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Anagran's senior leadership team consists of networking industry veterans whose pedigree consists of some of the most highly respected networking and systems companies.


Management Team



Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts Founder and Chairman
Kim Niederman CEO and President
Stefan Beck VP of Sales, Americas and EMEA
Bill Beckett VP & General Manager, Asia Sales Operations
John Harper VP Engineering
Alex Henderson CTO
Dan O'Farrell VP Marketing
Laura Phelps VP Finance and Administration

Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts, Founder and Chairman
Larry is recognized as one of the world's foremost authorities on packet switching and network architectures. He led the team that designed and developed ARPANET, the world's first major computer packet network, which evolved into the modern Internet. He founded the world's first packet data communications carrier, Telenet, which was sold to GTE in 1979 and subsequently became the data division of Sprint. After founding Telenet, Larry was a Founder and CEO of two ATM companies-NetExpress and ATM Systems. Most recently he was a Founder and CTO of Caspian Networks, the leader in high performance IP systems, where he designed and built IP Flow Routers. Dr. Roberts has been a recipient of numerous awards in the field of computer science and telecommunications. He and three others credited with founding the Internet were recipients of the National Academy of Engineering's 2001 Draper Award, engineering's highest honor. Larry holds B.S., M.S., and PhD. degrees from MIT. For more information on Dr. Roberts please visit www.packet.cc.

Kim Niederman, CEO and President
Kim has more than 20 years of successful leadership experience in the high-tech industry, having held various senior management positions at Polycom, Inc., Cisco, FORE Systems and Wang Laboratories. Most recently, Kim was SVP, Worldwide Sales at Polycom, Inc. increasing sales in three years from $360M to over $700M by creating a new Sales and Channel strategy.  Mr. Niederman also was CEO of LongBoard, Inc., a leader in software-based Class 5 IP services platforms and CEO of Magellan Network Systems, one of the first Calling Card Platforms.  Prior to LongBoard, he was Vice President of Sales for start-up RadioLAN, the first developer of 10MB WLANs and Vice President of Sales at FORE Systems, where he was responsible for doubling sales in excess of $225M within twelve months and merging FORE's $800 million acquisition of Alantec. As one of the early Sales Executives at Cisco Systems in the early 1990’s, he served in various executive capacities including Director, Worldwide Sales.  Kim managed Cisco’s first Business Unit that was comprised of acquisitions Crescendo, Kalpana and Grand Junction, and was instrumental in propelling sales from a $14 million to a $400 million run rate in little over a year. Earlier in his career, he held executive sales management positions at Wang Laboratories and served as CEO of Hallmark Industries. Mr. Niederman has been a Board Member and Technical Advisor to several Silicon Valley startups.  He holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Denver.

Stefan Beck, VP of Sales, Americas and EMEA

Stefan Beck has a proven track record as a general manager, global sales leader, and business development expert.  He has over fifteen years of consistent, outstanding results introducing new networking technologies, products, and companies into the global service provider and enterprise markets.  Prior to joining Anagran, Stefan successfully managed the international market entry for a variety of companies including Procket Networks, Chiaro Networks, and IP-Unity.  Before that, he worked in various sales and operations roles at Cisco Systems and Redback Networks.  Stefan has repeatedly managed successful market entry into established and emerging international markets, where he has built a number of successful Tier 1 and Tier 2 channel relationships.  He has also built and grown successful sales organizations for early to mid-stage companies, and has extensive experience working with telecommunications equipment market leaders.

Bill Beckett, VP and General Manager, Asia Sales Operations

Bill has over 17 years experience in the telecommunications industry in various sales, marketing, operations and engineering roles.  Prior to Anagran, Bill served as Director, Sales Engineering and Consulting for Tellabs Asia Pacific where he was instrumental in building Tellabs’ data business with tier 1 carriers in Japan, China, Korea, South Asia and Australia. Prior to Tellabs, Bill was Director, Consulting Engineering for Vivace Networks (acquired by Tellabs in 2003), where he was successful in acquiring Vivace’s first customers MCI and NTT, which led to the Tellabs acquistion by Vivace.  Bill has also served as Director, Services and Support at Mayan Networks, Executive Director, Engineering at Allied Riser Communications, and in various engineering and operations roles at Onstream Networks (acquired by 3Com), MFS Datanet (acquired by MCI) and British Telecom North America.  Bill studied Computer Sciences at DeAnza College and is enrolled part time in the Melbourne University MBA program.

John Harper, VP Engineering
John is a 25-year veteran of computer and telecommunications networks. Prior to Anagran, he was Vice-President of IOS Routing at Cisco, where he directed the development and strategy for routing protocols, multicast, IPv6 and related areas for the complete range of Cisco's router and switch products. Before that John was CEO of Q3 Consulting, whose projects included the design of a satellite communications network for Inmarsat, and before that he was at Digital Equipment, where he directed development of products for the telecommunications industry and the evolution of the D ECnet architecture towards open standards. While at Digital he designed what was then the fastest router in the world, the DECnis 500. John remains an engineer at heart, and is the author of over 20 patents. He holds a BA in Computer Studies from the University of Lancaster, England.
Alex Henderson, CTO
Alex brings to Anagran 25+ years of communications systems experience. Prior to joining Anagran, Alex was a Co-founder of Azule Technology, developer of storage switching systems, Co-founder & CTO of Fast-Chip, where he designed and delivered the first programmable 10 gigabit per second packet processor in the industry, Hardware Director/ Manager at ADC Kentrox and Skyline Technology, Member of Technical Staff at NetExpress and Telenet. Alex in an author of 10+ patents. He holds BS in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University.
Dan O'Farrell, VP Marketing
Dan has over twenty years of technical, product management, and marketing leadership experience in data networking, network security, and wireless communications. Prior to joining Anagran, Dan held senior marketing management positions at Sun Microsystems, Inktomi, Peribit Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks in 2005), and a number of early stage startups. At Sun, Dan managed outbound marketing for the Network Systems Division which built carrier-grade servers and peripherals for telecom carriers and service providers. Dan was the original VP of Product Marketing at Peribit, where he drove the company's initial product delivery and successful company launch from stealth mode. He began his career as a developer with IBM, and served in various sales support and product management functions at Tymnet, Hewlett-Packard, and NET. He has held executive product management and marketing management leadership roles since 1994. Dan has a degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York, Plattsburgh.
Laura J. Phelps, VP Finance and Administration
Laura brings to Anagran a 15 year career in banking and financial management. She most recently created the finance and administration policies and procedures for an aviation department within Fry's Electronics. Prior to that she was the Controller at an Internet scheduling company, Xtime. Laura holds a BA from University of Chicago.