The Planet Appoints Walters as General Manager, Storage & Backup

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Planet, the world’s largest privately held dedicated hosting company, today announced the appointment of Robert Walters to lead its newly formed storage and backup business unit. He will be responsible for leading strategy and developing new product lines to extend the company’s portfolio. Walters reports to Steve Kahan, vice president of marketing and product management.

He joins The Planet from Rackspace.

“With the growth of online businesses, there are both e-commerce requirements and legal obligations for having strong backup and storage products,” said Kahan. “Rob Walters brings significant experience to The Planet, along with important industry knowledge. His experience with some of the most highly regarded companies in the technology and hosting arena is a tremendous benefit to our company.”

Walters has held a series of increasingly responsible roles in the technology industry. He served as director of product management with Rackspace where he was responsible for the strategy and delivery of its managed hosting product portfolio, as well as refining product roadmaps to support the company’s product strategies.

Prior to Rackspace, he was a senior product manager with Hewlett-Packard. In this role, he was responsible for the entire lifecycle of three products in its application management offering, along with analytics and virtualization management initiatives for the OpenView line. Walters also worked with EMC Corporation as a product manager in its product strategy group. Additional experience includes work with American Express, where he was a team manager and lead software specialist on its global enterprise systems management team.

Walters earned an M.B.A. from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, with an emphasis in high-tech marketing. He attended the University of London, where he received a M.S. in computing science, and the University of Westminster where he graduated with a B.S. in life science.

About The Planet

The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 6.7 million Web sites worldwide. By offering the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and unmatched network connectivity, The Planet helps turn information technology into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to successfully grow their businesses. For additional information, visit www.theplanet.com