Executive Management Team

Steve Topper, Chief Executive Officer and President
Steve Houck, Senior Vice President Worldwide Sales
Keith Klarer, VP Engineering and Founder
Robert Harling, Vice President Operations

Steve Topper
Chief Executive Officer and President

Steve is a customer-facing Entrepreneur, Operating Executive, CEO and Board Member bringing over three decades of leadership across diverse technologies, products, markets and channels to Astute Networks. Prior to joining Astute, Steve was the Founder and Managing Director of JumpStart Partners, a client-based business advisory firm providing comprehensive strategic and operational services to Management teams, Board of Directors, and Venture Capital investors. Steve previously served as CEO of Cerebra, an enterprise software developer, and recognized semantic technology leader of metadata repository, data classification, and business policy management solutions. Cerebra was acquired by webMethods (subsequently by SoftwareAG). Earlier, Steve was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at ECentury Capital Partners, and previously served as CEO of several venture capital funded companies including Platypus Technology (SAN-based solid state storage systems), CEO of Zagros Networks (Multi-protocol, Quality of Service application delivery systems for packet switched networks) and CEO of Innovision (DTV/HDTV and Set-top Box processors). As an entrepreneur, Steve founded two start-ups - G2 Networks, a Fibre Channel-based Storage Area Network (SAN) solution company, where his vision created the technology, market and product road maps, led the company through three successful rounds of venture capital funding and drove the development of two innovative "industry firsts"; (i) a single chip 64-bit PCI-to-Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) and (ii) a full custom, mixed signal single chip gigabit optical transceiver for Fibre Channel and Ethernet applications. Steve has also helped launch three Ethernet companies and prior to entering the computer industry, spent four years at Warner Communications in marketing and merchandising roles. Steve received a BA in Business Administration from New York University.

Steve Houck
Senior Vice President Worldwide Sales

Steve is a technology veteran with 20 years of experience scaling global sales channels and partner programs in the geographic regions of North America, APAC, EMEA and Latin America for both private and public companies. Prior to joining Astute Networks, Steve held various executive positions including Vice President of Worldwide Channels, and Vice President/GM Latin America for VMware. Steve also served as Vice President Worldwide SMB Sales at EMC where he was chartered with and successfully developed their SMB storage market. Steve held the position of CEO at Gridtree, a cloud services company serving enterprises throughout Latin America. He has also held various sales leadership positions including Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Corel Corporation. Steve began his career in the United States Army in 1989 and holds multiple Military Honors.

Keith Klarer
Vice President of Engineering and Founding Member

Keith has 30 years of hardware design and management experience, including fifteen years of technical management experience and four years as a founder and CEO of an engineering services company. Before co-founding Astute Networks in 2000, he was the CEO of Axym Design, which provided system design services to such companies as Philips Semiconductor, IBM and Gateway 2000. Keith has held technical and management positions at Logic Innovations, a consulting firm that provided product design services to clients such as General Instruments, Brooktree, and Symbol Technologies. He has also held engineering positions at Scientific Computer Systems and Control Data Corporation. Keith holds a BSEE Degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Robert Harling
Vice President Operations

Robert brings nearly 20 years of Operations, Supply Chain Management, and Product Development experience to Astute Networks. Robert has extensive operational experience in diverse industries such as, storage networking, semiconductors, industrial computing, wireless networks, power conditioning, and consumer products. His focus has been on assisting companies achieve their goals through operational excellence. Prior to joining Astute Networks, Robert held key management positions with Carttronics, AP Labs, JNI Corp. (AMCC Enterprise Division), Maxwell Technologies, and Scotts/Miracle-Gro. Robert graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a degree in Quantitative Economics and Decision Sciences.

 

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