SAM VENNERI, FORMER NASA CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST, JOINS ASYNCHRONY SOLUTIONS AS SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
Move from High-Profile Government Agency is Spurred by Confidence in Company's Agile Approach to IT Initiatives
ST. LOUIS (March 1, 2008) -- Sam Venneri's 20-year career with NASA focused on transforming advanced technology research into practical applications. He assembled interdisciplinary teams composed of NASA centers, respected industrial firms, and universities to exploit advances in a broad range of research areas including telescope optics, space-based communications, propulsion, robotics and IT. As a result, Venneri's leadership is responsible for many of the NASA-initiated innovations being used today in industries such as transportation, health care, and homeland security.
Now, the former NASA CTO/CIO will be putting his high-profile experience to work as the new senior vice president at Asynchrony Solutions (www.asolutions.com), a pioneer in the agile delivery of IT solutions for government agencies and Global 2000 companies. Agile is a software development methodology that minimizes risk and reduces project development time through constant evaluation, feedback, and testing.
While the move from NASA to a small business might seem unexpected for someone with Venneri's background, he pointed to Asynchrony's aggressive approach as a primary factor in his decision.
"I joined Asynchrony because it offers a clear and actionable solution to the most pervasive challenge faced by IT initiatives across both government and private sector projects," said Venneri. "The company has proven that its approach can generate product capabilities in cycles of months, rather than years. This is very exciting work, and I look forward to being part of the executive team."
Venneri's direct experience with a broad spectrum of government IT projects helped him understand that the growing scale and complexity of software requirements was one of the most significant risk factors now faced by those responsible for these projects.
"The problems we saw at NASA still remain a key challenge for almost every major IT project," said Venneri. "Over the past decade, efforts to improve the processes of legacy project methodology have only produced marginal improvements in project success. Clearly, patching up the old ways of doing things was a dead-end approach."
Over the past five years, Asynchrony Solutions has been helping many government customers break away from traditional development methods, along with the associated risks and low success rate. Asynchrony's groundbreaking application of agile methodology within the Department of Defense has delivered an unbroken series of successful projects ranging from the creation of a mobile collaboration platform for the Explosive Ordnance Disposal community to the development of a turnkey Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) development environment for the U.S. Army.
As senior vice president at Asynchrony, Venneri will apply his extensive experience with the company's agile methodology and rapid prototyping to help government agencies and commercial markets improve and expand their product applications.
"Large organizations are realizing that traditional project methodologies don't deliver the results they need in today's fast-changing environment," said Bob Elfanbaum, Asynchrony CEO. "The fact that a person of Sam's stature decided to join us is a major validation of our vision. He will play a key role in helping us with our work with the Department of Defense, other government agencies, and large corporations."
ABOUT ASYNCHRONY SOLUTIONS, INC.
Asynchrony Solutions is an innovative software technology firm focused on the agile delivery of systems integration, custom application development and secure collaboration solutions. Clients include Global 2000 companies and Government agencies. More information is available on the Web at www.asolutions.com.