NWN Corporation, a leading managed IT services provider, today named accomplished IT industry executive Jim Sullivan as its new President and Chief Executive Officer. Sullivan, who has served as President of copy data management software pioneer Actifio for the past eight years, will drive the next phase of growth and leadership for NWN in the cloud era.

Sullivan succeeds Skip Tappen, who has served as NWN President and CEO since January 2017 and held a series of leadership roles at NWN since 2004.

Dave Blechman, Founder of New State Capital Partners and NWN's Chairman of the Board, said, "We find ourselves at an extremely exciting time as a provider of innovative managed IT services for some of the most dynamic organizations across numerous industries. The evolution of digital transformation, new technologies and cloud-based services puts NWN at the center of customers' business strategies, not just their IT strategies. We are very fortunate to bring an executive of Jim Sullivan's stature to lead the next phase of NWN's growth. Jim has led both technology companies and service providers to high-growth results over the past three decades. He has been at the center of some of the most significant developments in IT, and has helped build the strategies and led the execution for industry leaders from EMC to Actifio."

"We also thank Skip Tappen for 15 years of tremendous dedication and accomplishments in helping to build NWN, and for his leadership as CEO over the past two years."

Sullivan, who brings more than 30 years of enterprise technology industry experience, said, "At a time of change in enterprise technology and the way it's consumed that is both wrenching and incredibly promising, I am really excited to have the opportunity to lead an accomplished organization like NWN. The NWN team, its customers and partners have built a foundation that I believe has tremendous potential for further growth. Organizations need a partner like NWN as they navigate their digital transformations and drive their businesses forward."

From strategy to execution and leadership, Sullivan brings a track record of scaling both emerging and established companies for rapid global growth. As President of Actifio, he helped drive this copy data management software pioneer from pre-revenue to more than 3,500 global customers and a unicorn valuation. In co-developing the company's strategy and leading sales, presales, channels and OEM distribution, Sullivan drove the Actifio software platform into leading enterprises across all industries and forged OEM relationships with several of the world's largest IT providers.

Prior to Actifio, Sullivan served as President of enterprise storage technology provider XIV, which was acquired by IBM, then as Vice President of IBM Storage. He was previously Chief Executive Officer of CentrePath Network, and prior to that spent 12 years at EMC Corporation in sales leadership roles, including Senior Vice President of Sales, as the company grew from $80 million to more $10 billion in annual sales.

NWN, a leading managed IT services provider with locations throughout the U.S., solves customer business problems through technology. NWN designs, implements, manages, and supports secure, right-sized, reliable IT operations, on-premise and in the cloud, leveraging flexible, real-time solutions to empower organizations to focus on what they know best: their business.