Solo.io Expands Executive Team Amidst Strong Company Growth; Appoints New CFO and Head of Product Strategy
Application Networking Company Welcomes Seasoned Executive and Industry Influencer; Announces Major Product and Customer Growth at Second Annual SoloCon Event
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — March 8, 2022 — Solo.io, the application networking company, today announced the appointment of Rob Bailer as chief financial officer and Brian Gracely as vice president of product strategy. The announcement follows a momentous year of growth and innovation for Solo.io that included triple-digit customer growth and the unveiling of several industry “first and only” product updates that enable organizations to connect application services, service meshes, clusters, and clouds.
“We’re thrilled to have Rob and Brian join our executive team and believe their industry expertise and acumen will help accelerate Solo.io’s dedication to advancing the application networking industry,” said Idit Levine, founder and CEO, Solo.io. “Solo.io saw tremendous company and customer growth last year, fueled by our commitment to deliver product innovation that goes beyond market and customer demand. In 2021 we experienced 100% year-over-year growth in employee count, as we deepened our leadership team to bring on additional expertise in engineering, customer experience, sales, marketing and business operations. Adding Rob and Brian to our team will ensure Solo.io is positioned for continued success in the future.”
Rob Bailer brings more than a decade of financial experience, joining Solo.io as CFO from cloud data access control company Immuta, where he led the finance team. Previously, he was vice president of finance at machine learning and predictive analytics software company DataRobot where he helped the company grow from 200 to 1,200 employees amidst even faster revenue growth. At Solo.io, Bailer will focus on strategically leading the company’s financial growth and global expansion.
“Solo.io continues to help more enterprises reap the benefits of cloud native technologies while working to advance application networking,” Bailer said. “I am honored to join a company that is recognized as the leader in Istio service mesh and whose team roster includes a who’s who of open source luminaries. The sky’s the limit for Solo.io, and I consider myself lucky to be a part of this stellar team.”
Brian Gracely joins Solo.io as vice president of product and strategy from enterprise open source solutions provider Red Hat, where he served as senior director of product strategy. Gracely led the go-to-market strategy for Red Hat’s Open Hybrid Cloud offerings, working directly with enterprise customers to identify their hybrid cloud strategy and transformation plans. Gracely brings 20+ years of industry experience in business development, product management, and technical marketing for a breadth of topics including open source software, containers, Kubernetes, cloud computing, data center virtualization, AWM, serverless, and more.
Gracely is also the founder and host of The Cloudcast Podcast, the industry’s leading, independent cloud computing podcast, where he discusses cloud computing, open source, Kubernetes, and more with technology and business leaders that are sharing the future of computing.
“Solo.io’s dedication to advancing application networking is evident in the company’s steady stream of first-to-market product offerings and enhancements,” said Gracely. “I look forward to helping the company continue to drive superior product innovation while boosting customer and revenue growth. Solo.io has proven to be a leader within the Istio service mesh and Envoy open source communities. I’m excited to join the team during this pivotal period of growth.”
New Product Innovation: Gloo Mesh Enterprise 2.0 and GraphQL for Gloo Edge
The new appointments come as Solo.io announces significant product innovation at its yearly community-driven conference, SoloCon. This includes the unveiling of Gloo Mesh Enterprise 2.0, which features major enhancements including multi-tenant workspaces, a new unified API for Istio management, a new UI for observability, and improved VM support. The company also announced the beta release of GraphQL for Gloo Edge, which embeds a GraphQL server natively into Gloo Edge enabling federated GraphQL queries of your APIs. In addition, in 2021 Solo.io unveiled 100 GA, beta, and patch releases including thousands of enhancements across Gloo Mesh, Gloo Edge, and Gloo Portal product offerings.
The new executive appointments underscore Solo.io’s growth trajectory, as the company has reported continued company and customer growth in 2021, including a $135 million Series C funding round. Solo.io also reported 390%+ year over year ACV bookings growth, ~120% increase in new customers, ~95% gross retention rate, and ended the year with 12 Fortune 500/Global 500 customers.
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About Solo.io
Solo.io, the application networking company, delivers API infrastructure from the edge to service mesh, helping enterprises adopt, secure, and operate innovative cloud native technologies. APIs drive microservices and cloud native technologies, forming the foundation for developers, partners, and customers to interact with application services quickly, effectively, and securely. Solo.io brings developer and operations tooling to manage and federate security and traffic control and tie together the integration points to enable and observe the application network. Founded in 2017 in Cambridge, MA, Solo.io is backed by Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and True Ventures. For more information, visit https://www.solo.io/ or follow @soloio_inc.
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