Ungaro was vice president of worldwide deep computing sales for IBM, and he was in charge of all IBM servers and storage as they related to high performance computing, life sciences, digital media, and business intelligence.
He was hired away by Cray in August 2003 to take over its sales. Cray has brought two supercomputer architectures to market–the Cray X1 multistreaming vector processors and the Red Storm Opteron-Linux Cray XT3.
Cray was also helped significantly through its $115m acquisition of Canadian Opteron-Linux supercomputer maker OctigaBay, and has commercialized that product as the Cray XD1. All three product lines are now selling, and after some initial supply constraints, Cray could be heading into an easier sales cycle. But it has posted $144m in losses against $149m in sales in 2004.
o say that Cray has to focus on sales execution now is an understatement. But, to be fair, the supercomputer business is, by its nature, a choppy one, and with so many large projects, a small delay can push a relatively large amount of sales out into the future. Cray had, for instance, $237m in sales and $63m in profits in 2003.
Jim Rottsolk, Cray’s chairman and CEO, says that Ungaro’s appointment as president will allow him more time to focus on Cray’s product strategy. All Cray departments except finance and legal and relations with the governments of the world with which Cray does business will now report to Ungaro.
