Kaazing, a provider of HTML5 WebSocket technology, on Thursday announced that it has expanded its executive team with the additions of Mike Peckham as Vice President, Finance and Manuel Hoffmann as Vice President, Business Development. Bringing many years of executive management experience to Kaazing, Peckham and Hoffmann have helped lead emerging startups as well as global corporations within the enterprise technology sector.

Both additions address rapidly growing market demand for Kaazing's WebSocket Acceleration technology, a critical component for the delivery of ultra high performance, full duplex Web communication.  The Kaazing team is a recognized and trusted leader in emerging Web technologies with its flagship product Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and its significant contributions to the W3C's HTML5 WebSocket specification.  Driven by a new era of browser technologies, increased consumer and business demand for interactive web experiences and a growing number of content consumption platforms, HTML5 is now broadly recognized as the de-facto foundation for the next generation of browser-based web applications.

"After several months of exceptional growth, particularly within early adopter industries like financial services, telecommunications and social networking, we are starting to see broadly accelerating demand for HTML5 WebSockets across a number of vertical markets," said Jonas Jacobi, CEO of Kaazing. "Mike and Manuel have proven track records of driving and managing growth in high-performance sectors of the technology industry and are welcome additions to the Kaazing team."

As Kaazing's Vice President, Finance, Mike Peckham will oversee Kaazing's financial forecasting and modeling, advise on strategic investments and outside financing and lead annual and long-term budget planning.  Prior to Kaazing, Peckham held a number of senior finance positions within the IT and enterprise software sector, including roles at iTradeNetwork (General Manager - Business Intelligence Group), Instill Corporation (CFO), NetManage (CFO) and Simware (CFO).  Peckham holds a B. Business Administration and B. Commerce from the University Ottawa and is a Chartered Accountant.

As Kaazing's Vice President, Business Development, Manuel Hoffmann will be responsible for developing Kaazing's strategic partner ecosystem and helping drive overall marketing and sales efforts.  Hoffmann joins Kaazing from ScaleMP, where he served as Vice President, Channel Development, helping the high-end computing virtualization company to drive global revenue with Dell, HP, IBM, SGI, Sun and their channel partners.  Prior to ScaleMP, Hoffmann spent ten years working in senior-level marketing and business development positions in the high performance computing and storage sectors, including roles with Meiosys, Inc., 3PARdata, Inc. and SGI.  He holds a BS from Ecole Centrale des Arts et Métiers (ECAM) and an MBA from University of Louvain (Belgium).