Apertio

Michael Jackson - Chairman
Michael founded Elderstreet in 1990 and is its executive chairman. For the past 20 years, he has specialised in raising finance and investing in the smaller companies sector. Michael is non executive chairman of Partygaming plc and ex Chairman of The Sage Group plc.
He is a director and investor in many other quoted and unquoted companies, including Planit Holdings PLC, Netstore PLC and CS Group Plc. Michael studied law at Cambridge University, and qualified as a chartered accountant with Coopers and Lybrand before spending five years in marketing for various US multinational technology companies.

Paul Magelli - Chief Executive Officer
As co-founder and CEO, Paul brings his natural leadership and entrepreneurial zeal to Apertio's management, sales and business development. Before founding Apertio, Paul had already been involved in the telecoms and software industries for more than 20 years, both with start-up companies and large corporations. Creating and establishing successful new businesses is a familiar role for him; during the past ten years Paul has led the development of three $100 million businesses from their inception. As Director of Sales for Lucent Worldwide Services, Paul successfully developed business worth over $120 million in software and related services.

Niko von Huetz
Niko von Huetz joined ADD Partners after a twelve-year career in data communications services, enterprise software and management consulting. Prior to joining ADD Partners, Niko was Managing Partner of ICG & Partners, a technology related advisory service. Prior to that he was Vice-President of Marketing & Business Development at Kokua Communications, a pan-European wireless broadband service provider, and European Marketing Director at Trilogy Software, a leading independent CRM vendor based in Austin, Texas. Prior to that he was a Manager at Booz.Allen & Hamilton, in the Engineering & Manufacturing Practice based in Munich.

Mark Farmer
Starting life as a software engineer, he co-founded Metrica Systems in 1992, who became the leading supplier of performance management software to the telecommunications industry. Metrica was acquired by ADC Telecoms in 1996, at which point Mark commenced a career in seed investment. Over the last ten years Mark has made several investments and enjoyed several exits, including Cramer Systems, most recently acquired by Amdocs. At over $400m, this ranks as one of the largest cash based acquisitions of a European software company. In 2002, Mark combined his investment track record with similar ‘entrepreneurs-turned-seed-investors’, to form Eden Ventures, an early stage software venture fund. Eden 1 had its first close in 2004, one of the few first time European funds to close since the market collapse at the turn of the century.

Cyril Bertrand
Cyril is a partner at Deutsche Venture Capital (DVC), a leading European investor on over 70 companies since 1998 with 300 Million Euros under management. In addition to Apertio, Cyril has led a number of early-stage investments for DVC including MergeOptics (Germany), Panoratio (Germany), Powerlase (UK), Sigma-c (Germany, acquired by Synopsys), and VoluBill (France). Before DVC, Cyril joined TeleSoft Partners, a $500 million Silicon-Valley based VC firm to focus on wireless investments. Prior to that, Cyril was a director at Alcatel and built from scratch Alcatel’s first generation of 802.11 products in partnership with Alvarion (Israel). Cyril holds three patents and an MBA from INSEAD. He graduated in Digital Communications from ENST, Paris.

Michael T. Tokarz
Prior to forming the Tokarz Group, Michael was a General Partner at Kohlberg, Roberts & Co. KKR is a private investment firm that makes equity investments in management buyouts on behalf of itself and its investors, which are primarily government and corporate pension funds, financial institutions and university endowments. Before joining KKR, Michael spent 12 years with the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co. He has established an international reputation for creating unusual acquisition financings, including several that set new standards for the scale of financings and leveraged buyouts.

Ralf Holighaus - Vice President and General Manager
Previously CEO of Netzwert, the AAA and BSF provider recently acquired by Apertio. Ralf is responsible for Apertio's policy enabled product set. Ralf co-founded Netzwert in 2000 and has more than ten years of expertise in technical marketing and systems integration. Prior to co-founding Netzwert AG, Ralf served as product manager at NetCS Informationstechnik GmbH, where he was responsible for SNA and TCP/IP based communication products. Later, his position was product marketing manager of Isocor Germany with responsibility for the N-PLEX Messaging Server, which, after Critical Path's acquisition of Isocor, is now sold as Memova (R) Messaging.

Michael Welbourne - Chief Technology Officer
A co-founder of Apertio, Michael is responsible for Apertio's innovative suite of mobility applications. Michael previously worked for IPL, where as lead architect and designer he was the driving force behind many highly visible projects for Vodafone, Orange, BT and HP. He subsequently founded Invergence Ltd, a successful software development company specialising in high performance software systems enhancing the service portfolios of mobile network operators. Michael managed the company's business operations as well as designing and implementing its products. Michael's 16 years' experience in developing complex, enterprise-critical, intelligent networking (IN) and core network applications includes the design and implementation of the Vodafone HLR and related infrastructure software, now used in five global operating companies, as well as a broad range of applications across the core network of Orange.

Wallace Ascham - Vice President, Partners
A co-founder of Apertio, Wallace has over 14 years experience in the telecoms sector gained from a range of senior technical, management and business roles. As the UK Customer Support Manager for Lucent Technologies, Wallace was responsible for all products installed in the UK, including complex optical and data networks, and the world's largest Intelligent Network. During his time as Business Manager for Lucent's UK and Ireland Services division, Wallace was instrumental in its five-fold growth in revenues.Prior to Lucent, Wallace was part of Shaye Communications, a market leading UK digital communications company, managing OEM marketing and sales across Europe and Asia as well as heading up global customer support. At Apertio, Wallace is responsible for global partner sales and marketing.