Board of Directors

Gene Banman
Mr. Banman has held a variety of senior leadership positions in technology firms. Most recently, as CEO of Internet security appliance manufacturer NetContinuum, he led NetContinuum’s 100 worldwide employees for 3½ years. Previously, Mr. Banman held senior management positions at Sun Microsystems, serving as vice president and general manager of the Workstation Business Unit and the Information Appliance and Desktop Software Business Unit, and as president of Nihon Sun Microsystems, Sun's Japanese subsidiary. Mr. Banman has a Masters in Industrial Administration from Carnegie-Mellon University and a BS in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley. 

John M. Kehriotis
Mr. Kehriotis is a successful Bay Area-based businessman and investor. He is the owner of JMK Investments, Inc., a real estate investment and management company founded in 1981. Mr. Kehriotis owns and manages apartment, retail, hotel, and commercial properties throughout California. He is also a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings professional basketball team, the Monarchs WNBA team, and the Arco Arena. Mr. Kehriotis graduated from San Jose State University in 1977 and obtained his real estate broker's license in 1978. He is deeply involved with several charitable and professional organizations, including the YMCA, Cancer Society, and Boy and Girl Scouts of America.

Richard Preston
Chief Executive Officer
Richard Preston brings a proven record of success in building profitable software and hardware companies. As CEO, he has taken two companies from concept to profitability and repositioned two other companies for sale to public companies. He has extensive experience in storage management, Internet infrastructure, enterprise software, and online services. Richard was a former accountant with PWC and a founder and director of Silicon Valley Bank. He has served as Chairman of the American Electronics Association (NorCal Council) and on various community Boards. He holds an MBA in Finance and a BS in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.

Joel Harrison
Chief Technical Officer & Co-Founder
Serial entrepreneur Joel Harrison has been at the leading edge of creating value in computer storage for several decades which has resulted in 19 US patents. As a co-founder of Quantum (1980 – hard disk drives – IPO) and Plus Development (1984 – Hardcard – consumer hard disk drives – acquired by Quantum), Joel was a key architectural innovator in evolving the hard disk drive from expensive “washing machine” size products into ubiquitous, small and inexpensive consumer products. After owning several small related businesses in the early 1990’s Joel returned to Quantum in the mid 1990’s and led Quantum into the NAS (Network Attached Storage) server business. During this NAS period, Joel had the epiphany that most storage management problems can be most easily solved through advanced metadata (data about data) management software.

Recently focusing directly on metadata management software, Joel co-founded Categoryware (2000 – Advanced metadata management), became CTO of Acirro (2002 – Global Distributed File Systems using a NAS Switch – acquired by Intel), and most recently co-founded Abrevity (2003). At Abrevity he has been able to fully implement this vision into a world class metadata management software engine which has become the technology foundation for Abrevity. Joel received his BSME from CalPoly in Pomona, CA and his MSME from Caltech in Pasadena, CA.