About EMS
Executive Management Team
EMS has assembled a dynamic cross-disciplinary management team to bring new data center solutions to market, establish strong partnerships with industry leaders, respond to customer needs, and achieve positive financial results.
Bill Stockwell – Chief Executive Officer
Throughout his 28-year career, Bill Stockwell has distinguished himself as both a visionary and leader. As Chief Executive Officer of EMS, he oversees the overall operations of the company including sales and marketing, business development, finance, engineering and driving the company’s entrepreneurial culture.
Prior to joining EMS, Stockwell served as CEO of a regional apparel company where he successfully grew revenues by 500 percent within 7 years.
Before that, Stockwell served as Senior Vice President of Western Operations for Paranet, a leading provider of integration, management and support services for distributed computing technology. While there, Stockwell was responsible for all management, sales, technical staffing, recruiting and finance staff throughout the western U.S. Stockwell opened 26 offices over 5 years in 21 different western cities. Employees grew from 4 to over 350 during his tenure. The Western Operations grew from $200,000 in revenue to over $40M in revenue during his tenure. The total company grew business from $1 million to $110 million in 5 years before being sold to Sprint for $425 million in 1997. Stockwell stayed on in that capacity with Sprint through 1999.
Stockwell began his career with IBM in sales and quickly moved into sales management and product development. In each role he consistently exceeded all sales goals and objectives. Stockwell was employed with IBM from 1981 – 1994.
Stockwell graduated from State University at Albany, N.Y. with a B.S. in Economics. He has completed numerous graduate level courses at Wharton, Harvard and the Haas School of Business.
Joe Robbins – Founder, Chairman of the Board
With a career spanning 2 decades in high-tech, Joe Robbins is considered one of the industry’s true innovators. In 2005, he founded Elliptical Mobile Solutions where together with colleagues he pioneered “In Motion Engineering,” a patented adaptive suspension technology that offers significant efficiencies in the mobilization of electronic rack-mounted equipment.
Robbins also patented a closed loop cooling method that reduces the energy required to cool and maintain IT equipment by up to 80%.
Today, the dramatic cost benefits of these innovations are being recognized and implemented in data centers around the globe.
Prior to founding EMS, Robbins served in the United States Air Force and worked in a variety of information technology-computer related positions at MCI and Blackboard, Inc.
Don Kennedy – Senior Vice President of International Sales
Don Kennedy brings to EMS more than 27 years of senior-level sales and marketing experience within the international high-tech industry. As Senior Vice President of International Sales, he heads EMS’ global sales efforts, including markets in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, all of which are seeing significant growth in information technology (IT).
In this capacity, he appoints and manages the channel partners that are the basis of EMS' business model. In addition, he develops relationships with select OEMs who wish to engage with EMS in key target markets.
Prior to joining EMS, Kennedy served as V.P., Global Channels for Seagate Technology, where he led a distribution sales team with annual revenue responsibility in excess of $4 billion quota and exceeded 100% of the company's sales revenue target.
During his tenure with Seagate, Kennedy held various senior-level sales and marketing positions based in Singapore, Paris, San Jose and London and consistently surpassed sales revenue targets throughout the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the Asia Pacific region, and the United States.
Prior to joining Seagate, Kennedy founded Westan International, where he was Western Digital's master distributor for South East Asia and a key distributor and manufacturer's representative for IntelliSync, Labtec and Chromatic Research.
Kennedy also spent 14 years holding executive roles at Western Digital, including 6 years based in Singapore as V.P. of Asia Pacific sales.
Kennedy holds a B.A. in Business Management from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.
Tony Cole – Vice President of North American Sales
With a career spanning 20 years within the high-tech industry, Tony Cole has a proven track record with partner relationships, large account sales, management, and sales leadership.
As Vice President of North American Sales for EMS, Cole oversees the company's domestic sales operations focusing on growing revenue and profit results. This includes establishing key business and channel partner relationships, which are the basis of EMS’ sales model. He also oversees marketing, technical support and sales team leadership.
Prior to joining EMS, Cole served as V.P. of Sales Development for Insight Enterprises, Inc., a $4.1 billion provider of brand name computing products, software and advanced IT services. While there, Cole was responsible for significantly growing revenue and gross profit for the company and its key partners. He also worked to create a comprehensive management system to drive team success inclusive of talent management; territory assessment and planning; account strategy and planning; margin improvement; partner management; and pipeline and forecast processes. Earlier, Cole served as area V.P. for Insight’s Enterprise West Area where he built an outbound sales team and transitioned an existing inside sales team to grow business in Western Area Enterprise clients.
