The post that has now been filled by Mike Kail, formerly the Vice President of IT operations for Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), was empty for over a year as Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) looked for the right person to fill the post. David Dibble, who oversaw global technology infrastructure at Yahoo, left the company in July of 2013. Mr. Kail will report directly to CEO Marrisa Mayer.
Mayer introduces the new hire
“The strength of our technical infrastructure is critical as we aim to deliver the best possible user and advertiser experiences. It also ensures that Yahoo have the tools and technology necessary to execute. After an intensive search for the right leader, I am excited to announce that today Mike Kail is joining Yahoo as our new CIO and SVP, Infrastructure,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in her prepared remarks on Thursday. “Mike has the perfect combination of experience and vision to lead our IT and infrastructure to even greater global reach and scale.”
That experience spans over two decades. Prior to his work at Netflix, Kail was the Vice President of T Operations at Attensity, where he was responsible for the Americas data center operations team, including managing various big data systems including their Hadoop cluster, HBase, and MongoDB components. Prior to his work at Attensity , heworked in IT management positions at Internet-device maker Chumby as well as Networkcar.com and Nexprise.com. He earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Iowa State University where he studied in Ames, Iowa.
Kail’s remarks and Yahoo’s trading day
“I’m extremely excited to be joining Yahoo and to contribute to their focus on building great sites and services,” said Kail following Mayer’s remarks. “I’m looking forward to leading Yahoo’s world-class infrastructure teams, which will continue to provide the web scale architecture that enables the many outstanding products of the company.”
Yahoo has experienced two email outages this year, something that Kail will certainly look to correct. Yahoo barely moved in Thursday’s trading closing up $0.09 at $35.79.
