Executive Team

JL Valente – President & CEO

JL Valente brings over 20 years experience at senior level in the enterprise software sector. He has held global senior sales, marketing and operations positions at software companies ranging from CA, Viasoft (now ASG), InfoVista and most recently CITTIO. As CITTIO’s Executive Chairman, JL pioneered the company’s efforts of its well-regarded cloud computing initiative. Prior to that, JL ran the Americas Operations of InfoVista where he engaged in successful business transformation, bringing innovation to market, receiving awards and accolades along the way. Over a 10-year period from ‘87 to ‘96, JL was integral to Computer Associates’ successes running regional and international marketing as well as building and leading a P&L for CA in Iberia.

He speaks French, Spanish and English and holds a Master of Computer Science degree from Ecole d’Ingénieurs des Technologies de I’Information et du Management (EFREI), Paris, France.

Predrag (Fred) Mutavzdic – CTO & founding member

Fred has a proven track record in managing the design, architecture and delivery of complex software software solutions in the communications and operations management markets.

Fred was the first software engineer to work on Micromuse’s flagship Netcool Omnibus event management platform and was responsible for the design, build, test and deployment of the core software components during his 10 year tenure at Micromuse (1991 to 2001). As head of research and development and new product engineering, Fred was actively involved in the company’s transition from privately owned business to publicly listed (NASDAQ: MUSE) corporation.  He holds a first class BSc Honours degree in Electrical Engineering from the Belgrade University.

Phil Blades – VP Products and Community & founding member

Phil Blades is a veteran of the networking industry with a background in investment banking, telco and life sciences as well as the military and public sector.

During a seven year post at Capgemini in the mid 90’s, Phil held several positions including head of network consulting, CTO for Telco; media and networking business and VP of Technology Consulting Global Service Line. Previously, Phil led the infrastructure renewal of Union Bank of Switzerland as head of network operations. In addition, Phil was the very first beta tester of Micromuse’s NetCool Omnibus.

Co-Founders & Advisors

RiverMuse was founded by a collection of notable industry veterans, whose inventions assure the majority of public and private internet infrastructures today; these inventions are more recognizable perhaps as IBM Tivoli Netcool, Omnibus and Precision, IP Manager, Cisco InfoCentre and HP OpenView Advanced Edition.

Phil Tee – founding member

Phil is serial technology entrepreneur with a deep and proven pedigree in the service and fault management technology markets.

Phil co-founded Micromuse, a service management technology company, which held its IPO on NASDAQ and was sold to IBM in 2006 and RiverSoft, a root-cause analysis and discovery technology company, which held its IPO on the London Stock Exchange Main Board and was sold to Micromuse in 2002. Phil’s ideas and software form the core of service management offerings from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia.

Phil is able to claim that greater than 90% of the networks running the internet today are monitored and managed using software that he created. He also holds multiple software algorithm patents and is credited with a number of inventions. He holds a first class BSc Honours degree in Physics from the University of Sussex.

Mike Silvey – founding member

Mike has been instrumental in the success of numerous software companies including Remedy Corporation (BMC), Netmetrix (Agilent), Patrol (BMC), Riversoft (IBM Tivoli Software), Micromuse (IBM Tivoli Software) and Dexterra by driving the early stage marketing concepts, business development strategy and early market development activities. He was also instrumental in driving OEM agreements with leading global corporations including Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Vodafone, Telstra and Intel.

At Micromuse, Mike held the position of SVP of marketing and business development, and later at RiverSoft he was Vice President of business development and Marketing.  He also co-founded Dexterra, a mobile enterprise software company where he was VP of Marketing.

Matt Asay joins the RiverMuse Advisory Board. Asay’s journey on the open source road began in 1998 and he has since achieved guru status as one of the industry’s leading open source business strategists. In 2003 he founded the Open Source Business Conference – a premier open source strategy event – and served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Thomas Weisel Venture Partners where he focused on open source investment opportunities. In addition to his RiverMuse advisory post, Asay regularly writes on CNET’s open source blog: http://cnet.com/openroad and manages global business development for Alfresco, an open source Content Application Server vendor. Prior to Alfresco, Asay was part of Novell’s Linux Business Office.

Con Blackett joins the RiverMuse Advisory Board. Principle of IT service management operations at BT until recently, Blackett possesses top business acumen and weighty technical skills in network and systems management, collected over 25 years across Europe and North America. A true industry veteran of the telecom industry, Blackett is regarded by many as a prime influencer and his Midas touch has aided the futures of dominating products such as HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli. Interestingly, Blackett was also responsible for the first ever implementation of Netcool (from Micromuse) at BT- worldwide.