Prior to that, Cole was the Director of Sales, Global Accounts for Comark, a technology solutions provider with $1.5 billion in revenue when it was acquired by Insight in 2002. While there, he was a founding member of the Global Accounts Division designed to penetrate Fortune 100 clients and clients with international requirements. In this capacity, he developed contractual relationships with enterprise accounts and built account teams to support new wins. Within two years, he grew revenue from $0 to $100M and increased active accounts by 3,000 percent.
Cole holds an M.B.A. in New Venture Management from University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn., and a B.A. in Economics from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., where he graduated Cum Laude.
Dennis R. Johnson – Advisor to the Board
As Advisor to the Board, Dennis R. Johnson brings to EMS his vast expertise in high-tech startups and company turnarounds. He also has extensive experience positioning companies for sale and completing acquisitions and mergers.
Prior to opening his own consulting business, Johnson served as Executive Vice
President of Sales and Marketing at Compellent Technologies, Inc., a supplier of storage area networks. Within three years, Johnson helped grow revenues to more than $50 million using a channel only strategy. In 2007 and 2008 the company was found by Gartner to be the fastest growing storage company in the world. Compellent went public in 2008 and is now listed on the NYSE “CML” with a market value of $558 million.
Before that, Johnson served as President, CEO and Director of Marix Technologies, where he restructured a start-up software development company to deliver product as a SaaS through an MN based ISP.
As Executive Vice President of Sales at Xiotech Corp., Johnson grew the sales force from 13 to more than 200 employees in less than two years and increased revenue from $5 million to $100 million. IDC ranked Xiotech as the fastest growing company (400% +) in 2001. Xiotech was acquired by Seagate.
As President, CEO, and Director of Xata Corp., Johnson successfully turned around a cash strapped company and later oversaw its NASDAQ public offering. In 1996, the company was listed by INC as one of the 100 fastest growing public companies in the world.
Johnson has worked for a number of other high-tech companies including Marix, National Business Systems, AmeriData (sold to GE Information Systems) and Currentech (sold to JWP/Entex/Siemens).
A graduate of Minnesota State University, Johnson holds a B.A. in Sociology/ Psychology
William Woodbury II – Co-Founder, Chief Design Engineer
William Woodbury II is the co-inventor of EMS’ products. When presented with the idea to have a mobile data center platform in 2005, Woodbury took that idea and helped develop it into a full product line of mobile, high-density, cost-effective and energy-efficient data centers.
His talents in engineering have allowed EMS to develop equipment for a variety of military, governmental, industrial and commercial applications.
Today, Woodbury oversees the engineering of EMS’ full product line from concept, to research and development, to design and implementation.
Simon Rohrich – Co-Founder and Chief Technology Evangelist
As Co-Founder and Chief Technology Evangelist of Elliptical Mobile Solutions,
Rohrich is dedicated to driving data center trends toward optimal efficiency, while reducing their harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
His multi-disciplinary experience and passion for green technologies have shaped the philosophical underpinnings of the company’s overall product vision.
Rohrich has taken an active part leveraging contact with businesses, governmental and technology leaders to establish ongoing relationships with the Uptime Institute, the Data Center Alliance and Lifebot, to name a few.
At EMS, he serves in many senior level capacities primarily in engineering, finance, project management, and marketing.
Rohrich’s background in various technical fields, including telecom, IT, and wireless communication has been a valuable asset in the development and implementation of EMS’ product line.
Mike Chaput- Director of Technical Sales
With more than 25 years in the IT industry, MikeChaput brings to Elliptical Mobile Solutions a vast knowledge of the data center industry that has led to much of the EMS product line as it exists today.
Chaput conceived the idea for a mobile computing/communications platform while serving in the U.S. Air Force where he designed squadron level data centers and computing environments and managed a team of peers responsible for the implementation, cut-over, and testing of environments. He believed a mobile data center platform would be priceless in terms of cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency and space savings.
Today, Chaput serves as Director of Technical Sales at EMS. In this capacity, he provides all technical sales support and engineering for VAR’s, partners’ and customers across North and South America.
Prior to joining EMS, Chaput served as Senior Sales/ System Engineer for Sanity Solutions, a privately held VAR offering storage, backup, deduplication, WAN optimization, and DR/HA solutions for SMB to large enterprise accounts.
Before that, he was Principal Sales/System Engineer for Xiotech Corp., a manufacturer of enterprise class data storage solutions. While there, he was responsible for regional Systems Engineering and support of SAN products for the SW region; and built a customer base of more than 50 accounts covering the So Cal region. His sales team increased the footprint of storage solutions by 35 – 50% year after year.
Chaput also worked as a Technical Solutions Manager and Consultant for Paranet, an IT consulting/contracting company that was later acquired by Sprint, and Phoenix Home Life Insurance Company in Hartford, Conn., where he was responsible for IT related matters for 126 field offices nationwide.