Industry pioneers Robert Strickland, Paul Mockapetris and Ihab Tarazi, bring world-class expertise to Vapor IO, accelerating the company’s lead in edge computing
Austin, Texas – February 1, 2018 – Vapor IO, the leader in edge computing and edge data centers, today announced the addition of three new advisors, each with deep expertise in telecom, internet and data center technologies. Additions are Robert Strickland, former CTO of Leap Wireless and Cricket Communications (acquired by AT&T), Paul Mockapetris, inventor of DNS, and Ihab Tarazi, former CTO of Equinix. These new advisors will support the next phase of the company’s growth, which includes deploying Kinetic Edge infrastructure to dozens of US cities and stitching them together into a nationwide network via Project Volutus.
“Interest and demand for edge computing and Project Volutus continues to accelerate. As we push forward to roll out our first Kinetic Edge cities, we’re thrilled to welcome Robert, Paul and Ihab as advisors and look forward to working closely with them. Each has uniquely pioneered success and innovation within their respected fields time and again, and we look forward to their valuable insights,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO.
As announced last year, Vapor IO and its partners in Project Volutus are building a nationwide network of colocation data centers at the extreme edge of the network. These data centers utilize the patented Vapor Chamber and Vapor Edge Module which can be woven into the urban infrastructure, placed in locations that include rooftops, parking garages and at the base of cell towers. Each Vapor Chamber or Vapor Edge Module can house 150 Kilowatts of IT equipment in a small footprint, and are designed to be placed in extreme edge locations, one hop away from the last mile network.
Global internet players, including cloud operators, application providers, landowners, and network operators stake out high-value edge locations in top tier cities with Project Volutus. Customers place their specialized IT equipment in Project Volutus edge facilities and connect back to their centralized data centers and clouds, making it possible to push workloads to the very edge of the network, within milliseconds of the end user or device, supporting very low-latency applications and reducing the amount of data that has to return to centralized servers.
The new advisors are:
Robert Strickland: Strickland is founder and CEO of M37 Ventures, a consulting agency, where he applies decades of executive, corporate and IT strategy expertise on behalf of clients. Prior to M37, Rob served as CTO of Leap Wireless and Cricket Communications, CIO of T-Mobile, and CIO of Echostar, all of which are leaders in wireless and satellite communications. A longtime technology and mobile executive, Strickland has led business transformations at companies that include T-Mobile, Echostar and Dish Network, Neustar, Televisa, Landmark Communications, The Weather Channel and TruConnect.
Ihab Tarazi: Tarazi has over 25 years of experience in the telecommunication industry, and is currently entrepreneur in residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. Prior to Sutter Hill, he served as CTO of Equinix where he was responsible for Equinix’s International Business Exchange network operations and platform strategy, leading the company’s next generation technology and innovation functions, as well as cloud initiatives. Tarazi has held leadership roles at Verizon and MCI with extensive engineering and operations experience in enterprise products and internet networks. He previously served as co-chair of the Open Optical Packet Transport team at the Telecom Infrastructure Project and chairman of the Metro Ethernet Forum.
Paul Mockapetris: Mockapetris is the inventor of the Domain Name System (DNS). His mission has been to help guide DNS and IP addressing to its next stage. His earliest work at UC Irvine on distributed systems and LAN technology preceded the commercial Ethernet and Token Ring designs. At ISI, after working on the design and initial implementation of the SMTP protocol for email as part of the birth of the Internet in 1983, he took on the challenge of designing DNS, and then operated the original “root servers” for all Internet names. He currently serves as chief scientist at ThreatSTOP.
For more about Vapor IO, and to learn about Project Volutus, please visit www.vapor.io.
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About Vapor IO
Vapor IO is building the cloud of the future by delivering a suite of hardware and software for edge computing. The company’s technology enables highly-distributed micro data centers to be embedded in the wireless and wireline infrastructure, colocated with the last mile or Radio Access Network (RAN), and meshed together with software and high-speed fiber for remote operations, fault tolerance, low-latency workloads, and scale. The company has also built Project Volutus, a partnership with landowners and infrastructure providers to deliver edge as a service using modern data center automation and a colocation business model. For additional information, please visit www.vapor.io.
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