meet me room
TONY MARTIN – FALCONSTOR
Tony Martin joined FalconStor in February 2016 as UK & Ireland managing director. His main role is to
help FalconStor focus on accelerating its position as a leading storage innovator in the region. With extensive
experience in software development and sales, Martin joined FalconStor having previously spent time as
senior vice president EMEA Channels at CA Technologies, and, most recently, as vice president EMEA at
Progress Software. Martin has also held the positions of director at Advanced Legal Solutions and managing
director at Computer Associates UK.
What part of your job do you
find the most challenging?
What I find most challenging is getting
the message of FreeStor across to
IT teams. With so much choice in the
storage market, I often find that they
are unsure as to what solution is right
for their business needs. The issue
is that there are so many definitions
of software defined storage (SDS) in
the market, which can ultimately leave
customers very confused.
Looking back on your career
so far, is there anything you
might have done differently?
Perhaps a move to North America. I
was offered an opportunity to move
there and should have taken it when
I got the chance. Europe doesn’t
have an incubated culture in the
same way the US does. There are
thousands of software companies in
North America, allowing for a stronger
career progression. There are not as
many opportunities in Europe, all the
strategy and decision making for US
companies tends to happen in the US.
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Are there any major changes
that you would like to see in
the data centre industry?
The data centre industry has
evolved from very specialist stand
alone centralised data centres to a
completely decentralised ‘choose
the most appropriate platform’
environment. Data centres will
continue to grow in size and
number, serving existing and new
applications from ‘behind the
scenes’ and touch more areas of
our lives, some of which we can’t
even imagine today. Explosive
growth of the data which is
used by the applications that are
starting to power our lives needs
to be managed with less complex
infrastructures and silos.
What qualities do you value
in the people you work with?
With the right attitude, you can
achieve anything and once you’ve got
that, everything else falls into place.
It helps you rise to the challenge and
do anything you set your mind to. As