About VM6
Addressing the efficiencies and business continuity at Remote Offices, Branch Office (ROBO) and SMB, where specialized technical staff is not practical or affordable, is a challenge for infrastructure planning. Without a cost effective alternative, IT managers look for the cheapest ìgood enoughî solution to keep their ROBO or business operational and have therefore become accustomed to dealing with outdated hardware, suboptimal utilization, and unplanned downtime. With the rapid proliferation of virtualization, data centers have adopted the technology in production and for many of their optimization and business continuity needs however it has not been cost effective or easy to roll-out to the ROBO or SMB, until now.
Businesses of all sizes, even the smallest companies, operate remote offices. Enterprise class organizations (+10K employees) have between 500 and 600 branch offices each, the lionís share (55%) located in 3 major industries: Retail; Finance/Insurance; and Hospitality/Food Services. In these ROBO locations, employees work directly with customers and partners. If systems, applications and data arenít current or are unavailable, the results will include reduced productivity, lost sales and most importantly, decreased customer confidence/satisfaction. Same is true for SMB.
Providing excellent IT service to remote offices and SMB isnít easy however it is becoming imperative to maintain service levels. Of organizations that run a high number of widely-dispersed facilities it becomes even more problematic. Organizational and technological factors have made high availability for ROBO locations and SMB prohibitively costly so organizations have made the conscious decision to assume the risk of lost sales, and lost customers.
VM6 provides enterprise-class virtualization to remote locations and SMB without the complexity or cost of traditional solutions. Designed for remote office and SMB budgets and capabilities, VM6 VMex harnesses the power of virtualization to provide server consolidation, management, shared storage and high availability without the need for costly consultants, professional services, training or specialized skill sets other than the MSCEs our customers already have on staff.
Claude Goudreault, Founder and CEO
Claude is a visionary and a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in developing IT infrastructure for large enterprises. He specializes in designing solutions that allows companies to substantially reduce their IT total cost of ownership.
Claude founded VM6 five years ago and was involved as a senior IT adviser with each of his clients. VM6 provides IT expertise and affordable solutions to extend the benefits of virtualization.Prior to starting up VM6, Claude was a senior consultant working for customers like Microcell, Rogers, Videotron, Bell, Hydro-Quebec, General Electric, GAN Insurance and Valero, CGI, IBM, Quebecor, John Hancock, Canada Post and OCE.
Claude has been invited to participate in many expert panels that focus on virtualization such as Montreal VM show 2005, VMWorld 2005 and 2006, HP Tech World 2006, Montreal VMug 2007, VMware Symposium 2008, Journal les affaires 2009, Finance on Windows 2009, Royal Bank of Canada CIO Council 2009 and Microsoft WPC 2009.
Eric Courville, Founder and COO
Eric brings over 18 years of successful experience in sales, marketing and business development and a solid track record at improving top line growth. Prior to joining VM6, Eric was Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development at Embotics and PlateSpin where he was responsible of establishing and executing the go-to-market strategy including building and maintaining relationships with all worldwide channel, OEM and alliance partners. At PlateSpin, Eric helped lead the company to well over 200 percent revenue growth annually for over three years; increasing the number of customers from less than 60 to over than 3500 globally.
Prior to this Eric was responsible for establishing and growing MPlex Solutions into a profitable business arm of MediSolution Ltd by tripling revenue over a one year period. At Platform Computing Corporation, Eric was responsible for establishing and managing global alliances with key system vendors such as Apple, Dell, Egenera, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, SGI, and Sun Microsystems, leading to record sales. While as Director of Channels for SGI Canada, Eric was responsible for all the indirect sales operations, including resellers, VARs, ISVs, system integrators, distributors and telesales, leading to dramatic revenue contributions from indirect channels.
Eric holds a Business Management and Marketing degree from Les Hautes Etudes Commerciales business school in Montreal.
Eric is married and the proud father of 2 sons. Eric enjoys Skiing, Golf, Cooking, Wine and spending time with family and friends.
Denis Archambault, Partner and CFO
Denis brings over 15 years of successful experience in business management, with a solid track record in developing business models and industry intelligence to backup business strategies. Denis has been with VM6 since inception, five years ago, and until recently was the acting president. Prior to starting up VM6, Denis was head of business modeling and business intelligence at Modelcom, a boutique shop working largely for the Telesystem holding. With nearly 75 direct investments in the high tech world, Denis has had the chance to work first hand with companies from beginning to success, helping them define strategies from a financial and operational perspective. His direct experience has brought him immense knowledge about identifying great products, markets and building startup companies.
Previously, Denis was a consultant developing sophisticated financial and operational cost models for large industrial companies. These models where used to improve product and customer profitability through product remixing, process reengineering and customer pricing. As a consultant, he has had the opportunity to go from business to business for a period of five years. It was at that time that he became seriously interested in information systems and information technologies.
Denis holds a masterís degree in management (M.Sc.) and a bachelorís degree in accounting (BA) from líEcole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, a world renowned business school in Montreal. He is also a member of the Quebec Order of Certified Management Accountant (CMA), for whom he regularly gives time to evaluate new accountants passing their certification.
Denis is married and the proud father of a son and a young daughter. He enjoys playing out with his kids, cooking, fine spirits and spending time with the neighbors.