Liquid Robotics(R), an ocean data services provider and developer of the Wave Glider(R), the first wave-powered marine robot, today announced that Howard M. Dratler, formerly CEO of Panzura, Inc., and veteran, high technology sales executive, has joined the company to lead the global sales and business development organization.

Liquid Robotics®, an ocean data services provider and developer of the Wave Glider®, the first wave-powered marine robot, today announced that Howard M. Dratler, formerly CEO of Panzura, Inc., and veteran, high technology sales executive, has joined the company to lead the global sales and business development organization. Mr. Dratler will report directly to Bill Vass, CEO of Liquid Robotics. His position is effective immediately.

"I am very excited to have Howard join Liquid Robotics and my executive staff," said Bill Vass, CEO of Liquid Robotics. "This is a strategic win for the Company. Having a veteran sales executive of Howard's stature will be invaluable as we move into our next phase of major expansion and growth. We have the products, the market opportunity and now the sales leader to help achieve our goal of transforming how the world collects, monitors and measures our oceans."

The addition of Mr. Dratler comes at an exciting time for the Company as it experiences rapid growth in its customer base, adds critical new hires, and expands strategic industry partnerships. Under his leadership, Mr. Dratler will create the global sales strategy and build out the worldwide sales and business development organizations. He was chosen for his experience and successful track record in creating multi-dimensional, go-to-market strategies and building high performance sales teams in pursuit of significant revenue growth.

Mr. Dratler is a highly successful sales executive with more than 25 years of experience across a wide range of disciplines including storage virtualization, content management, data warehousing, SaaS and the Cloud. He has an impressive record scaling businesses from early-stage to much larger, complex organizations with a blend of product and hosted service (XaaS) offerings, thousands of employees and multiple divisions/business units operating globally.

Prior to joining Liquid Robotics, Mr. Dratler was CEO of Panzura Inc., an Enterprise Cloud Storage provider, where he led the early start up to a leadership position in the cloud storage gateway market. Other career highlights include vice president and general manager of strategic platform business for Veritas Software Inc. where he developed initiatives generating over $1B in annual revenues. Prior to Veritas Software Inc., Mr. Dratler was executive vice-president, worldwide field operations for Captiva Software Inc. (acquired by EMC) with responsibilities for direct and indirect sales channels, consulting, professional services and customer technical support operation globally.

About the Wave Glider
The Liquid Robotics Wave Glider is the first marine robot to use only the ocean's endless supply of wave energy for propulsion (no manpower, no emissions, no refueling). The Wave Glider employs a multi-patented design that allows it to cost-effectively collect and transmit data gathered during missions lasting years, over distances of thousands of miles, or while holding station. Data gathered by Wave Gliders will help us address the biggest challenges our marine environments face -- including ocean acidification, fisheries management, global climate and natural disaster mitigation.

About Liquid Robotics
Liquid Robotics, Inc. is an ocean data services provider and developer of the Wave Glider® marine robot that functions as a persistent and versatile platform for scientific and industrial applications. Based in Silicon Valley and Hawaii, the company's Wave Glider® is enabling dozens of applications and missions never before attainable. Liquid Robotics is backed by VantagePoint Capital Partners. For more information, visit www.liquidr.com.