When it comes to high-speed, light-weight, reliable messaging systems and transports, the team at 29West has been leading the industry for more than 20 years. We have first-hand experience at what works and have been active in the design of hundreds of solutions and systems.

Mark Mahowald - President and Founder
Mark led the design effort of the world's first digital trading floor systems (the Rich/Reuters TRIARCH system) and created the reliable UDP broadcast messaging protocol used to reliably distribute financial data efficiently across the trading LAN. This work was done in 1985 and 1986, and for the next couple of years as VP of Advanced Development at Rich, Mark had management responsibility for all digital trading floor development on the TRIARCH system. From 1989 to 1995, Mark was the executive VP of Lachman Technologies, responsible for the development and sale of its TCP/IP software and integration services. In late 1995, after being acquired by CA, Mark founded WhiteBarn, where the first commercial implementation of Cisco's PGM reliable multicast software was developed. After WhiteBarn was acquired by Talarian, Mark headed up the multicasting development and integration efforts at Talarian and was later promoted to COO after the company went public. Mark left Talarian in April of 2002, when Talarian was acquired by TIBCO, and founded 29West.

Michael Garwood - Director of Software Development
Mike has been active in networking and consulting/integration services since 1984 when he started his technical career as a consultant for Lachman Technologies. In 1987, Mike became responsible for developing the Lachman TCP/IP stack that became the leading UNIX Streams-based OEM TCP stack. Mike's responsibility evolved into management and he became the Director of the software development and integration group, managing a number of multi-million dollar porting and integration projects. After the Lachman team was acquired by CA, Mike left to join WhiteBarn and head up the services and integration team. For the next 4 years, Mike delivered critical work on RADIUS proxies for the 3Com remote access servers and managed the growing PGM and File transfer development teams at WhiteBarn. After WhiteBarn was acquired by Talarian, Mike took management responsibility for the broader PGM effort as well as the multicast services and integration work.

Todd Montgomery - Principal Software Architect
Todd has been active in the development of reliable multicast software since his early research work in reliable multicast as a grad student at West Virginia University. This background was extended with work for NASA in 1994 and 1995. In 1995 Todd was a co-founder and software architect for GlobalCast Communications in Freemont CA. During his 4 years with GlobalCast, Todd implemented a number of reliable multicast protocols including a prototype of PGM, and commercial releases of RMP and Lucent's RMTP II. These protocols employed different approaches to provide packet recovery, and each had clear strengths and weaknesses. GlobalCast was acquired by Talarian and at that time Todd joined the WhiteBarn team to develop a commercial PGM product as well as reliable file transfer applications built on this framework. In this work, Todd helped shape the PGM spec submitted to the IETF as a co-author of draft IETF RFC 3208. When WhiteBarn was acquired by Talarian, Todd continued to drive the PGM development effort as well as support the integration of PGM into the Talarian SmartSockets product family. Todd continued in these roles after the acquisition of Talarian by TIBCO. In early 2004, Todd left TIBCO to join the 29West team. Additional details are available in an extended resume.

Tim Mund - Global Head of Sales
Tim has spent the last 15 years of his sales career in the telecommunications and high tech industry. He managed highly specialized business projects with The NASDAQ Stock Market and the NASD from 2000 until 2006 while working at MCI/WorldCom/Verizon. Tim worked with his team to deliver creative, reliable, and cost effective managed data solutions for NASDAQ's mission critical systems. He also spearheaded the effort to engage with NASDAQ's end users and further drive revenue and customer loyalty. In mid-2006, Tim started working at Solace Systems with the charter of developing new relationships and revenue generating opportunities with the New York based financial community. During this time Solace made significant progress with large industry players and developed new use cases to better leverage Solace technology and add value to client engagements. Tim joined 29West in December of 2007 to lead the sales and marketing efforts worldwide.

Annalisa Sarasini - Director of Business Development EMEA
Annalisa is in our London office at 44 (0) 207 763 7001, located at 2 Finch Lane, London EC3V 3NA. Prior to joining 29West, Ms. Sarasini was responsible for Business Development and Technical Sales at IONA Technologies supporting the firms SOA solutions within the financial and telecommunications community throughout Northern Europe. Prior to IONA, Ms. Sarasini was a Senior Architect and Sales Engineer for Sonic Software with responsibilities in eleven European countries. Ms. Sarasini has extensive experience as an authority on architectural design within the financial and telecommunications sectors.

Kurt Klein - Director, Asia Pacific Region
Based in our Warrenville office at 630-836-2990, Kurt is a twenty-year veteran in the financial technology business, having been involved in a number of roles including sales, marketing, operations, client services and project management. Prior to coming on board with 29West, Kurt was with Market Data Integrators, a sales and marketing consultancy serving low-latency technology providers. Kurt's background also includes many years with HyperFeed Technologies as COO, where his responsibilities included the management of the firm's ticker plant and distribution technology. Kurt also served as Vice President of Sales and Operations at FutureSource for over a decade.

Matt Meinel - Global Director of Business Development
In 1984-1986, Matt worked with Mark on the team that designed and built the original Reuters Triarch system at Rich/Reuters. Following that, Matt served at the UBS Investment Bank and its predecessor organizations - Swiss Bank Corp and O'Connor & Associates - for more than 15 years, starting as software architect/project leader with O'Connor and rising to CIO-level positions at Swiss Bank Corp. and later within the Fixed Income & Treasury Division of UBS. Matt spent 5 years living and working in London and ran global IT development groups within UBS for more than 10 years. Matt also served on the board of Swapswire.com and helped create FPML, serving as founder co-chair of the Standards Committee. From 2003 until joining 29West in January of 2006, Matt had been providing IT management consulting and coaching to IT companies serving the global banking community like Red Hat. Since joining 29West, in January of 2006, Matt has been driving our global strategy to meet the enterprise messaging needs of the top tier banks worldwide.

Bob Van Valzah - Director Technical Marketing
Bob built an Altair computer from a kit in 1975. He's been interested in high-performance networking systems ever since. Before joining 29West, he served as Product Manager for TIBCO's SmartSockets, Rendezvous, and SmartPGM products. He has a deep understanding of the system-level approach necessary to build reliable, high-performance messaging systems. His familiarity with all architectural layers in a system allows him to understand the trade-offs involved in performance, latency, and reliability. Bob has designed and managed LAN and WAN networks delivering reliable unicast and multicast connectivity using protocols like PGM, PIM, and BGP. In addition to roles in Product Management, Bob has been a Project Manager, Support Manager, and Consulting Manager. Bob gained experience in applying technology to financial market problems while working at FutureSource. He managed their communications network, a team of engineers responsible for their ticker plant, and built their original E-commerce web site. Bob left FutureSource to join WhiteBarn in 1998, and worked on PGM, messaging and File Transfer applications at WhiteBarn, Talarian and TIBCO.