Niel Viljoen
Chief Executive Officer
Niel Viljoen has been active in the computing and networking equipment industry for the past 20 years. Primary areas of focus include IP, ATM, security and system design. Before becoming involved with Netronome on a full-time basis in July 2003, Niel was an active business angel, investing in, amongst others, Nujira, Intune and Azuro. He serves on the board of Nujira.
Between 2000 and 2001, Niel was CTO of the Marconi group. Niel joined Marconi after the acquisition of FORE Systems, where he was part of the management team. At FORE, Niel's roles included Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Service Provider Division, Senior Vice President Product Marketing, Vice President Engineering, Senior Director and General Manager of the Adapter group. Niel joined FORE through the acquisition of Nemesys Ltd, where he was the CEO. Nemesys developed a range of video encoding devices for broadband networks. Prior to that, Niel developed and created a number of businesses, developing products like network security devices and large distributed memory processor complexes.
Niel has received a number of industry awards. He has attended the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) and Cambridge University (UK).
David Wells
Vice President, Technology & General Manager EMEA
David is a business-focused technologist with 18 years experience in the data and telecommunications equipment sector, operating globally at senior executive and board level. He has successfully led product development activities in both start-ups and large companies. At a corporate level, he has experience developing strategy, supporting M&A activities, corporate finance and leading technology and marketing activities.
Most recently, David was EVP and CTO for the Wireless division of Marconi. Before this, he was at Tellabs in both corporate and product development roles. Prior to Tellabs, he played a key role in Netcomm Ltd, a UK start-up eventually acquired by GDC. While at Netcomm, GDC and Tellabs, David was an active contributor to standards development for Frame Relay and ATM. He also served on the board of directors of the ATM Forum.
David has a PhD from Cranfield Institute of Technology and is the holder of a number of patents relating to telecommunications.
Johann Tönsing
Chief Architect & Senior Vice President, Software Engineering
Johann focuses on combining information and communications technologies to create innovative products that solve real-world needs. He has managed product engineering and marketing for large companies and all aspects of start-ups.
From 1999 to 2003, Johann was with Marconi Communications (USA), managing engineering for several products based on VoIP (SIP and H.323) and distributed control plane (GMPLS) technologies, and serving as business planner. Prior to that, he was active for eight years in the network and IT security field as lead engineer (chief architect), product marketing manager and independent consultant, amongst others, leading design of VPN, firewall and intrusion detection products for Nanoteq (South Africa).
Since 1985, Johann has founded or participated in a variety of business ventures. These created products that typically combined digital electronics, embedded software, communications hardware/software and distributed processing. He received M. Eng. (Electron.) and B. Eng. (Electron.) degrees (both cum laude) from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
