Executive Leadership

Vikram Mehta, president and CEO of BLADE Network Technologies, is the driving force behind the company’s growth and rapid global expansion, making BLADE one of the fastest growing companies in enterprise data center networking.  Under his leadership, the company has attracted partners such as HP, IBM, Juniper Networks, NEC, Netezza and SGI, and closed a Series B financing for a valuation of $240M.  Vikram brings over 23 years technology industry experience, and has been at the helm of the company since its inception. He brokered the spin out of Nortel’s Blade Server Switch Business Unit (BSSBU), establishing BLADE as an independent company in February 2006. Vikram came to Nortel in 2000 through its acquisition of Alteon Web Systems and there he laid the foundation for what became Nortel’s BSSBU. Prior to this, he spent 12 years at Hewlett-Packard in various management and executive positions in several countries across the Asia Pacific region and the US. His last position at HP was general manager Enterprise Servers, Americas Region, a $1B+ business. In 2009, Vikram won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® award in the “Emerging” category for Northern California, and was subsequently honored as a National Finalist Winner and inducted into the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Hall of Fame. Vikram has been a frequent speaker at industry events and is often quoted by media and analysts. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology.  Read his blog

As senior vice president and CFO, Mark Verbeck is responsible for the company’s corporate finance, investor relations and information technology strategy. He brings over 20 years experience in finance and operations from both emerging growth companies and major corporations. Prior to joining BLADE Network Technologies, Mark was an executive and prominent Wall Street research analyst covering technology companies for firms such as Cantor Fitzgerald, Citigroup and Epoch Partners (acquired by Goldman Sachs). As a former equity analyst, Mark has broad exposure to successful corporate strategy, capital processes, and acquisition approaches as well as experience with complex accounting and reporting issues. Prior to Wall Street, Mark worked at Deloitte & Touche (now Deloitte), the global accounting and consulting company, where he provided a number of Fortune 500 companies with advice on corporate and information technology strategy. Mark has a BA in Accounting from the University of St. Thomas.

Clive Surfleet is responsible for expanding the company’s strategic alliances in the data center market. He brings more than 30 years of executive experience to the company in servers and storage. Clive spent 24 years at Hewlett-Packard, where he built businesses of over $1B in revenue during his tenure in a variety of senior executive roles in marketing and channels, R&D, operations, strategic planning and finance. Clive established HP’s position in enterprise storage by building strong product and channel programs with partners such as EMC, Hitachi, Clariion, and Storagetek, and was the senior HP executive leading the HP/Compaq merger planning for storage. At HP, Clive led the HP9000 Unix Server channel and ISV partner program from its inception, building partnerships with companies such as Oracle, SAP, Informix, Sybase and Peoplesoft and driving over $700M in HP9000 sales annually. He also managed the HP9000 reseller program and established HP’s first 2-tier distributor channel for servers and OEMs. Clive has also held the position of chief marketing and strategy officer for Exanet, Inc., and is a member of the advisory board of Storactive, Inc. He has a B.S in Mathematics and an MBA, both from the University of California at Berkeley.