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Announcement of New Marketing Leadership
To: Symbolics Employees
From: Jay Wurts
Date: March 27, 1989
Subject: Announcement of New Marketing Leadership
Building an effective marketing organization is one of
Symbolics' most important and difficult goals. Today, I am pleased to
announce that we have made important progress towards meeting
this goal by announcing the appointment of Richard I. Karash as
Vice-President, Marketing and the promotion of Howard Cannon to
Vice-President, Product Marketing, reporting to Rick. I believe that
the unique experience and skills of each of these individuals will
enable us to build an effective, comprehensive and sustainable
marketing advantage.
As many of you know, Rick has been a consultant for Symbolics
for the past 4 months helping us to define our short-term LISP
business strategy. He brings extraordinary experience in launching
practical products from technology organizations and I believe that
his technical and marketing leadership will be a perfect match for
our needs.
Rick has a unique combination of technical and marketing
skills. He is particularly effective at refining, improving and
adapting ideas to meet marketplace opportunities. He began his
career as a systems programmer at MIT on the ICES project. At
Management Decision Systems, Inc., where he was a co-founder with
me, Rick developed the marketing consulting organization with the
goal of getting customers to successfully use and accept radically new
software technology. Based on his personal success with leading
customers, he was able to build and train a highly effective
organization to enable Fortune 500 companies to make marketing
decisions guided by MDS's state of the art marketing models. Rick
also was instrumental in creating an international marketing
organization for MDS by identifying and developing a network of
distributors and subsidiaries.
Because of his knowledge of both technology and the customer,
Rick was a key member of an MDS task force in the early 80s with
the goal of developing a strategy to use the existing software
technology to address the emerging PC market. I have found Rick to
be an excellent sounding board for ideas in a broad range of areas.
Most recently, Rick has held senior marketing and general
management positions with a variety of computer hardware and
software companies including Applied Expert Systems. APEX, under
Rick's leadership, created and introduced one of the first large-scale
AI application products. Rick has also consulted on strategy for
companies including Intellicorp and Banyan Systems and he is a
director of Ventana Systems.
I am also pleased to announce that Howard Cannon has been
promoted to the new post of Vice-President, Product Marketing
reporting to Rick. As acting Vice-President, Marketing, Howard has
played a major role in Symbolics' recent product and financial
progress. He orchestrated our highly successful presence at the
AAAI conference last August. He directed the launch of both the
MacIvory and the XL400. His strategic pricing of these new
products enabled us to have one of the smoothest product transitions
in the history of the Company. Howard has been a key spokesman
for the Company and has spent a great deal of time with customers.
In addition, his broad technical and product knowledge have allowed
the Company to pursue our newest marketing initiatives with a
minimum of staffing and resources.
With the challenges we face in transitioning our product line
and restoring the Company's health, effective marketing will be an
especially important challenge. I believe that Rick's marketing
experience and organizational skills with Howard Cannon's strong
marketing and product vision and Susan Zellmann-Rohrer's
communications and marketing skills will make a superlative team to
meet the marketing challenge.
****************************************************************
External press release follows:
Contact: Susan Zellmann-Rohrer, (617) 221-1021
SYMBOLICS APPOINTS RICHARD I. KARASH VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING
Burlington, Mass., March 27 -- Symbolics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMBX),
today announced that Richard I. Karash has been appointed vice
president, marketing. Karash will report to Jay Wurts,
Symbolics' chairman, chief executive officer and president, and
will have responsibility for all marketing operations as well
as for longer term marketing strategy and business development.
Karash has 20 years of experience in marketing and general
management including executive positions with Applied Expert
Systems, Inc., a provider of financial services software based
on artificial intelligence technologies, and Management
Decision Systems, Inc. (MDS), a leading vendor of decision
support software for the consumer marketing industry. Karash
and Wurts were co-founders of MDS.
For the past 2 years Karash has been an independent consultant
on strategic planning for several advanced technology companies
including Intellicorp, Inc. and Banyan Systems, Inc.
Symbolics also announced that Howard I. Cannon, a Company
founder, who had been acting vice president, marketing while
the Company sought a permanent candidate, will assume the newly
created position of vice president, product marketing,
reporting to Karash.
Commenting on Karash's appointment, Jay Wurts stated, "Rick
Karash and I have a proven track record working together. His
unique experiences developing practical businesses from
technology-rich organizations make him a perfect match for
Symbolics' needs."
Karash added, "Symbolics has significant technology and
expertise to develop hardware, software and services to address
major market opportunities for advanced computer applications.
I look forward to working with the Company's management team to
turn these assets into practical solutions for our customers
and into profitable, high growth businesses for Symbolics."
Commenting on Cannon's newest post, Jay Wurts stated,
"Symbolics has made tremendous progress over the past nine
months, including our return to profitability, renewed customer
confidence and the launch of major new software and hardware
products supporting industry standards and providing cost
effective delivery solutions. Howard Cannon has had a critical
role in these recent developments including directing the
launch of our newest XL400(tm) and MacIvory(tm) workstation
products. His technology vision and marketing leadership will
be an invaluable resource to our marketing programs.
Karash, who is a director of Ventana Systems, Inc., holds an
undergraduate degree in physics from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) and a master's degree from the
MIT Sloan School of Management.
Symbolics, Inc., headquartered in Burlington, Mass., and with
operations in Chatsworth, Calif., is the leading provider of
symbolic processing systems used for the development and
delivery of expert systems, computer aided software engineering
(CASE), computer aided design and engineering (CAD/CAE) and
advanced image generation and processing.
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MacIvory and XL400 are trademarks of Symbolics, Inc.