Management Team
Bill Hood – Founder and Chief Executive Officer
A recognized leader known for crafting the requisite strategic vision to achieve business objectives, Bill Hood has a reputation of driving IT solutions through many years of hands on entrepreneurial and management experience. Over 30 years in the industry starting with a large Texas Bank just after graduation with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics at UT Arlington 1985 and on through Price Waterhouse, Guaranty Federal Bank and then as founder of Network Partners, Inc. in 1998.
The last 15 years have been focused as CEO of Network Partners, Inc. and leading NPI’s emergence into the “Solution as a Service” market. For over 10 years, NPI has sold a line of “classic” managed service products through CDW. These Managed Service products included NetGuard© network monitoring, SafeGuard© network backups and QuickStart© Firewall Installations, to name a few. These were packaged up and sold as turn key installations.
Bill is actively driving “Solution-as-a-Service” as an emerging leadership role in the industry. As use of the cloud as a solution matures a new role is emerging that requires knowledge of both cloud infrastructure and cloud applications. Increasingly, customers will be driven to cloud infrastructure and cloud applications forming a new discipline that is focused on delivering these types of solutions and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Rick Braddy – Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Rick Braddy is an innovator, leader and visionary with more than 30 years of technology experience and a proven track record of taking on business and technology challenges and making high-stakes decisions.
Rick is responsible for SoftNAS business and technology strategy, product development and e-commerce infrastructure. Rick also oversees online marketing, lead-generation and product launch strategy for the company.
Rick is a serial entrepreneur and former CTO of Virtual-Q, a hosted virtual desktop company, former Chief Technology Officer of the CITRIX Systems XenApp and XenDesktop group, and former Group Architect with BMC Software.
During his 6 years with CITRIX, Rick led the product management, architecture, business and technology strategy teams that helped the company grow from a $425 million, single product company into a leading, diversified global enterprise software company with more than $1 billion in annual revenues.
Throughout the 1980′s, he developed real-time process control, SCADA and manufacturing automation software, including the first Unix-based process control system.
Rick is a United States Air Force veteran, with military experience in top-secret, cryptographic voice and data systems at NORAD / Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
Today, Rick’s experience as both a Fortune 500 and start-up CTO, software and IT solutions architect guides the team to develop and deliver the SoftNAS storage-as-a-service product line.
Jeff Bunnell – COO and CFO
Jeff Bunnell is Chief Operating Officer, responsible for the company’s day-to-day business operations, sales operations, marketing and business development. Jeff is also serving as acting CFO.
From his start with Data General and HP, Bunnell has nearly 30 years of experience in the technology industry.
Bunnell is a broad-based executive with a track record of startup success. Most recently, he serves as Chief Financial Officer for Network Partners, a CDW national service provider , where he also plays key roles in sales operations, marketing, and strategic partnerships. Previously, Bunnell was President/CEO of Elite Group, a group of companies that, as a HP business partner, offered enterprise and mid-range computing products along with 24/7 hardware support.
