VC-backed Embrane names Bill Burns as CEO

Venture capital-backed Embrane, which provides app-centric network services and virtual appliance lifecycle management, has named Bill Burns as president and chief executive officer. Prior to Embrane, Burns was CEO of Spirent Communications. Embrane recently raised $14 million in a Series C funding round led by Cisco, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates and North Bridge Venture Partners, as well as new investor Presidio Ventures.

Press Release

Embrane,® the leader in delivering application-centric network services and virtual appliance lifecycle management, today announced it has appointed Bill Burns as its new President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Building on multiple recent positive advancements by the company, such as continuing to secure new customers, raising $14 million in Series-C funding, and new partnerships with Cisco and Sourcefire, Burns will leverage his nearly three decades of experience across networking, data center, applications and services to accelerate the company’s growth.

Prior to joining Embrane, Bill Burns was CEO of Spirent Communications plc, a global leader in test and measurement solutions within development labs, communications networks and IT organizations. Under Burns’ leadership, Spirent grew revenue and profitability while establishing Spirent as a market share leader across each of its market segments. Burns also held several executive leadership positions at Tellabs, Inc., including Senior Vice President Global Marketing, Strategy and Business Development, Senior Vice President – Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Vice President – Competitive Service Providers.

“In my role as CEO of Spirent, I saw first-hand how technologies were evolving to support the changing demands of next-generation data centers, and companies like Embrane had an opportunity to address a significant need in the market,” said Burns. “As I looked across the industry, I wanted to lead a company that not only was innovating, but also had proven it could solve real customer challenges. Embrane is that company and I’m excited about the opportunity and significant potential we have in front of us.”

Burns responsibilities will include the overall leadership of the company, expanding its existing customer base, and building the company’s growing ecosystem of partners to leverage Embrane’s virtual appliance lifecycle management solutions. He assumes the leadership role from Embrane Co-founder, Dante Malagrinò, who will transition into the role of Chief Product Officer, continuing to build on the Embrane heleos platform for virtual lifecycle management and its portfolio of application-centric network services, which includes its firewall, multi-tenant VPN and load balancer.

“As an entrepreneur, it’s important to build the strongest team possible to turn your vision into a market-leading company,” added Malagrinò. “With our customer traction, our new round of funding, and our string of industry partnerships, it’s clear the time is now to take the company to the next level and Bill is the perfect candidate to carry our momentum forward. I’m excited to work with him and to continue evolving our products to solve more challenges of enterprises and service providers alike.”

Burns holds an Associate degree in Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from College Misericordia and a Master of Business Administration degree from Temple University.

About Embrane

Embrane is the leading provider of application-centric network services, including firewalls, VPNs, load balancers and SSL offload engines. The company’s solutions enable customers to create network services on per application basis in seconds, all managed from a single orchestration engine. The result is greater security, and faster time to deployment for applications. Additionally, customers achieve over 50 percent savings in CAPEX and OPEX compared to integrated hardware-based systems and traditional virtual appliance offerings. These solutions are purpose-built for enterprises and service providers looking to design data centers where agility and automation are priorities, including private/hybrid/public cloud environments.