drivers including sales, pre-sales/solutions, project delivery, marketing and e-commerce.

The company also established a customer experience and customer success organization under Kathy-Anne McManus, Chief Customer Experience Officer. This organization focuses on optimizing all facets of the customer experience across Avid, while ensuring the ultimate success of the company’s customers through delivering best-in-class customer support, learning and customer success management capabilities.

“I’m very pleased that Avid succeeded in adding experienced new leaders to its management team such as Lior and Kevin to build a highly scalable SaaS and cloud business as another strategic element to our growing subscription business,” said Jeff Rosica, CEO and President, Avid. “Additionally, I am enthusiastic about the changes we are making in our management team and organizational structure in order to create a more focused and cost-effective organization consistent with our cost-savings targets for 2021, while supporting the next phase of our strategic growth plan. In the near term, we plan to continue to add talent including senior business leaders specifically focused on driving our software subscription and maintenance business areas to accelerate growth in these strategically important recurring revenue parts of our business.”

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