Mike Manos Takes Operations Post at AOL

Industry veteran Mike Manos has joined AOL as Senior Vice President of Technology Operations, the company said this week. Manos' shift to AOL follows leadership posts in data center operations at Nokia and Digital Realty Trust and Microsoft's Global Foundation Services.

"Michael brings a wealth of valuable experience and expertise to the team," said Alex Gounares, AOL Chief Technology Officer. "We are thrilled to have this highly sought after candidate on board as we continue to focus on developing best in class platform technologies that enable us to deliver excellent experiences to all of our users."

"I am excited to join AOL, especially now as the company is refocusing on providing its users with the best possible experience online and that starts with building a world class technology team to support all of the great work begin done by AOL's product teams," said Manos. "Working with the global technology leadership team, I look forward to advancing the technological innovation across the AOL network."

In a post on his Loose Bolts blog, Manos acknowledged that some in the data center industry might be puzzled by his move to AOL, a company not recently famed for infrastructure innovation.

"AOL is aggressively moving to redefine itself in the industry, to significantly transform and morph itself into a world that AOL itself helped create and define over 25 years ago," he writes. "There is no arguing that the first true scale challenges in dealing with the Internet at large were experienced by those first AOL’ers as they had to deal with numbers of users never before seen in our industry. They pushed the boundaries of technology, they pushed the boundary of operations, they created whole new paradigms. To reinvent itself in a market with such competition, such diversity is a huge challenge."

"I could have taken a safe bet. But where is the excitement? Where is the challenge?" Manos continued. "As the saying goes, 'A ship is safe in the harbour, but that's not what ships are for!' This ship is setting sail and my commitment is that not only will we find a new world, we will define it!"